The 14th Execution of 2024
South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death as
the state restarted executions after an unintended 13-year pause because prison
officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections, reported The Associated Press.
Owens was convicted of the 1997 killing of a Greenville
convenience store clerk during a robbery. While on trial, Owens killed a person
incarcerated at a county jail. His confession to that attack was read to two
different juries and a judge who all sentenced him to death.
Owens, 46, made no final statement. His last meal was two
cheeseburgers, french fries, well-done ribeye steak, six chicken wings, two
strawberry sodas and a slice of apple pie.
When the curtain to the death chamber opened, Owens was
strapped to a gurney, his arms stretched to his sides. After the drug was
administered, he said “bye” to his lawyer and she said “bye” to him.
He smiled slightly and his facial expression did not change
much before he appeared to lose consciousness after about a minute. Then his
eyes closed and he took several deep breaths. His breathing got shallower and
his face twitched for another four or five minutes before the movements
stopped.
A doctor came in and declared him dead a little over 10
minutes later at 6:55 p.m.
Owens’ last-ditch appeals were repeatedly denied,
including by a federal court Friday morning. Owens also petitioned for a stay
of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. South Carolina’s governor and
corrections director swiftly filed a reply, stating the high court should
reject Owens’ petition. The filing said nothing is exceptional about his case.
The high court denied the request shortly after the
scheduled start time of the execution.
His last chance to avoid death was for Republican South
Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison.
McMaster denied Owens’ request as well, stating that he had “carefully reviewed
and thoughtfully considered” Owens’ application
for clemency.
First execution in 13 years
Owens may be the first of several people to die in the
state’s death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other
people are out of appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared
the way to hold an execution every five weeks.
South Carolina first tried to add the firing
squad to restart executions after its supply of lethal injection drugs
expired and no company was willing to publicly sell them more. But the state
had to pass a shield
law keeping the drug supplier and much of the protocol for executions
secret to be able to reopen the death chamber.
To carry out executions, the state switched from a
three-drug method to a new protocol of using just the sedative pentobarbital.
The new process is similar to how the federal government kills people on death
row, state prison officials said.
South Carolina law allows condemned people to choose lethal
injection, the new firing squad or the electric chair built in 1912. Owens
allowed his lawyer to choose
how he died, saying he felt if he made the choice he would be a party to
his own death, and his religious beliefs denounce suicide.
Owens changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah
while in prison, but court and prison records continue to refer to him as
Owens.
The crimes
Owens was convicted of killing Irene Graves in 1999.
Prosecutors said he fired a shot into the head of the single mother of three
who worked three jobs when she said she couldn’t open the store’s safe.
Hanging over his case was another killing: After his
conviction, but before he was sentenced in Graves’ killing, Owens fatally
attacked Christopher Lee, whom he was incarcerated with at a county jail.
Owens gave a detailed confession about how he stabbed Lee,
burned his eyes, choked and stomped him, ending by saying he did it “because I
was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to an investigator’s written
account.
The confession was read to each jury and judge who went on
to sentence Owens to death. Owens had two different death sentences overturned
on appeal only to end up back on death row.
Owens was charged with murder in Lee’s death but was never
tried. Prosecutors dropped the charges with the right to restore them in 2019
around the time Owens ran out of regular appeals.
Final appeals
In his final appeal, Owens’ lawyers said prosecutors never
presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was
killed and the chief evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty
and testified that Owens was the killer.
Owens’ attorneys provided a sworn
statement two days before the execution from Steven Golden saying
Owens was not in the store, contradicting his trial testimony. Prosecutors said
other friends of Owens and his former girlfriend testified that he bragged
about killing the clerk.
Owens’ lawyers also said he was just 19 when the killing
happened and that he had brain damage from physical and sexual violence while
in a juvenile prison.
“Mr. Owens’s childhood was marked by suffering on a scale
that is hard to comprehend. He spent his adulthood in prison for a crime that
he did not commit,” attorney Gerald “Bo” King said in a statement following
Owens’ execution. “The legal errors, hidden deals, and false evidence that made
tonight possible should shame us all.”
South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty held
a vigil outside the prison about 90 minutes before Owens was scheduled to die.
South Carolina restarts the death penalty
South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. It took a decade of
wrangling in the Legislature — first adding the firing squad as a method and
later passing a shield law — to get capital punishment restarted.
South Carolina has put 43 people to death since the death
penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying
out an average of three executions a year. Only nine states have put more
people to death.
Since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s
death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned people in early
2011. It now has 31 after Owens’ death Friday. About 20 people have been taken
off death row and received different prison sentences after successful
appeals. Others have died of natural causes.
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