COLUMBIA, SC — A South Carolina inmate is about to are being carried out Friday, Gov. Henry McMaster asks to spare his life, something no governor in the state has done since the death penalty was reinstated nearly 50 years ago.
Freddie Eugene Owens, 46, is the first person executed in South Carolina in 13 years. His attorney chose lethal injection about the firing squad or the electric chair after Owens made the decision to her.
McMaster has said he will adhere to the traditional practice of announcing his decision by telephone to the prison minutes before Owens is given the lethal injection.
Owens is headed to the execution chamber for the 1997 murder of Greenville grocery store clerk Irene Graves. While awaiting sentencing after being found guilty in her death, Owens killed a fellow inmate in a brutal attack, authorities said. Prosecutors read Owens’ confession to the two juries and judge, who decided he should die. He was never tried for the inmate’s death.
Owens’ petition for clemency ahead of Friday’s execution states that prosecutors never presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed because she was unable to open the store’s safe, his attorneys said in a statement.
A co-defendant who was at the store pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer, but Owens’ attorneys said the other man… a secret deal with prosecutors to avoid a death sentence or life imprisonment.
They also said Owens was only 19 when the murder occurred and that he had suffered brain injuries from physical and sexual abuse in juvenile detention.
“Because Khalil’s childhood and traumas prevented him from functioning as an adult, it is unjust to punish him as an adult,” Owens’ attorneys said. Owens changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while in prison, but court records still refer to him as Freddie Owens.
Owens’ attorneys have not yet released the full pardon request.
The arguments are similar to those defense attorneys made last week when they asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to stay Owens’ execution. The justices rejected themand said that either they had been challenged before or that after decades of appeals they had not succeeded in stopping the execution.
Owens has been sentenced to death three times after parts of his case were overturned and his death sentence was overturned.
Attorneys for the state attorney general’s office said prosecutors showed during Owens’ latest sentencing hearing that the man who pulled the trigger was wearing a ski mask, while the other man was wearing a stocking mask. They then linked the ski mask to Owens.
But hanging over Owens’ case is another murder. Before he was convicted of Graves’ murder, Owens attacked a fellow inmate, Christopher Lee.
Owens gave a detailed confession of stabbing Lee, burning his eyes, choking and stomping on him, ending by saying he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to an investigator’s written account.
Owens’ confession was read by prosecutors whenever a jury or judge had to decide whether he lived or died. He was charged with murder in the Lee case but never went to trial. Prosecutors dropped his charges a few years ago when he could no longer file appeals in the Graves case with the right to reinstate them if they wanted to.
In South Carolina, the governor has the sole power to grant clemency and reduce a death sentence to life in prison. However, no governor has done so in the 43 executions in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976.
McMaster has repeatedly said he has not yet decided what to do in Owens’ case and that he will thoroughly review all information given to him. He says that as a former prosecutor, he respects jury verdicts and court decisions.
“If the rule of law is followed, there is really only one answer,” McMaster said.
At least five other death row inmates in South Carolina have no further appeals and the state Supreme Court has ruled that they can be executed at five-week intervals.