South Carolina prison director says electric chair, firing squad and lethal injection ready to go

COLUMBIA, SC — South Carolina’s prison director said Wednesday that the state’s stockpile of a lethal injection drug is clean, that the electric chair was tested a month ago and that the firing squad has the ammunition and training to carry it out. his first execution next month in more than 13 years.

Prison Director Bryan Stirling was ordered by the state Supreme Court to file an affidavit with Freddie Owens’ attorney stating that all three methods to put a prisoner to death are available before his scheduled execution on September 20.

Owens’ attorneys have said they will review the statement. If they find it insufficient, they will ask the state Supreme Court or federal judges to consider it.

It is one of at least two legal disputes between the state and Owens ahead of next month’s execution date.

Owens has until Sept. 6 to decide how he wants to die, and he has given his power of attorney to his attorney, Emily Paavola, to make that decision for him. The state Supreme Court has agreed to a request from the prison system to see if that is allowed under South Carolina law.

The power of attorney was signed under the name Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah. Owens changed his name in prison, but uses his old name in his legal hearings with the state to avoid confusion.

In the affidavit, Stirling said technicians from the State Law Enforcement Division lab tested two vials of the sedative pentobarbitalthat the state wants to use for lethal injections.

The technicians told him the drug is stable and pure and that it is potent enough to kill under the guidelines of other jurisdictions that use a similar method, Stirling wrote.

The state previously used a three-drug cocktail, but the drugs were expired, which is partly why no executions have been carried out in South Carolina since 2011.

Stirling did not release further details about the drugs, following state guidelines new shield lawwhich keeps the name of the drug supplier and anyone else who helps carry out the execution secret. The law’s passage in 2023 also helped restart executions, allowing the state to buy pentobarbital and keep the supplier private.

The state electric chairbuilt in 1912, was tested on June 25 and found to be in good working order, Stirling wrote, without providing further details.

And the firing squadauthorized by a 2021 law, has the weapons, ammunition and training it needs, Stirling wrote. Three volunteers have been trained to shoot at a target placed over the heart from 15 feet (4.6 meters) away.

Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of Irene Graves, a Greenville grocery store clerk. Prosecutors said he and his friends robbed several businesses before going to the store.

One of the friends testified that Owens shot Graves in the head because she couldn’t open the safe. A surveillance system didn’t clearly show who fired the shot. Prosecutors agreed to reduce the friend’s murder charge to manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 28 years in prison, according to court records.

After he was first convicted of murder in 1999, but before a jury could determine his sentence, Owens killed his cellmate in the Greenville County Jail, according to authorities.

Investigators said Owens gave them a detailed account of how he killed Christopher Lee, stabbing and burning him in the eyes, choking him and stomping on him while another inmate sat quietly in his cage. He said he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to a confession read in court the next day by a prosecutor.

Owens was charged with murder against Lee immediately after the prison killing. Court records show that prosecutors dropped the charge in 2019 with the right to reinstate it around the time Owens exhausted his appeals for his death penalty for Graves’ murder.

Owens has one chance left to save his life: In South Carolina, only the governor has the power to grant clemency and commute the death penalty to life in prison.

But no governor has done so in the 43 executions carried out in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976.

Governor Henry McMaster said he will follow long-standing tradition and not announce his decision until the prison administration makes a phone call from the execution chamber minutes before the execution.

McMaster told reporters Tuesday that he has not yet decided what he will do in Owens’ case, but that as a former prosecutor he respects the jury’s verdicts and the court’s decisions.

“If the rule of law is followed, there is really only one answer,” McMaster said.