A death row inmate is being forced to choose his execution method, ending weeks of tension, after his lawyers reluctantly told South Carolina prison officials on Friday to prepare for lethal injection rather than the electric chair or firing squad, leaving the decision to their lawyers.
Freddie Owens said in court documents that deciding the method of his execution meant taking an active role in his own death and that Islamic teachings teach that suicide is a sin.
Attorney Emily Pavola sent documents to prison officials in a statement saying she still isn't sure prison officials have disclosed enough information to be confident the drug would result in death without inflicting excruciating pain and suffering, which could amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
“I have known Mr. Owens for 15 years. Given the circumstances and the information currently available, I have made the best decision I could make on his behalf. I sincerely hope that the assurances made by the South Carolina Department of Corrections are true,” she wrote.
If his lawyers don't make a decision, state law means Owens could be sent to the electric chair, a death he said he doesn't want.
South Carolina has implemented a new lethal injection system after a 13-year moratorium on executions, and Owens' execution is scheduled for September 20.
Executions in South Carolina have been on hold 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 are 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.
Owens and five other inmates have exhausted their appeals, and the judges have set their execution dates for the fifth Friday of each month through 2025.
Lawyers for Owens, 46, have filed multiple lawsuits since his execution date was set two weeks ago, but so far there have been no delays.
The state Supreme Court has yet to rule, but Owens has asked for a stay of the execution so his defense can argue that his co-defendants lied and made a deal to avoid the death penalty or life in prison in exchange for testifying that Owens pulled the trigger to kill store clerk Eileen Graves when she struggled to open a safe at a store he robbed in 1997.
Store video did not clearly show Graves' killer, and no forensic evidence was presented at trial. Prosecutors said Owens' confessions to the killing to his mother, his boyfriend and investigators bolstered the testimony of his co-defendants.
State prosecutors said the issue, and whether jurors may have been prejudiced against Owens after they saw a bulge under his clothing and correctly assumed it was a stun belt, has been addressed in six appeals and two additional sentencing hearings, also ending with a death penalty recommendation after another judge overturned the original sentence.
“Defendant Owens had ample opportunity to litigate his conviction and sentence claims and there is no further penalty to be served,” the South Carolina Attorney General's Office said in a court filing.
Owens also tried to delay the execution, arguing that the state had not released enough information about the drugs.
In upholding the new SHIELD law, the state Supreme Court said prison officials must testify under oath that the pentobarbital used in the state's new lethal injection procedure is stable, pure and potent enough to cause death based on similar methods in other jurisdictions.
Corrections Commissioner Brian Sterling said a state law enforcement lab technician tested two vials of the sedative and determined the drugs met standards, but he declined to provide other details, citing SHIELD Act guidelines.
Owens' lawyers have requested more information, including a full report from the lab, the expiration date of the drugs he allegedly mixed and how the drugs were stored. They included in court documents a photo of a syringe of execution drugs stored in Georgia in 2015 that had crystallized because it had been stored at low temperatures.
The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled late Thursday that prison officials had released enough information, upholding lawyers' arguments that it could be a “piece of the puzzle” that would allow death penalty opponents to identify the drug's supplier and pressure the prison not to sell drugs again.
Whatever happens in court, Owens has another path to save his life: In South Carolina, only the governor can grant pardons and commute death sentences 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.
