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SC inmate is executed by lethal injection, 2 days after the witness changed his story • SC Daily Gazette
This text has been up to date with the execution.
COLUMBIA — Freddie Owens was executed Friday night by deadly injection, after his attorneys’ last-chance enchantment to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom did not cease it.
Owens was pronounced lifeless at 6:55 p.m., making him the primary inmate executed in South Carolina in almost 14 years.
He made no closing assertion. When the execution started, Owens checked out his lawyer. She smiled at him, and he appeared to smile again, mentioned Related Press reporter Jeffrey Collins. He and different media witnesses who spoke to reporters afterward agreed that Owens confirmed no outward indicators of struggling.
The execution, which was scheduled for six p.m., was delayed by 35 minutes as officers waited on a ruling from the nation’s excessive court docket.
Owens’ attorneys requested justices Friday to place his sentence on maintain pending the result of a problem they filed every week in the past in federal court docket searching for extra info on the drug to kill him, saying they wanted the small print to make sure his execution could be painless and efficient.
In a three-sentence order, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom — just like the decrease courts earlier than it — refused, whereas noting that Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed.
The ruling capped weeks of failed authorized makes an attempt for a reprieve in state and federal courts. Owens’ final hope to remain alive fell to Gov. Henry McMaster, who mentioned no.
“I’ve declined to grant any type of govt clemency on this matter,” McMaster wrote in a letter confirming in writing what he informed Corrections Director Bryan Stirling by cellphone.
Owens, 46, died 25 years after he was convicted of killing gasoline station clerk Irene Graves, a 41-year-old single mom of three, throughout a string of robberies on Halloween night time 1997. A single shot to the top killed her as a result of she couldn’t open the secure.
Witnesses included Graves’ oldest son and son-in-law.
The curtain to the dying chamber parted at 6:35 p.m. to disclose Owens in a inexperienced jumpsuit, a white blanket pulled as much as the center of his chest. He was strapped to a medical desk together with his arms out to both facet. Three jail officers stood within the room with Owens, media witnesses mentioned.
Owens turned his head to take a look at the witnesses, his gaze deciding on his lawyer Emily Paavola, who was the one to resolve he would die by deadly injection. He smiled and mouthed some phrases to her that witnesses couldn’t hear behind the pane of glass separating the chamber from the witness room.
At one level, he appeared to mouth, “Bye,” Justin Dougherty from Fox Carolina Information, one other media witness, informed reporters.
A minute later, the drug started to circulate by way of an IV inserted in Owens’ left arm. His eyes closed, and he began respiration closely. After 4 or 5 minutes, his face started to twitch, and his respiration grew to become shallow.
At 6:42 p.m., his movement stopped. A physician entered the room at 6:54 p.m. to pronounce Owens’ time of dying. Owens stored his head tilted towards Paavola all through, media witnesses mentioned.
Graves’ members of the family watched the execution intently, staring instantly at Owens the complete time. In any other case, they didn’t react, Collins mentioned.
Collins, who witnessed six executions by deadly injection earlier than Owens’, mentioned that apart from the wait at first, the execution proceeded in the identical manner as earlier ones. The one distinction was that it appeared to take Owens longer to cease respiration from the time the drug started flowing. That took about six minutes, in comparison with two or three minutes at earlier executions, Collins mentioned.
It was the primary time the state used a single dose of the sedative pentobarbital as an alternative of its earlier three-drug cocktail, which expired after the final execution in 2011.
Who Owens noticed main as much as his dying is unknown. Corrections’ coverage is to not launch info on what dying row inmates do or who they see of their final days.
His final meal was two cheeseburgers, French fries, a well-done ribeye steak, six wings, two strawberry sodas and a slice of apple pie, all from the jail kitchen, mentioned Division of Corrections spokeswoman Chrysti Shain.
Authorized and private pleas
Two days earlier than his execution, the one witness to the taking pictures — who was convicted as Owens’ confederate — signed an announcement saying he falsely recognized and testified in opposition to Owens, newly claiming that Owens wasn’t even with him that night time.
Hours earlier than Owens’ scheduled finish, Owens’ mom made a public plea to McMaster to spare her son’s life.
“Freddie is greater than his conviction. He’s a human being, a son, a brother, and a buddy,” his mom, Dora Mason, mentioned in an announcement launched by the Greenville nonprofit Preventing Injustice Collectively. “He deserves compassion, understanding, and a good likelihood at justice. As a substitute, the system has failed him and the sufferer at each flip.”
Mason expressed sympathy for Graves’ household whereas asking the individuals of South Carolina to think about whether or not the state ought to execute Owens, who legally modified his identify in 2015 to Khalil Divine Black Solar Allah.
