South Carolina justices refuse to stop state's first execution in 13 years

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The South Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stop the execution of Freddie Owens who is set to die by lethal injection next week in the state's first execution in 13 years.

The justices unanimously tossed out two requests from defense lawyers who said a court needed to hear new information about what they called a secret deal that kept a co-defendant off death row or from serving life in prison and about a juror who correctly surmised Owens was wearing a stun belt at his 1999 trial.

That evidence, plus an argument that Owens' death sentence was too harsh because a jury never conclusively determined he pulled the trigger on the shot that killed a convenience store clerk, didn't reach the “exceptional circumstances” needed to allow Owens another appeal, the justices wrote in their order.

The bar is usually high to grant new trials after death row inmates use up all their appeals. Owens’ lawyers said past attorneys scrutinized his case carefully, but this only came up in interviews as the potential of his death neared.

The decision keeps on track the planned execution of Owens on Sept. 20 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.

South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. The state didn’t set out to pause executions, but its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell the state more if the transaction was made public.

It took a decade of wrangling in the Legislature — first adding the firing squad as a method and later passing a shield law — to get capital punishment restarted.

Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for killing convenience store clerk Irene Graves in Greenville in 1997. Co-defendant Steven Golden testified Owens shot Graves in the head because she couldn’t get the safe open.

There was surveillance video in the store, but it didn’t show the shooting clearly. Prosecutors never found the weapon used and didn’t present any scientific evidence linking Owens to the killing at his trial, although after Owens' death sentence was overturned, prosecutors showed the man who killed the clerk was wearing a ski mask while the other man inside for the robbery had a stocking mask. They also linked the ski mask to Owens.

Golden was sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, according to court records.

Golden testified at Owens' trial that there was no deal to reduce his sentence. In a sworn statement signed Aug. 22, Golden said he cut a side deal with prosecutors, and Owens’ attorneys said that might have changed the minds of jurors who believed his testimony.

The state Supreme Court said in its order that wasn't compelling enough to stop Owens' execution, and while they believed the evidence that Owens was the clerk's killer, even if he didn't kill her it, wasn't enough to stop his death.

“He was a major participant in the murder and armed robbery who showed a reckless disregard for human life by knowingly engaging in a criminal activity that carries a grave risk of death,” the justices wrote.

Owens has at least one more chance at stopping his death. Gov. Henry McMaster alone has the power to reduce Owens' sentence to life in prison.

The governor has said he will follow longtime tradition and not announce his decision until prison officials make a call from the death chamber minutes before the execution. McMaster told reporters he hasn’t decided what to do in Owens’ case but as a former prosecutor, he respects jury verdicts and court decisions.

“When the rule of law has been followed, there really is only one answer,” McMaster said.

Earlier Thursday, opponents of the death penalty gathered outside McMaster's office to urge him to become the first South Carolina governor since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976 to grant clemency.

“There is always hope," said the Rev. Hillary Taylor, Executive Director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "Nobody is beyond redemption. You are more than the worst thing you have done.”

Taylor and others pointed out Owens is Black in a state where a disproportionate number of executed inmates have been Black and was 19 years old when he killed the clerk.

“No one should take a life. Not even the state of South Carolina. Only God can do that,” said the Rev. David Kennedy of the Laurens County chapter of the NAACP.