Post-Furman US execution #1596
South Carolina execution #44 since reinstatement
On Friday, the 20th of September, 2024, the State of South Carolina resumed capital punishment after a hiatus of more than thirteen years when 46-year-old Freddie Eugene Owens—who had adopted the Muslim name Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah—was put to death by lethal injection at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Owens had spent over a quarter of a century on death row following his conviction for the 1997 murder of a convenience store clerk during an armed robbery in Greenville.
His execution was the first carried out by the state since Jeffrey Motts was put to death in May 2011. The intervening pause had been largely forced upon the Department of Corrections by an inability to procure lethal injection drugs from pharmaceutical manufacturers, a hurdle finally overcome when the state passed secrecy legislation shielding drug suppliers and shifted to a single-drug pentobarbital protocol.
The Crime
The crime for which Owens was condemned occurred in the early hours of Saturday, the 1st of November, 1997. The victim was 41-year-old Irene Grainger Graves, a widowed mother of three who held three separate jobs to support her family, including night-shift work as a cashier at a Speedway convenience store on Laurens Road in Greenville.
Owens, then aged 19, together with an 18-year-old companion named Steven Andra Golden and two others, set out to commit an armed robbery. Security cameras recorded two masked men entering the premises—one wearing a ski mask and carrying a handgun, the other wearing a nylon stocking mask. While Mrs Graves surrendered the cash from the register, totaling just $37.29, she was unable to open the main store safe. The armed robber in the ski mask thereupon shot her once through the head at point-blank range, causing instant death.
Ten days later, both Owens and Golden were arrested. Golden made a full confession, entering into a plea bargain with prosecutors under which he agreed to testify that Owens was the gunman in exchange for the capital charge being reduced to voluntary manslaughter.
The Jail Murder and Sentencing Trials
Owens was brought to trial in Greenville County in February 1999 on charges of murder, armed robbery, and conspiracy. On the 15th of February, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts.
It was during the brief adjournment before the sentencing phase that the case took an extraordinary and violent turn. While awaiting the penalty hearing inside the Greenville County Detention Center, Owens launched an unprovoked, lethal attack on a 28-year-old cellmate, Christopher Lee. In a graphic signed confession later given to investigators, Owens recounted how he had choked, stabbed, stomped, and burned Lee’s eyes, explicitly stating he had killed him because he was angry about being wrongfully convicted of the Graves homicide.
The written confession was read into the record before the jury during the sentencing phase. On the 19th of February, 1999, the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty, and the trial judge formally pronounced sentence of death.
Although Owens had his death sentence vacated twice on procedural grounds by state and federal appellate courts, subsequent resentencing proceedings in 2003 and 2006—both before a new jury and a judge sitting alone—resulted in the reimposition of the death penalty each time after his confession to the jailhouse killing was reintroduced. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the formal murder charge regarding Lee’s death, retaining the right to reinstate it should the original death sentence ever be overturned.
Appeals and Method Selection
Owens pursued extensive post-conviction relief over the next eighteen years. His appeals challenged the admissibility of the jailhouse confession, alleged prosecutorial misconduct, and contended that extensive childhood physical abuse and mental illness had been inadequately presented by trial counsel.
In the weeks prior to his execution, Owens’s lawyers lodged an emergency appeal featuring a sworn recantation from his co-defendant, Steven Golden. Golden claimed that his 1999 testimony identifying Owens as the shooter had been fabricated under pressure from detectives. However, the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected the petition, noting that multiple other acquaintances and a former girlfriend had testified that Owens had independently boasted of the shooting.
Under South Carolina law, a condemned prisoner is given the statutory choice between the electric chair, the firing squad, or lethal injection; failure to make a choice results in death by electrocution. Owens declined to sign the election form personally, stating that taking an active role in choosing his execution method conflicted with his Islamic religious beliefs against suicide. To avoid the electric chair default, he granted his attorney legal power of attorney to make the selection, and his counsel formally chose lethal injection.
A final clemency petition was denied by Governor Henry McMaster on the afternoon of the execution, and the United States Supreme Court declined to intervene.
The Execution
For his final meal, Owens requested two cheeseburgers, french fries, a well-done ribeye steak, six chicken wings, two soda drinks, and a slice of apple pie.
Owens was escorted into the execution chamber at Broad River shortly before 6:30 p.m. on Friday, the 20th of September, 2024. He was strapped securely to the central gurney, his arms outstretched on armboards with intravenous lines inserted into both arms. Behind the glass partition, members of Irene Graves’s family, Owens’s legal representatives, and official state witnesses were assembled.
When the viewing blinds were drawn open at 6:35 p.m., Owens mouthed a brief, silent word to his attorney, who smiled in acknowledgement. Asked by the warden if he wished to make an oral final statement, Owens offered none.
The administration of the lethal five-gram dose of pentobarbital commenced shortly thereafter. Owens remained conscious for approximately one minute before his eyes closed. He took five or six deep, labored breaths, followed by slight facial twitching that subsided over the course of four minutes as respiration ceased entirely.
At 6:55 p.m. Eastern Time, an examining medical official pronounced life extinct. Freddie Eugene Owens was 46 years of age.
His death marked the reopening of South Carolina’s execution chamber after a 4,886-day hiatus and cleared the way for a series of scheduled executions carried out in the state over the following months.
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