“To the governor, the Legislature, and the individuals of South Carolina, I ask: Is that this actually justice? Is that this actually what we name compassion and mercy?”
Mason, who nonetheless lives in Greenville, pointed to the identical arguments that Owens’ attorneys have made over the past a number of weeks as they sought unsuccessfully to cease the execution and get a brand new trial.
Within the month since Owens was scheduled for execution, his attorneys have claimed that Steven Golden, Owens’ convicted confederate, had a secret take care of a prosecutor in change for testifying in opposition to his buddy.
On Wednesday, Golden recanted what he informed legislation enforcement and jurists about that night time, alleging the “actual shooter” was another person fully who Golden nonetheless doesn’t need to identify out of worry of retaliation. He got here ahead, he mentioned, “to have a transparent conscience.”
The state Supreme Courtroom dismissed these arguments, noting Golden admitted at trial he was testifying to keep away from the dying penalty. Justices additionally indicated they didn’t imagine Golden’s new story, calling it “squarely inconsistent” with what he’s mentioned since his 1997 arrest.
The primary rejection on the federal problem searching for particulars on the state’s drug provide got here Wednesday. That was the choice appealed all the way in which to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom.
Dying penalty protesters
An hour forward of the scheduled execution, about 50 individuals gathered exterior the jail campus gates to protest the dying penalty. Some chanted “cease the killing,” whereas others gathered in prayer.
Mersedes Mejia, of Columbia, was on her manner dwelling Friday when a sense came visiting her that she ought to take a unique route. She had heard in regards to the pending execution on the information however the gathering of demonstrators exterior Broad River Correctional Middle took her unexpectedly. She rotated and joined the group hoping and praying within the closing hour the execution could be stopped.
Because the clock ticked to six p.m., the group began to quiet.
Lulu Torres, of Batesburg, dropped to her knees and made a silent prayer. She got here to Columbia with different members of St. John the Cross Catholic Church to exhibit her perception that “life is efficacious.”
“It ought to in the end be God’s determination when our final day shall be,” she mentioned. “Another person made that call for Mr. Owens, and that’s heartbreaking.”
Because the minutes handed, a lot of the group pressed up in opposition to the fence ready for information.
A bit of after 7 p.m., demonstrators shaped a circle holding fingers and comforting those that had been crying as Ron Kaz, of Charleston, modified the quantity on an indication counting the variety of dying row executions within the U.S. since 1977 to incorporate that of Owens.
“We aren’t right here to make excuses for the hurt Khalil did trigger throughout his life,” mentioned Rev. Hillary Taylor, govt director of South Carolinians for Alternate options to the Dying Penalty.
“However there’s additionally no justice for younger Khalil, a baby who skilled bodily hurt in his family and bodily and sexual hurt in juvenile jail services right here in South Carolina,” she mentioned. “As a rule, these on dying row are the victims of another person’s violence lengthy earlier than they commit violence themselves. This is the reason we stand in opposition to all executions. At its core, the dying penalty is a declaration that some victims of violence matter greater than others.”
Owens’ life and crimes
Owens was born prematurely right into a household life his attorneys have described as violent and chaotic. Each his organic dad and mom and his stepfather used and dealt medicine, and all three abused Owens and his three siblings. His father and stepfather had been out and in of jail all through his childhood, in response to court docket filings.
Owens went into foster care at 5 years outdated after social employees discovered him and his siblings alone in a home with no meals or electrical energy.
He dropped out of college in ninth grade after repeating a number of grades and infrequently moving into hassle for combating with different college students. As a teen, he hung out within the state’s juvenile justice system, the place the opposite youngsters abused him bodily and sexually, his attorneys have mentioned.
SC justices once more refuse to cease Friday’s execution, regardless of new claims of innocence
Sooner or later, which medical doctors can’t pinpoint, Owens suffered injury to his frontal lobe, the a part of the mind that controls an individual’s impulses and feelings. He skilled violent outbursts, nervousness, melancholy, paranoia and seizures at completely different factors in his life, in response to court docket filings.
Owens was 19 years outdated when Graves was shot within the head as two masked males robbed the Speedway comfort retailer the place she labored one in all her three jobs. The youngest of the three youngsters she left behind was 8 years outdated.
The Speedway was the third place that Owens and three buddies — in response to Golden and others — robbed as Halloween changed into the early morning of Nov. 1, 1997.
Golden testified — each in 1999 and 2003 — that it was Owens who shot Graves as a result of she couldn’t open the shop’s secure. The pair of robbers left with $37.29 from the money register.
