A key witness who helped secure the execution of Freddie Owens has testified that Owens lied to save his own life. The witness came forward just days before Owens' execution, scheduled for Friday.
Owens' one-time friend and co-defendant, Steven Golden, argued in an affidavit Wednesday that he lied during his testimony and that Owens was not present at the South Carolina convenience store when Eileen Graves was killed during a robbery attempt in 1997.
Golden said he made a secret deal with prosecutors and lied about his friend's guilt at the time to avoid execution.
“I am coming forward now because I know Freddie's execution date is September 20th and I do not want Freddie to be executed for something he did not do,” he wrote. “This weighs heavily on my heart and I want to have a clear conscience.”
But the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the shocking last-minute confession was not enough to halt the execution, scheduled for Friday at 6 p.m.
Owens' lawyers denounced the decision to go ahead with the state's first execution in 13 years.
“The state of South Carolina is trying to execute a man for a crime he didn't commit,” said Gerald “Bo” King, one of Owens' lawyers. “We will continue to advocate for Mr. Owens.”
Golden said in the affidavit that Owens blamed him because he was high on cocaine, and that police then pressured him, saying they already knew the two were together and that Owens had been talking.
Golden also said he fears for the real culprit, but declined to reveal his identity.
“I feared that if I gave the police the killer's name, he or his associates would kill me. I still fear that. But Freddy was not there,” Golden wrote in his second affidavit.
Golden said he testified at Owens' trial because prosecutors promised to consider his testimony in his favor after Owens pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of intentional homicide. Owens was ultimately sentenced to 28 years in prison, according to court records.
But prosecutors pointed out that Golden wasn't the only one who put Owens at the scene of the crime, and that others, including Owens' then-girlfriend, also testified that Owens had bragged about killing Graves.
They successfully argued that Golden's change in his statement alone was not enough to prevent the execution because Golden had admitted to lying under oath and his change in statement showed he was unreliable.
“There is no indication that Mr. Golden will testify. If Mr. Owens was not the shooter as currently alleged, we see no reason why Mr. Owens would admit to officers, his girlfriend, or his mother that he shot Ms. Graves,” the state Attorney General's office wrote in court documents.
“Owens has had ample opportunity to litigate his conviction and sentence claims and no longer needs to do so,” the attorney general's office wrote in a court filing.
Owens has just one more lever to save his life: In South Carolina, only the governor can grant clemency and commute a death sentence to life in prison.
But no governor has imposed such a sentence in any of the 43 executions carried out in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
Gov. Henry McMaster said he would follow longstanding practice and not announce the sentence until a corrections official called from the death chamber minutes before the execution.
Executions in South Carolina have been postponed since 2011 because of a fight over access to lethal injection. The execution chamber reopened last year after lawmakers voted to keep the source of the sedative pentobarbital secret and the state Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair and firing squad were also legal methods of execution.
The state previously used three drugs for executions, but has switched to using just one, pentobarbital, to match the federal government's method of execution, to make it easier to obtain.
With post wire
