Columbia, South Carolina — A South Carolina inmate due to be killed on Friday has asked Gov. Henry McMaster to spare his life, something no governor in the state has done since the capital sentence was reinstated over 50 years ago.
Freddie Eugene Owens, 46, is slated to become the first person executed in South Carolina in 13 years. Owens delegated the decision to his lawyer, who selected lethal injection over the firing squad or electric chair.
McMaster has stated that he will follow the historic practice of making his decision over the phone with the prison minutes before Owens’ lethal injection begins.
Owens is being sentenced to death for killing Greenville convenience store clerk Irene Graves in 1997. While awaiting sentencing after being found guilty in her killing, Owens killed a fellow jail inmate in a savage attack, according to authorities. Prosecutors read Owens’ confession to the two juries and judge who agreed he should die. He was never tried for the inmate’s death.
Owens’ mercy appeal, filed before Friday’s execution, argues that prosecutors never offered scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed because she couldn’t access the store’s safe, according to his lawyers.
A co-defendant who was in the store pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the murderer. Still, Owens’ lawyers claimed the other guy made a secret deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty or life in prison.
They also claimed Owens was only 19 years old at the time of the killing and had suffered brain damage as a result of physical and sexual violence while in a juvenile prison.
“Because Khalil’s youth and traumas prevented him from functioning as an adult, it is unjust to punish him as one,” his attorneys stated. Owens changed his identity to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while inside, although court papers still refer to him as Freddie Owens.
Owens’ lawyers have not made the whole clemency petition available to the public.
The arguments are identical to those made by the defense attorneys last week when they petitioned the South Carolina Supreme Court to postpone Owens’ execution. The court rejected them, stating that they had already been argued or did not reach the level of delaying the execution after decades of appeals.
Owens has been sentenced to death three times after sections of his case were overturned and his capital sentence vacated.
According to attorneys for the state Attorney General’s Office, prosecutors demonstrated during Owens’ final sentencing hearing that the man who drew the trigger was wearing a ski mask and the other man was wearing a stocking mask. They then linked the ski mask to Owens.
However, another murder looms over Owens’ case. Before being imprisoned for Graves’ murder, Owens attacked Christopher Lee, a fellow jail inmate.
Owens delivered a full confession regarding stabbing Lee and burning his eyes. According to an investigator’s written account, he choked and stomped him before explaining that he committed it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder.”
Prosecutors relayed Owens’ confession to jurors or judges while they decided whether he lived or died. He was charged with murder in Lee’s death but never appeared in court. Prosecutors dismissed his charges a few years back when he ran out of appeals in Graves’ case, with the option to reinstate them if needed.
In South Carolina, only the governor has the authority to give mercy and commute a death sentence to life in prison. However, no governor has done so throughout the state’s 43 executions since the capital sentence was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
McMaster has consistently stated that he has not determined what to do in Owens’ situation and will thoroughly study any information sent to him. As a former prosecutor, he respects jury judgments and judicial decisions.
“When the rule of law has been followed, there is only one answer,” Mr. McMaster said.
At least five additional South Carolina death row inmates have exhausted their appeals, and the state Supreme Court has determined that they can be executed in five-week intervals.