Owens informed family and friends that he had killed Graves, bragging about it in some circumstances. Past Golden, these testifying in opposition to Owens at his 1999 trial included his girlfriend and one other buddy on the theft spree. Owens’ attorneys have since disputed the reliability of what they mentioned.
In February 1999, a jury convicted Owens of killing Graves. That night time, between his conviction and sentencing listening to the following day, Owens killed a fellow inmate on the Greenville County jail, 28-year-old Christopher Lee.
Lee was serving a 90-day sentence for visitors violations. Owens confessed to the crime, then described intimately how he had killed Lee by choking him, slamming his head into the ground and shoving a pen up one nostril, in response to court docket paperwork.
That case by no means went to trial. Prosecutors dropped the costs in 2019, quickly after Owens exhausted his appeals for killing Graves, with the stipulation that they might convey them again if wanted.
Twice, the state Supreme Courtroom despatched Owens’ dying sentence again to a jury for resentencing. Each occasions, the jury once more advisable sentencing Owens to dying.
However Owens has modified throughout his 25 years in jail, one in all his attorneys, Rob Lee, mentioned throughout a Thursday night time vigil at Washington Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbia.
“Reasonably than wallow within the extreme isolation of dying row, he started to learn,” Lee mentioned. “Then, he started to check.”
Owens took an curiosity in historical past, significantly African historical past. He advised his niece write a paper on Nubian Queen Amanirenas, who resisted Roman rule within the historic Kingdom of Kush. He regaled his attorneys with details in regards to the College of Timbuktu, bonobo apes, and the historical past of cartoon character Betty Boop, Lee mentioned.
He realized to learn and write in Arabic to strengthen his Islamic religion. He referred to as his mom each day to verify on her.
Owens wrote ideas and poems and essays, “creating a brand new recorded historical past of his life,” Lee mentioned.
Vigils forward of the execution
Through the Thursday vigil, a dozen activists made a closing name for clemency. They peacefully walked the road exterior the Governor’s Mansion, holding indicators studying “finish the dying penalty” and “cease state killing.”
Kaz, a board member of South Carolinians for Alternate options to the Dying Penalty, has pushed from Charleston to Columbia to sit down vigil for all however one of many executions carried out within the state since 1985, he mentioned. Friday night time made his forty third vigil exterior the razor wire of the jail gates.
“For me, it will get tougher each time,” Kaz mentioned.
Within the time between an individual’s crime and execution, lots can change, he mentioned.
“The individuals which are getting executed should not the identical individuals who had been sentenced to dying,” Kaz mentioned.
Paul Palmer, a protestor from Columbia, mentioned he disagreed with the concept that executions convey justice for the kin of the victims. After his nephew was killed whereas working a shift at a video poker parlor within the Nineteen Eighties, the prosecutor requested Palmer’s household whether or not they wished to hunt the dying penalty.
Palmer knew that sentence wouldn’t convey the household the peace they had been searching for. He pushed as an alternative for a life sentence, which the perpetrators in the end obtained, he mentioned.
“I don’t need that sort of justice,” he informed his brother-in-law and sister on the time, he mentioned.
Activists identified the uneven methods through which the dying penalty is commonly utilized. Black individuals, like Owens, are disproportionately sentenced to dying, civil rights leaders have argued.
Of the 282 individuals executed in South Carolina since 1912, 74% had been Black and 26% had been white, in response to Division of Corrections information.
Of the 32 males on the state’s dying row, 15 are Black and 17 are white. Folks with disabilities, reminiscent of Owens’ mind injury, are additionally extra more likely to face execution, mentioned Taylor, director of anti-death penalty group.
“The dying penalty shouldn’t be justice,” Taylor mentioned. “It doesn’t cease violence from taking place. It solely creates extra victims.”
It’s possible activists shall be again in Columbia over the course of the following six months because the state Supreme Courtroom schedules 5 extra males who’ve exhausted their appeals for execution, Taylor mentioned.
“Sadly, there could also be many future vigils,” Taylor mentioned.
After his execution, Owens’ attorneys maintained he was killed for against the law he didn’t commit.
“Freddie Owens didn’t kill Ms. Graves. His dying tonight is a tragedy,” lawyer Gerald “Bo” King mentioned in an announcement late Friday. “Mr. Owens’s childhood was marked by struggling on a scale that’s exhausting to grasp. He spent his maturity in jail for against the law that he didn’t commit. The authorized errors, hidden offers, and false proof that made tonight doable ought to disgrace us all.”
Jessica Holdman contributed to this report.
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