As first execution in a decade nears, South Carolina prison director says 3 methods ready

In court filings on Wednesday, the South Carolina prisons director said the state is ready to carry out its first execution in more than a decade next month.

South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling was ordered by the South Carolina Supreme Court to submit a sworn statement to Emily Paavola, lawyer for Freddie Eugene Owens, who is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 20.

The statement is used to certify that Owens has all three methods of execution available for use: lethal injection, electric chair and firing squad.

The last execution in the state was more than 13 years ago, with Stirling saying the state’s supply of a lethal injection drug is pure and stable. He also said the state’s electric chair was tested two months and its firing squad has the ammunition and training to carry out the execution.

Owens now has until Sept. 6 to decide how he wants to die and has signed his power of attorney to his lawyer to make the decision for him. The state's Supreme Court has agreed to a request from the prison system to see if it is allowed by South Carolina law.

If Owens does not make a decision by the deadline, he will automatically be given the electric chair by the state.

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Freddie Eugene Owens' execution previously halted by South Carolina

Owens was set to be executed on June 25, 2021, but he and other death row inmates filed a lawsuit that halted his execution.

The lawsuit deemed the three choices for execution were against the state’s constitution, but the South Carolina Supreme Court decided against the lawsuit in July and deemed the choices constitutional.

South Carolina plans to use pentobarbital in lethal executions

Stirling said in the sworn statement that technicians at the State Law Enforcement Division laboratory tested two vials of the sedative pentobarbital, which the state plans to use for lethal injections.

“I have confirmed that the pentobarbital in the Department’s possession is of sufficient potency, purity, and stability to carry out an execution successfully using the Department’s lethal injection protocol,” Stirling wrote in the filing.

Before the last execution in 2011, the state previously used a three-drug cocktail but those drugs have since expired, making it one of the reasons that the state has not carried out an execution for more than a decade.

A 2023 shield law passed in the state keeps the name of the supplier of the drug and anyone who helps to carry out the execution. It is widely credited with helping restart executions in the state as it allowed officials to buy pentobarbital and keep the supplier private.

This allowed Stirling to keep details about the drugs private in Wednesday’s filing.

An electric chair more than 100 years old is available for use

Built-in 1912, the state’s electric chair was tested on June 25 and was found to be working properly, Stirling said in the filing. 

Stirling says firing squad is armed, trained and ready

A law passed in 2021 allowed for firing squads to be used in the state for executions. In the filing, Stirling stated that they had the guns, ammunition and training needed to perform the execution.

Three volunteers have been trained to fire at a target placed on the heart from 15 feet away,

Owens’ case has been going on since the 1990s

Owens, 46, was sentenced to death in 1999 in connection to the 1997 Halloween murder of 41-year-old Irene Graves at the Speedway convenience store. He was convicted of murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy.

Attorneys have filed at least two appeals seeking to reduce his sentence to life in prison but both were denied, with the most recent one in September 2006.

According to court documents, Owens and another person robbed the store on Nov. 1, 1997. Prosecutors said he and friends robbed several businesses before going to the store.

During the robbery, Owens shot Graves in the head after she had told the group that she could not open the store safe.

During the trial, prosecutors showed surveillance footage of the store, and one of the friends involved testified that Ownens had been the shooter. The surveillance footage used in the case did not clearly show who fired the shot.

Owens maintained he was at home in bed at the time of the robbery, but his co-defendant Stephen Andra Golden reached a plea deal with prosecutors to reduce his murder charge to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

Authorities said Owens killed his cellmate

In the time between his trial in 1999 and his subsequent sentencing, authorities said Owens killed his cellmate inside the Greenville County jail. Owens was accused of having beaten his 28-year-old cellmate, Christopher B. Lee, stabbing him and burning his eyes, choking him and stomping him. 

Officials said he did this while another prisoner was in the same cell and stayed quietly in his bunk.

Reports from the time say in Owens’ written confession to officials said that he did it, “because I was wrongly convicted of murder.”

He was charged with the murder of Lee, but court records show these were dropped in 2019, with the option to restore these around the time Owens exhausted his appeals to the original sentencing.

One last hope for Owens

There is one last way that his life could be spared, but one that has not been used in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

Gov. Henry McMaster has the ability to grant clemency and reduce Owens’ life sentence to life in prison, but this has not been done in the state's last 43 executions in the last 48 years. 

A July 31 press release from the Governor’s Office reacting to the state’s Supreme Court's decision to uphold the state's methods of execution provides little hope for clemency.

“The Supreme Court has rightfully upheld the rule of law. This decision is another step in ensuring that lawful sentences can be duly enforced and the families and loved ones of the victims receive the closure and justice they have long awaited,” the statement said.

Contributing: Terry Benjamin II, Greenville News (SC).

Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.