South Carolina sets date for first execution in more than 13 years

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina has set a Sept. 20 date to put inmate Freddie Eugene Owens to death in what would be the state’s first execution in more than 13 years.

South Carolina was once one of the busiest states for executions, but for years had had trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs due to pharmaceutical companies’ concerns that they would have to disclose that they had sold the drugs to officials.

The state Legislature has since passed a law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers secret and, in July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way to restart executions.

Owens, who killed a store clerk in Greenville in 1997, will likely have the choice to die by lethal injection, electrocution or by the newly added option of a firing squad. A Utah inmate in 2010 was the last person to have been executed by a firing squad in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

The prisons director has five days to confirm that all three execution methods will be available. He must also give Owens’ lawyers proof that the lethal injection drug is stable and correctly mixed, according to the high court’s 2023 interpretation of the state’s secrecy law on executions that helped reopen the door to South Carolina’s death chamber.

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A lawyer for Owens didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Owens, 46, will then have about a week to let the state know how he wishes to be killed. If he makes no choice, the state will send him to the electric chair by default.

The justices didn’t specify how much information has to be released but they have promised a swift ruling if an inmate challenged the details in the disclosure.

South Carolina used to use a mix of three drugs, but now will use one drug, the sedative pentobarbital, for lethal injections in a protocol similar to executions carried out by the federal government.

Owens can ask Republican Gov. Henry McMaster for mercy and to reduce his sentence to life without parole. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.

South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. The state didn’t set out to pause executions, but its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell the state more if the transaction was made public.

It took a decade of wrangling in the Legislature — first adding the firing squad as a method and later passing a shield law — to get capital punishment restarted.

South Carolina has put 43 inmates to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of three executions a year. Only nine states have put more inmates to death.

But since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned inmates in early 2011. It currently has 32. About 20 inmates have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.

Along with Owens, at least three other inmates have exhausted their regular appeals and a few more are close, meaning the death chamber could be busy to close out 2024.

The recent state Supreme Court ruling that reopened the door for executions found that the state shield law was legal and both the electric chair and firing squad were not cruel punishments.

The South Carolina General Assembly authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates a choice between it and the same electric chair the state bought in 1912.

Supporters of the firing squad, including some Democrats reluctant about the death penalty, said it appears to be the quickest and most painless way to kill an inmate.

Owens killed store clerk Irene Graves during a string of robberies in 1997. He has been sentenced to death three separate times during his appeals.

After being convicted of murder his initial trial in 1999 but before a jury determined his sentence, Owens killed his cellmate at the Greenville County jail.

Owens gave investigators a detailed account of how he killed his cellmate, stabbing and burning his eyes, choking him and stomping him while another prisoner was in the cell and stayed quietly in his bunk, according to trial testimony.