South Carolina puts inmate in jail Freddie Owens Dies Friday as the state resumed executions after an accidental 13 year break because prison staff could not obtain the drugs needed for the lethal injections.
Owens was convicted of murdering a Greenville convenience store clerk during a 1997 robbery. During his trial, Owens killed an inmate in a county jail. His confession to the attack was read to two different juries and a judge, all of whom sentenced him to death.
Owens, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m.
When the death chamber curtain opened, Owens was strapped to a gurney, his arms at his sides.
He mumbled a word to his lawyer, who smiled back. He seemed conscious for about a minute, then his eyes closed and he took a few deep breaths.
His breathing became shallower and his face scrunched up for another four or five minutes before the movements stopped.
About 13 minutes later, a doctor came in and pronounced him dead.
Owens’ last-resort appeals have been repeatedly denied, including by a federal district court Friday morning. Owens also filed a petition for a stay of execution with the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor of South Carolina and the warden of the prisons quickly filed a response, arguing that the high court should deny Owens’ petition. The petition said there is nothing exceptional about his case.
The Supreme Court denied the request shortly after the execution was scheduled to begin.
His last chance to avoid death was for Republican South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison. McMaster also denied Owens’ request, stating that he had “carefully reviewed and considered” Owens’ request for clemency.
McMaster previously said he would follow historic tradition and announce his decision minutes before the lethal injection, when prison officials call him and the state attorney general to make sure there is no reason to delay the execution. The former prosecutor had promised to review Owens’ request for clemency but has said he trusts prosecutors and juries.
Owens was convicted in 1999 of murdering Irene Graves. Prosecutors say he shot the single mother of three who worked three jobs in the head when she said she couldn’t get the store safe open.
But there’s another murder hanging over his case: After his conviction, but before he was sentenced for Graves’ murder, Owens fatally attacked a fellow inmate, Christopher Lee.
Owens gave a detailed confession of stabbing Lee, burning his eyes, choking him and stomping on him, ending by saying he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to an investigator’s written account.
That confession was read to every jury and judge who subsequently sentenced Owens to death. Owens received two different death sentences that were overturned on appeal, but he eventually ended up back on death row.
Owens was charged with Lee’s murder but never went to trial. Prosecutors dropped the charges with the right to reinstate them in 2019, around the time Owens was no longer eligible for regular appeals.
Owens could be the first of several inmates to die on South Carolina’s death row at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other inmates have been removed from appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared the way for executions to be held every five weeks.
South Carolina first tried the firing squad to resume executions after its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and no company was willing to sell them publicly. But the state had to pass a shield law that kept the drug supplier and much of the execution protocol secret in order to reopen the death chamber.
To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol using only the anesthetic pentobarbital. The new process is similar to the way the federal government kills prisoners, state prison officials said.
South Carolina law allows condemned prisoners to choose between lethal injection, the new firing squad, or the electric chair, which was built in 1912. Owens let his attorney choose how he died. He said he felt that if he made that choice, he would be partly responsible for his own death. Moreover, his religious beliefs reject suicide.
The last execution in South Carolina was in May 2011. It took a decade of legislature wrangling — first by adding the firing squad as a method and later by passing a shield law — to reinstate the death penalty.
South Carolina has executed 43 prisoners since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, it averaged three executions per year. Only nine states have executed more prisoners.
But since the pause in accidental executions, South Carolina’s death row population has declined. The state had 63 condemned inmates at the start of 2011. As of Friday, it had 32. About 20 prisoners have been taken off death row and given varying prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.
In his final appeal, Owens’ attorneys argued that prosecutors never presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed. The key evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer.
Owens’ attorneys have an affidavit two days before Steven Golden’s execution, who said Owens was not at the store, contradicting his testimony at trial. Prosecutors said other friends of Owens and his former girlfriend testified that he bragged about killing the clerk.
Owens’ attorneys also stated that he was only 19 when the murder occurred and that he suffered brain injuries from physical and sexual abuse in juvenile detention.
