2 weeks Ago
COLUMBIA — Greenville County's Freddie Eugene Owens was killed by lethal injection Friday night, South Carolina's first execution since 2011. Owens, 46, died at 6:55 p.m.
Sept. 20, 19 minutes after being injected with an IV containing a lethal dose of pentobarbital at the Broad River state prison in Columbia. His execution comes 27 years after the armed robbery and killing of convenience store clerk and single mother of three Irene Graves .
Hours after being found guilty in his 1999 trial, but before being sentenced, Owens admitted to brutally beating his jail cellmate Christopher Lee to death. SC death row: A look at those facing capital punishment in the Palmetto State In South Carolina, inmates on death row can choose between lethal injection, electrocution or a firing squad. Owens, who had changed his name to Khalil Allah after converting to Islam while on death row, opted for his attorney, Emily Paavola, to choose how he was going to die .
The state followed through with the execution after a litany of last-ditch appeals in state and federal court. In an interview earlier this week with Post and Courier reporter David Ferrara — who served as one of three media witnesses inside the execution chamber — Graves' son, Arte Graves, said he was ready for the whole ordeal to be over with. "Some days I forgive him, some days the hell with him," Graves said.
"It is what it is. It'll bring some closure." Lee's sister, Sherry Brooks, said her family had been waiting for this day since they learned Owens had killed him in the middle of the night 25 years ago.
Irene Graves, 21 in this photo, died during an armed robbery at a Greenville convenience store in 1997. Lee had been serving a 90-day sentence on traffic offenses, but jail policy at the time allowed Owens — just convicted of murder — to be housed with him. Today's Top Headlines Story continues below How did 14 of the world’s deadliest snakes end up in a South Carolina neighborhood? Invasive animals plague South Carolina.
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Owens' murder charge for killing Lee was dismissed by "prosecutorial discretion" in 2019, court records show. Multiple requests by Owens' attorneys to delay his execution were denied, including after a last-minute affidavit from a co-defendant in his 1997 robbery spree, Steven Golden, who said Owens was never at the gas station and didn't shoot Graves. State prosecutors pointed toward Owens' cold-blooded admissions to investigators, close friends and his own mom that he had killed Graves.
"Yeah, I want to be remembered as the one who killed the most people in Greenville," Owens said to an investigator, according to trial testimony. "I’m a real menace." The order in which SC will execute the next 5 inmates has been set.
35-day waiting period issued. With 31 men remaining on the state's death row, officials are planning for roughly one execution a month for the next three years after the Supreme Court set a minimum 35-day interval between death notices. The court issues death warrants to prison officials and inmates on death row at their discretion, so the next could come in late September, followed by an execution in late October.
The next inmate expected to receive a death warrant is Richard Moore , 59, convicted of fatally shooting convenience store clerk James Mahoney during a 1999 armed robbery in Spartanburg County. This is a developing story. Check back later for updates.
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