South Carolina prepares for first execution in 13 years

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina set to execute first inmate in 13 years after an inadvertent hiatus caused by the state’s inability to obtain the drugs needed to perform 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 last desperate appeals were met with negativeHis last chance to avoid death is to have his sentence commuted to life in prison by Republican South Carolina 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 promised to review Owens’ decision. request for pardon but he said he tends to trust prosecutors and jurors.

Owens could be the first of several inmates to die in the state’s death cell at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other inmates are not participating in appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court cleared the way carry out an execution every five weeks.

South Carolina was the first to try to add firing squad resume executions after supplies of lethal injection drugs ran out and no company was willing to publicly sell more. But the state had to pass shield law keeping the drug supplier and much of the execution protocol secret so that the death chamber could be reopened.

To carry out executions, the state has switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol that uses only a sedative pentobarbitalState prison officials say the new process is similar to how the federal government executes prisoners.

South Carolina law allows condemned prisoners to choose lethal injection, the new firing squad or the electric chair built in 1912. Owens allowed his lawyer choose how to diesaying that he feels that if he made such a decision, he would be contributing to his own death, and 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 assured sworn statement Two days before his execution, Steven Golden said Owens had not been at the store, contradicting his testimony at trial. Prosecutors said other friends of Owens’ and his ex-girlfriend testified that he had 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.

South Carolina last performance took place in May 2011. It took a decade of legislative wrangling — first the addition of the firing squad as a method, then the passage of the Shield Act — 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, the number of people on death row in South Carolina has fallen. At the beginning of 2011, the state had 63 sentenced prisoners. As of early Friday, there were 32. About 20 prisoners have been sentenced taken off death row and received various prison sentences after successful appeals. Others died of natural causes.