South Carolina’s prisons director has signed the death warrant for Freddie Eugene Owens, setting his execution for September 20. He will likely be given the choice between lethal injection, electrocution, or the newly added option of a firing squad... CLICK TO READ THE FULL NEWS HERE▶▶
FILE – This undated photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left.
A photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left
In less than a month’s time, a US state that was once renowned for carrying out a large number of executions is set to kill its first inmate in over a decade. The con facing the death penalty in South Carolina on September 20 is inmate Freddie Eugene Owens, a double murderer.
Many states where the practice is legal have struggled for years to acquire the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injection executions, after pharmaceutical companies, whose reputations are based on healthcare, became reticent to be associated with the practice of state executions. However, a new law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers confidential and a recent clearance from the state Supreme Court have paved the way for executions to resume.
Owens, convicted of murdering a store clerk in Greenville in 1997, will likely be given the choice between three brutal methods of death, all of which cannot guarantee a painless death – lethal injection, electrocution, or the newly added option of death by firing squad. The last execution by firing squad in the US took place in Utah in 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
The prisons director now has five days to confirm that all three execution methods are available and provide proof to Owens’ lawyers that the lethal injection drug is stable and correctly mixed, as per the high court’s 2023 interpretation of the state’s secrecy law on executions. Owens, aged 46, will then have approximately a week to inform the state of his preferred method of execution, reports the Mirror US.
This undated photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows Freddie Eugene Ownes. View pictures in App save up to 80% data.
This undated photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows Freddie Eugene Ownes.
If he does not make a choice, he will be sent to the electric chair by default. Owens’ defense team is awaiting a sworn statement from prison officials regarding the purity, potency, and quality of the lethal injection drug, as per South Carolina’s new shield law.
“The lack of transparency about the source of the execution drugs, how they were obtained and whether (they) can bring about as painless a death as possible is still of grave concern to the lawyers that represent persons on death row,” attorney John Blume expressed via email.
The justices have not specified the extent of information required but have promised a swift ruling if an inmate challenges the disclosure details. South Carolina has shifted from a mix of three drugs to using only one, the sedative pentobarbital, for lethal injections, mirroring federal execution protocols.
Owens has the option to plead with Republican Gov. Henry McMaster for mercy and a sentence reduction to life without parole. However, no South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty. The state’s last execution took place in May 2011.
The pause in executions was unintentional, resulting from the expiration of the state’s supply of lethal injection drugs and companies’ refusal to sell more if the transaction was made public. After a decade of legislative debates, which included the addition of the firing squad as an execution method and the passing of a shield law, capital punishment has been reinstated in South Carolina.
Since the reintroduction of the death penalty in the US in 1976, South Carolina has executed 43 inmates. In the early 2000s, the state was averaging three executions per year, with only nine states having executed more inmates.
However, due to an unintentional pause in executions, the number of inmates on death row in South Carolina has decreased. In early 2011, there were 63 condemned inmates; currently, there are 32.
(FILES) This file photo taken on February 29, 2000, shows the “death chamber” at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas. – The US state of Texas is pushing ahead with the use of lethal injection for its Death Row inmates despite legal challenges over the drugs it employs, in the latest chapter of a fraught national debate over how to conduct executions. Texas is among the 27 states — more than half the total 50 — that has capital punishment on the books for certain violent crimes such as murder, drug trafficking and rape.
A US lethal injection room in Texas, called the “death chamber”
Approximately 20 inmates have been removed from death row and given different prison sentences following successful appeals, while others have died of natural causes. Alongside Owens, at least three other inmates have exhausted their regular appeals, and several more are close, indicating that the death chamber could be busy towards the end of 2024.
A recent ruling by the state Supreme Court, which reopened the door for executions, found that the state shield law was legal and that both the electric chair and firing squad were not cruel punishments. In 2021, the South Carolina General Assembly authorized the creation of a firing squad, providing inmates with a choice between it and the same electric chair the state purchased in 1912.
Supporters of the firing squad, including some Democrats who are hesitant about the death penalty, argue that it appears to be the quickest and most painless way to execute an inmate. Owens, who was found guilty of murdering store clerk Irene Graves during a series of robberies in 1997, has been sentenced to death on three separate occasions throughout his appeals process.
Following his initial conviction for murder in 1999, but prior to the jury deciding his sentence, Owens murdered his cellmate at the Greenville County jail. According to trial testimony, Owens provided investigators with a detailed description of how he killed his cellmate, which included stabbing and burning his eyes, choking him, and stomping on him while another inmate remained silent in his bunk.
