Columbia, South Carolina — A South Carolina inmate scheduled to be executed on Friday has asked Gov. Henry McMaster to spare his life, the first time any governor in the state has done so since the death penalty was reinstated nearly 50 years ago.
Freddie Eugene Owens, 46, is set to be the first person executed in South Carolina in 13 years. After Owens handed the decision over to her, his attorneys chose lethal injection over the execution rack or electric chair.
McMaster told Owens he would stick to the historic practice of announcing his decision by phone to prison officials minutes before the lethal injection began.
Owens was sent to death row for the 1997 murder of Greenville convenience store clerk Irene Graves. While Owens was awaiting sentencing for her death, authorities said he brutally attacked and killed a fellow prison inmate. Prosecutors read Owens’ confession to two jurors and a judge who ruled that he should die. He was not tried for the inmate’s death.
Owens’ request for clemency before his execution Friday, his attorneys said in a statement, stated that prosecutors never presented scientific evidence showing that Owens pulled the trigger because he was unable to open the safe when Graves was killed.
An accomplice at the store pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer, but Owens’ defense attorney said the other defendant made a secret deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty or life in prison.
They said Owens was just 19 at the time of the murders and suffered brain damage from physical and sexual abuse while in a juvenile detention center.
“It is unfair to punish Khalil as an adult because of his youth and the trauma he suffered that left him unable to function as an adult,” Owens’ attorney said. Owens changed his name to Khalil Devine Black Sun Allah while in prison, but court records still refer to him as Freddie Owens.
Owens’ attorney has not yet released the full text of his petition for clemency.
The argument is similar to what defense attorneys said last week when they asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to delay Owens’ execution. The justices denied the motion, saying past arguments and decades of appeals did not rise to the level of a motion to halt the execution.
Owens was sentenced to death on three occasions after parts of his case were overturned and his death sentences were vacated.
Attorneys for the state attorney general’s office said prosecutors showed at Owens’ final sentencing hearing that the man who pulled the trigger was wearing a ski mask and the other man was wearing a stocking mask. They then linked the ski mask to Owens.
But Owens’ case is tied to another murder. Before being sentenced for Graves’ murder, Owens attacked fellow prison inmate Christopher Lee.
According to a written statement from investigators, Owens gave a detailed confession that he stabbed Lee to death, burned her eyes, strangled her and stomped on her, saying he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder.”
Owens’ confession was read by prosecutors whenever the jury or judge decided whether he lived or died. He was charged with murder in Lee’s death, but never stood trial. Prosecutors dropped the case years ago when they exhausted appeals in the Graves case, and they had the right to reinstate the appeal if they wanted to.
In South Carolina, the governor has the sole power to grant pardons and commute death sentences to life imprisonment. But no governor has carried out any of the 43 executions in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
McMaster has repeatedly said he has not yet decided what to do in the Owens case and will thoroughly review all the information given to him. As a former prosecutor, he says he respects the jury’s verdict and the court’s decision.
“When you follow the rule of law, there’s really only one answer,” McMaster said.
At least five death row inmates in South Carolina have had their appeals dismissed, with the state Supreme Court ruling that they can be executed five weeks apart.
