South Carolina Carries Out Its First Execution Since 2011

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South Carolina put convicted killer Freddie Eugene Owens to death on Friday evening by lethal injection – the first execution carried out by the Palmetto State in more than thirteen years.

The sentence – upheld by state and federal courts – was carried out by the S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDC) after a last-minute appeal from Owens’ attorneys was belatedly denied by the U.S. supreme court shortly after 6:44 p.m. EDT. Only one of the nine justices – Sonia Sotomayor – stated she would have granted Owens’ application for a stay of his death sentence.

Here is the high court’s notification denying Owens’ final appeal…

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Following the supreme court’s denial of Owens’ last-ditch appeal, governor Henry McMaster declined his option to intervene in the matter. South Carolina’s state constitution (Article IV, Section 14) gives the governor the power to grant clemency in capital cases, reducing the death penalty to a sentence of life in prison without parole.

“With respect to clemency, the governor shall have the power only to grant reprieves and to commute a sentence of death to that of life imprisonment,” the text (.pdf) of the constitution states.

Since a nationwide prohibition on capital punishment was lifted in 1976, no governor has ever granted clemency to a condemned inmate.

McMaster had previously said he would not make a decision on Owens’ fate until he received the call from the warden of the prison asking him whether there would be a reprieve.

When the call came, there was none…

“I have declined to grant any form of executive clemency in this matter,” McMaster wrote in a letter (.pdf) to SCDC director Bryan Stirling, a document which accompanied his verbal denial.

Owens was administered the fatal dose of pentobarbital shortly thereafter and pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. EDT. According to witness Jeffrey Collins of The Associated Press – one of three reporters granted access to the execution – Owens appeared conscious for approximately one minute after receiving the injection but his breathing “got more shallow and his face twitched” for four to five minutes prior to his movements stopping.

What led Owens, 46, to a strapped gurney inside the death chamber at the Broad River secure facility – located just northwest of downtown Columbia, S.C. – on this warm, late summer evening?

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In the early morning hours of November 1, 1997, Owens shot and killed 41-year-old Irene Graves of Greenville, S.C. in the head during an armed robbery at a Speedway convenience store, according to a jury of his peers. A single parent, Graves had two young children at the time she was murdered – an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old. She also had a son in college.

Owens murdered Graves because she couldn’t open the safe at the convenience store – although his accomplice during the robbery, Steven Golden, issued a sworn statement earlier this week claiming “Freddie was not there” at the time Graves was fatally shot.

“I don’t want Freddie to be executed for something he didn’t do,” Golden said in his statement (.pdf).

Why did Golden wait until the eleventh hour to come forward with his claim?

“I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to police,” Golden said in his statement. “I am still afraid of that.”

Golden still hasn’t named the individual he claims was responsible for killing Graves – however it is worth noting prosecutors relied on far more than his testimony when they secured their conviction of Owens.

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RELATED | LINE. THEM. UP.

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Also, while awaiting his sentencing, Owens committed another horrific murder – brutally beating his 28-year-old cellmate, Christopher B. Lee, and stabbing him repeatedly in the face multiple times with a pen.

Owens confessed to the murder of Lee, saying the man he brutally beat and stabbed to death “never fought back after the first punch.”

The account of Lee’s killing is unspeakably savage, with Owens describing to investigators how he stabbed Lee in the eye with the pen, strangled him, stomped on his head and chest while he was defenseless, used a cigarette lighter to burn his eyes and attempted to use the pen to stab him in the chest and throat.

Owens was given the option of choosing between lethal injection, electrocution or death by firing squad. He declined to make a choice, at which point his attorney selected lethal injection on his behalf.

Prior to executing Owens, South Carolina had not put an inmate to death since May 6, 2011, when 36-year-old Jeffrey Brian Motts was executed by lethal injection. No executions have taken place since then, and prosecutors have typically refrained from seeking the death penalty in high profile cases because of its lack of availability.

That changed on July 31, 2024, when the S.C. supreme court overturned a lower court ruling which effectively barred SCDC from carrying out death penalty sentences.

I have consistently argued in favor of capital punishment being “broadly implemented” in response to especially heinous cases – like the brutal kidnapping and murder of 21-year-old University of South Carolina student Samantha Lee Josephson in March of 2019.

That verdict was recently upheld by the S.C. court of appeals, incidentally.

“There’s no point having a debate over the efficacy of capital punishment if it is only going to be carried out once a year using the most genteel of methods,” I wrote seven years ago in an expansive piece on criminal justice reform.  “There’s simply nothing to debate under these circumstances except that killing someone in America (has become) a ticket to stardom and ‘three hots and a cot’ for life courtesy of the taxpayers.”

Several other inmates on South Carolina’s death row have exhausted their appeals. Stay tuned for updates in the event additional executions are scheduled.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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