South Carolina placed inmate Freddie Owens Dead Friday as the state resumed executions after a 13 years of break because prison authorities could not obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.
Owens was convicted of murdering a Greenville convenience store clerk in 1997 during a robbery. At his trial, Owens killed an inmate in a county jail. His confession to the attack was read to two separate juries and a judge, who each 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 outstretched at his sides.
He whispered a word to his lawyer, who smiled back. He appeared conscious for about a minute, then his eyes closed and he took several deep breaths.
His breathing became more shallow and his face trembled for another four or five minutes before the movements stopped.
A medical professional arrived and pronounced him dead approximately 13 minutes later.
Owens’s final appeals have been repeatedly rejected, including by a federal court Friday morning. Owens also filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution. South Carolina’s governor and prison director quickly filed a response, saying the Supreme Court should deny Owens’ request. The petition said his case was not exceptional.
The High Court dismissed the application shortly after the scheduled start time of the execution.
His last chance to escape death was for South Carolina Republican Governor Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison. McMaster also rejected Owens’ request, saying he had “carefully reviewed and carefully considered” Owens’ request for clemency.
McMaster had said earlier that he would follow historical tradition and announce his decision minutes before the lethal injection begins, when prison officials will call him and the state attorney general to ensure there is no reason to delay the execution. The former prosecutor had promised to review Owens’ request for clemency but said he tends to trust prosecutors and juries.
Owens was convicted of murdering Irene Graves in 1999. Prosecutors said he shot the single mother of three, who worked three jobs, in the head when she said she couldn’t open the store’s safe.
But another murder hangs over his case: After his conviction, but before being sentenced for Graves’ murder, Owens fatally attacked a fellow inmate, Christopher Lee.
Owens gave detailed confessions about how he stabbed Lee, burned his eyes, strangled him and stomped on him, ending by saying he did it “because he was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to an investigator’s written account.
These confessions were read to every jury and judge who sentenced Owens to death. Owens had had two separate death sentences overturned on appeal, but found himself back on death row.
Owens was charged with murder in Lee’s death but never went to trial. Prosecutors dropped the charges with the right to reinstate them in 2019, around the time Owens exhausted his usual appeals.
Owens could be the first in a series of inmates to die in the morgue at Broad River Correctional Facility in South Carolina. Five other inmates have not yet appealed, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has authorized one execution every five weeks.
South Carolina first tried to add the firing squad The state had to resume executions after its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and no company would sell them publicly. But the state had to pass a protective law keeping the drug supplier and much of the execution protocol secret in order to reopen the death chamber.
To carry out the executions, the state replaced the three-drug method with a new protocol using only the sedative pentobarbital. The new process is similar to the one the federal government uses to kill inmates, state prison officials say.
South Carolina law allows death row inmates to choose lethal injection, the new firing squad or the electric chair built in 1912. Owens allowed his attorney to choose how he would die, saying he felt that if he did so he would be complicit in his own death and that his religious beliefs condemn suicide.
The last execution in South Carolina was in May 2011. It took a decade of wrangling in the legislature — first over adding the firing squad as a method, then over passing a death shield law — for capital punishment to be reinstated.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, South Carolina has executed 43 death row inmates. In the early 2000s, it was averaging three executions per year. Only nine states have executed more death row inmates.
But since the involuntary suspension of executions, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 death row inmates at the start of 2011. It had only 32 as of early this week. About 20 inmates have been released from death row and given different prison sentences after appealing their sentences. Others have died of natural causes.
In his final appeal, Owens’ lawyers said prosecutors never presented any scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed and that the main evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer.
Owens’ lawyers provided a sworn statement Two days before the execution, Steven Golden claimed Owens was not in the store, contradicting his testimony at trial. Prosecutors said other friends of Owens and his former girlfriend testified that he had bragged about killing the clerk.
Owens’ attorneys also said he was just 19 at the time of the killing and suffered brain injuries from physical and sexual abuse while incarcerated in a juvenile prison.
