South Carolina executed death row inmate Freddie Owens on Friday, unintentionally resuming a 13-year hiatus after prison officials were unable to obtain the drugs needed to administer the lethal injection.
Owens was convicted in 1997 of killing a Greenville convenience store clerk during a robbery.
During the trial, Owens murdered a county jail inmate.
His confession to the attack was read to two jurors and the judge, who all recommended the death sentence.
Owens, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m.
The curtains to the death chamber were parted to reveal Owens strapped to a gurney with his arms at his sides.
He said something to his lawyer, who smiled back.
He appeared to be conscious for approximately a minute, then closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
His breathing became shallow and his face twitched for about four or five minutes, then he stopped moving.
Medical professionals arrived on the scene and pronounced him dead about 13 minutes later.
Owens' latest appeals have been repeatedly rejected, including in federal court on Friday morning.
Owens has also petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution.
The governor of South Carolina and the commissioner of corrections quickly filed a response arguing that the Supreme Court should deny Owens' petition.
The complaint said there was nothing unusual about his case.
The High Court rejected the request shortly after the execution was scheduled to begin.
His final chance to avoid the death penalty was for South Carolina's Republican governor, Henry McMaster, to commute his sentence to life in prison.
Judge McMaster said he had given Owens' pardon application “careful and thoughtful consideration” and also denied his request.
McMaster had previously said prison officials would call him and the state attorney general to ensure there was no reason to delay the execution, following historic tradition, and then announce their decision minutes before the lethal injection was to begin.
The former prosecutor had promised to consider Owens' petition for clemency, but said he tends to trust prosecutors and jurors.
First execution in 13 years
Owens could be the first of several inmates to die in the death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution.
Five other inmates have exhausted their appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has given them permission to carry out executions five weeks apart.
South Carolina first tried to resume executions by adding firing squads after it ran out of lethal injection drugs and no companies were willing to sell them publicly.
But in order to reopen the execution chamber, the state had to pass protective laws that kept its drug suppliers and many of the execution procedures secret.
The state has switched from a three-drug execution method to a new procedure that uses only the sedative pentobarbital.
State prison officials say the new procedure is similar to how the federal government kills inmates.
Under South Carolina law, death row inmates can choose between lethal injection, the new firing squad or the 1912-era electric chair.
Owens said he gave his lawyer permission to choose how he wanted to end his life, saying he felt that by doing so he would be complicit in his own death and that his religious beliefs did not permit him to commit suicide.
Owens changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while in prison, but continues to be referred to as Owens in court and prison records.
crime
Owens was convicted of murdering Eileen Graves in 1999.
Prosecutors said the man shot the single mother of three, who worked three jobs, in the head after she said she couldn't open the store's safe.
But another murder looms over his case: after being convicted and before being sentenced for the Graves murder, Owens fatally attacked a fellow prisoner, Christopher Lee.
According to investigators' reports, Owens detailed his confession, describing how he stabbed Lee, burned his eyes, strangled him and stomped him, ultimately saying he did it “because he was wrongly convicted of murder.”
The confession was read to the entire jury and the judge, and Owens was sentenced to death.
Owens had his death sentence overturned twice on appeal, but was eventually returned to death row.
Owens was charged with murder in Lee's death but never went to trial.
Prosecutors dismissed the charges in 2019 after Owens exhausted his normal rights of appeal, granting him the right to reinstate the prosecution.
Final Appeal
In his appeal, Owens' defense team argued that the prosecution had not presented any scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed, and that the main evidence against his defence was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer.
Two days before the execution, Owens' defense team submitted an affidavit from defense attorney Steven Golden that said Owens was not in the store, but this contradicted testimony at trial.
Prosecutors said other friends of Owens and his ex-girlfriend testified that he had bragged about killing the store clerk.
“The state of South Carolina is about to execute a man for a crime he did not commit, and we will continue to advocate for Mr. Owens,” attorney Gerald “Bo” King said in a statement.
Owens' lawyers also argued that he was only 19 at the time of the incident and that he suffered brain damage from physical and sexual assaults while incarcerated in a juvenile detention center.
The group South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty plans to hold a prayer vigil outside the prison about 90 minutes before Owens' scheduled execution.
South Carolina reinstates death penalty
South Carolina Last Run It was May 2011.
It took a decade of congressional wrangling, first to add the firing squad as an execution method and then to pass the Shield Act, before the death penalty was reinstated.
South Carolina has executed 43 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
In the early 2000s, there was an average of three executions per year.
Only nine states have executed more death row inmates.
But since the pause on unintentional executions, the number of inmates on South Carolina's death row has decreased.
As of early 2011, the state had 63 inmates on death row. As of early Friday, that figure was down to 32.
About 20 inmates have had their appeals successful, been removed from death row and given different sentences.
Some died of natural causes.
