COLUMBIA, SC — South Carolina has set a September 20 date for incarcerating prisoners Freddie Eugene Owens sentenced to death. It would be the first execution in the state in more than 13 years.
South Carolina was once one of the states with the highest execution rates. But for years, lethal injection drugs were hard to come by. Pharmaceutical companies feared having to report selling the drugs to authorities.
The state legislature has since passed a law allowing officials to keep suppliers of lethal injection drugs secret, and in July the state Supreme Court the way cleared to restart the executions.
Owens, who murdered a Greenville store clerk in 1997, will likely have the choice of dying by lethal injection, electrocution or the newly added option of a firing squadAccording to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, a Utah inmate was the last person executed by firing squad in the U.S. in 2010.
The prison warden has five days to confirm that all three execution methods will be available. He must also provide evidence to Owens’ attorneys that the lethal injection drug is stable and properly mixed, under the Supreme Court’s 2023 interpretation of the state’s execution secrecy law that helped reopen the door to South Carolina’s death chamber.
Owens, 46, will then have about a week to let the state know how he wants to be killed. If he doesn’t make a choice, the state will send him to the electric chair by default.
An attorney for Owens did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The judges did not specify how much information should be released, but they promised a quick ruling if a prisoner challenges the details in the disclosure.
South Carolina previously used a mix of three drugs, but will now use one drug, the tranquilizer pentobarbital, for lethal injections in a protocol similar to executions carried out by the federal government.
Owens can ask Republican Gov. Henry McMaster for clemency and reduce his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. No South Carolina governor has ever granted a pardon in the modern era of the death penalty.
South Carolina last execution was in May 2011. The state had no intention to pause executions, But the stockpile of lethal injection drugs was no longer available and companies refused to sell the state more if the deal was made public.
It took a decade of legislature wrangling—first by adding the firing squad as a method and later by passing a shield law—to reinstate the death penalty.
South Carolina has executed 43 prisoners since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, it averaged three executions per year. Only nine states have executed more prisoners.
But since the unintended pause in executions, South Carolina’s death row population has declined. The state had 63 sentenced inmates at the beginning of 2011. It now has 32. About 20 prisoners are taken off death row and received various prison sentences after successful appeals. Others died of natural causes.
In addition to Owens, at least three other inmates have already completed their regular appeals process, and several others are close to completion. That means the execution chamber will be busy as 2024 draws to a close.
The state Supreme Court’s recent ruling, which reopened the door to executions, concluded that the state’s shield law was legal and that neither the electric chair nor the firing squad were cruel punishments.
The South Carolina General Assembly has authorized the state to a firing squad in 2021 to give prisoners the choice between this chair and the same electric chair the state purchased in 1912.
Supporters of the firing squad, including some Democrats who are skeptical of the death penalty, said it appears to be the quickest and most painless way to kill a prisoner.
Owens murdered store clerk Irene Graves during a series of robberies in 1997. He was sentenced to death three times during his appeals.
After being convicted of murder at his first trial in 1999, but before a jury could determine his sentence, Owens murdered his cellmate in the Greenville County Jail.
Owens gave investigators a detailed account of how he killed his cellmate, stabbing his eyes out, burning them, choking him and stomping on him while another inmate sat in the cell and lay quietly on his bunk, according to testimony during the trial.