South Carolina prepares for first execution in 13 years

COLUMBIA, South Carolina – South Carolina is poised to execute its first inmate in 13 years after an inadvertent hiatus caused by the state’s inability to obtain the drugs needed to administer lethal injections.

Freddie Eugene Owens, 46, is scheduled to die just after 6 p.m. Friday in Columbia Prison. He was convicted of the 1997 killing of a clerk who couldn’t open a safe at a Greenville grocery store.

Owens’s final appeals have been rejected. His last chance to avoid death is to have his sentence commuted to life in prison by South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster.

McMaster said he would follow historical tradition and announce his decision minutes before the lethal injection begins, at which point prison officials will call him and the state attorney general to make sure there is no reason to delay the execution. The former prosecutor has promised to consider Owens’ clemency application but said he tends to trust prosecutors and juries.

Owens could be the first of several inmates to die in the state’s death row at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other inmates have lost their appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared the way for executions to be carried out every five weeks.

South Carolina first tried adding a 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 protective law that kept the drug supplier and much of the execution protocol secret to reopen the death chamber.

To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol that uses only the sedative pentobarbital. The new process is similar to the way the federal government executes prisoners, according to state prison officials.

South Carolina law allows condemned prisoners to choose between lethal injection, a new firing squad or the electric chair built in 1912. Owens allowed his lawyer to choose how he would die, saying he believed if he chose, he would be complicit in his own death and that his religious beliefs condemn suicide.

While in prison, Owens changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, but continues to be identified as Owens in court and prison documents.

Owens was convicted of the murder of Irene Graves in 1999. But another murder hangs over his case: After being convicted but before being sentenced for the murder of Graves, Owens fatally attacked fellow inmate Christopher Lee.

According to a written account by an investigator, Owens gave detailed testimony about how he stabbed Lee, burned his eyes, choked him and stomped on him, concluding that he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder.”

This confession was read to every juror and judge who sentenced Owens to death. Owens had two separate death sentences overturned on appeal, only to be sent back to death row.

Owens was charged with murder in Lee’s death but was never tried. Prosecutors dropped the charges with the right to reinstate them in 2019, around the time Owens ran out of regular appeals.

In their latest appeal, Owens’ lawyers said prosecutors never presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger in Graves’ death, and the main evidence against him was that a co-defendant confessed and testified that Owens was the killer.

Owens’ attorneys submitted a sworn statement two days before the execution from Steven Golden that Owens was not at the store, contradicting his testimony at trial. Prosecutors said other friends of Owens’ and his ex-girlfriend testified that he bragged about killing the clerk.

“South Carolina is on the verge of executing a man for a crime he did not commit. We will continue to represent Mr. Owens,” attorney Gerald “Bo” King said in a statement.

Owens’ attorneys also said he was just 19 at the time of the killing and that he suffered brain damage from physical and sexual abuse he endured while in a juvenile detention center.

South Carolinaians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty plans a vigil outside the prison about 90 minutes before Owens’s scheduled execution.

The last execution in South Carolina took place in May 2011. It took a decade of legislative struggle — first adding the firing squad as a method of execution and later passing a shield law — to reinstate the death penalty.

South Carolina has sentenced 43 inmates to death since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 21st century, it averaged three executions per year. Only nine states have sentenced more inmates to death.

But since the inadvertent lull in executions, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. At the beginning of 2011, the state had 63 sentenced prisoners. As of early Friday, there were 32. About 20 prisoners have been released from death row and given alternative prison sentences after successful appeals. Others died of natural causes.