COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death Friday as the state restarted executions after an unintended 13-year pause because prison officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death Friday as the state restarted executions after an unintended 13-year pause because prison officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections.
He smiled slightly and his facial expression did not change much before he appeared to lose consciousness after about a minute. Then his eyes closed and he took several deep breaths. His breathing got shallower and his face twitched for another four or five minutes before the movements stopped.Owens' last-ditch appeals were repeatedly denied, including by a federal court Friday morning. Owens also petitioned for a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court.
To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using just the sedative pentobarbital. The new process is similar to how the federal government kills inmates, according to state prison officials. But hanging over his case is another killing: After his conviction, but before he was sentenced in Graves’ killing, Owens fatally attacked a fellow jail inmate, Christopher Lee.
Owens was charged with murder in Lee's death but was never tried. Prosecutors dropped the charges with the right to restore them in 2019 around the time Owens ran out of regular appeals.In his final appeal, Owens' lawyers said prosecutors never presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger when Graves was killed and the chief evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer.
Owens' lawyers also said he was just 19 when the killing happened and that he had suffered brain damage from physical and sexual violence while in a juvenile prison.
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