South Carolina executed convict Freddie Owens on Friday, resuming executions after an unforeseen 13-year hiatus caused by prison officials’ inability to get the medicines required for lethal injection.
Owens was found guilty of the 1997 murder of a Greenville convenience store clerk during a robbery. While on trial, Owens murdered an inmate in a county jail. His confession to the attack was read to two separate juries and a judge, all of whom sentenced him to death.
Owens, 46, was pronounced deceased around 6:55 p.m.
When the curtain to the killing chamber opened, Owens was shackled to a gurney, arms extended out to his sides.
He said something to his lawyer, who smiled in response. He appeared conscious for nearly a minute before closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths.
His respiration became shallower, and his face trembled for another four or five minutes until it stopped.
A medical professional entered and confirmed him dead around 13 minutes later.
Owens’ final appeals were repeatedly refused, including by a federal court Friday morning. Owens also sought a stay of execution from the United States Supreme Court. South Carolina’s governor and prison director quickly responded, suggesting that the high court should dismiss Owens’ plea. According to the complaint, there is nothing special about his case.
The Supreme Court refused the request shortly after the execution’s scheduled start time.
His only chance of avoiding death was for Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison. McMaster also declined Owens’ appeal, adding that he had “carefully reviewed and thoughtfully considered” his bid for mercy.
McMaster previously stated that he would follow historical precedent and reveal his decision minutes before the lethal injection begins, when prison authorities phone him and the state attorney general to ensure that there is no reason to prolong the execution. The former prosecutor vowed to study Owens’ clemency appeal but has stated that he generally trusts prosecutors and juries.
Owens was convicted of killing Irene Graves in 1999. Prosecutors claim he fired a shot into the head of the single mother of three who worked three jobs when she stated she couldn’t unlock the store’s safe.
But another murder looms over his case: following his conviction, but before being sentenced in Graves’ death, Owens fatally stabbed a fellow jail inmate, Christopher Lee.
According to an investigator’s written statement, Owens gave a lengthy confession about how he stabbed Lee, burned his eyes, choked and stomped him before claiming he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder.”
That confession was read to each juror and judge, who ultimately sentenced Owens to death. Owens had two distinct death convictions reversed on appeal, yet he ended up back on death row.
Owens was charged with murder for Lee’s death but was never tried. Prosecutors dismissed the charges, with the option to reinstate them in 2019, about the time Owens ran out of ordinary appeals.
Owens could be the first of many inmates to die in South Carolina’s death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five additional inmates have exhausted their appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has paved the way for an execution every five weeks.
South Carolina originally attempted to reinstate executions using the firing squad after its supply of lethal injection medications ran out and no company was prepared to openly sell them anymore. However, in order to reopen the death chamber, the state passed a shield law that kept the drug supplier and much of the execution protocol secret.
To carry out executions, the state went from a three-drug technique to a new regimen that only used the sedative pentobarbital. State prison authorities say the new technique is identical to how the federal government executes inmates.
South Carolina law enables sentenced criminals to choose between lethal injection, a new firing squad, or the electric chair, which was established in 1912. Owens permitted his lawyer to decide how he died, stating that if he chose, he would be a party to his own death, and that his Christian convictions oppose suicide.
South Carolina’s last execution occurred in May 2011. It took a decade of legislative struggle — first introducing the firing squad as a technique, then adopting a shield statute — to reintroduce death punishment.
South Carolina has executed 43 prisoners since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, it carried out an average of three executions per year. Only nine states have executed more convicts.
However, since the inadvertent execution stop, South Carolina’s death row population has decreased. As of early 2011, the state has 63 condemned inmates. It had 32 when Friday began. Following successful appeals, around 20 convicts were removed from death row and sentenced to various jail terms. Others have perished from natural causes.
In his final appeal, Owens’ counsel claimed that prosecutors never produced scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed, and that the primary evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and stated that Owens was the killer.
Owens’ attorneys obtained a sworn declaration from Steven Golden two days before the execution, stating that Owens was not in the business, contradicting his trial testimony. Prosecutors claimed Owens’ other buddies and previous girlfriend testified that he brags about killing the clerk.
Owens’ lawyers also claimed that he was just 19 years old at the time of the homicide and had suffered brain damage as a result of physical and sexual violence while in a juvenile prison.