SC Supreme Court rejects appeals, paving way to first execution in 13 years

The South Carolina Supreme Court has denied a stay of execution for Freddie Eugene Owens, clearing the path for the South Carolina man to be the first person executed in the state since 2011.

In an order released Thursday evening, the five justices of the state Supreme Court responded to a series of motions filed by Owens’ attorneys that argued the death penalty was disproportionate, prosecutors had concealed a secret deal with a key witness and a juror at Owens’ original trial had seen him wearing an electric stun belt, violating his right to a fair trial.

But in a unanimous ruling, the court rejected these claims, finding that Owens had not demonstrated there were exceptional circumstances or a constitutional violation “shocking to the universal sense of justice” required to halt his execution, scheduled for Sept. 20.

Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for the murder of Irene Graves, a gas station clerk, in the early morning hours of Nov. 1, 1997. A jury found that the 19-year-old Owens had shot and killed Graves, a mother of three, during a robbery spree that he committed with three other accomplices.

Owens was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1999. Following appeals, he was resentenced to death, first in 2003 by then circuit court judge now South Carolina Chief Justice John Kittredge and again by a jury in 2006. In 2015, Owens converted to Islam and changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah but continues to use the name “Freddie Owens” in his appeals.

“We’re disappointed by the Court’s ruling. Mr. Owens’s death sentence remains excessive and unprecedented, especially in light of his youth and organic brain damage. The prosecutor obtained that sentence by withholding evidence that would have impeached its most important witness. We will continue to seek review and relief for Mr. Owens,” said Gerald “Bo” King, Chief of the Capital Habeas Unit for the Fourth Circuit in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of North Carolina, who is assisting with Owens’ appeal.

Thursday’s ruling comes following a motion that alleged prosecutors concealed a secret deal to secure the testimony of Owens’ accomplice, Steven Golden, who identified Owens as the shooter.

On the stand, Golden denied being promised a specific sentence. But in a sworn affidavit provided to Owens’ attorneys in August, Golden said his attorneys told him prosecutors would not seek the death penalty for him if he testified. This was backed up, Owens’ attorneys said, by the rediscovery of a draft affidavit prepared by Golden’s lawyer in 1999.

Rejecting this claim, the Supreme Court said that not only was this evidence already known and being introduced too late, but the two affidavits only showed evidence of what Golden’s attorneys told him in order to “induce him” to accept a plea deal.

The court also dismissed a highly technical argument made by Owens’ attorneys in a blitz of motions filed last week that the death sentence would be disproportionate as the jury had not necessarily found that Owens was the one who fatally shot Graves.

Instead, his attorneys argued that the court in Owens’ original 1999 trial had allowed prosecutors to advance a legal theory that the jury could find him guilty of murder simply by finding that he had participated in the robbery that led to Graves’ killing.

Were he to be executed, his attorneys argued, it could be the first time since the death penalty was reinstated in South Carolina in 1976 that a person would be put to death with no specific finding that they had actually killed someone.

“Just the act of taking a life is not going to always result in a capital prosecution or death sentence,” Josh Kendrick, a member of Owens’ defense team, told The State. “What we’re saying is this is not the kind of case where you would typically be subject to the death penalty.”

But the Supreme Court was unmoved. The justices wrote that there was sufficient evidence to “prove Owens deserved a sentence of death.”

Besides evidence that Owens had been the one to fatally shoot Graves, including testimony from his ex-girlfriend and accomplices, the Supreme Court noted the “many disciplinary infractions Owens committed while in jail awaiting trial” and an admission by Owens that he “brutally murdered his cellmate during the twenty-four-hour waiting period between his 1999 criminal conviction and his first sentencing trial.”

Owens was never tried for killing cellmate Christopher Bryan Lee, who was serving a 90-day charge for drunk driving.

With this latest ruling, Owens execution is set to take place at 6 p.m. on Sept. 20. Last week, citing Owens’ Muslim faith that forbid him from making the selection, his attorney selected lethal injection as his method of execution.

What did Owens’ attorneys argue?

Around 4 a.m. on Nov. 1, 1997, two men entered Starvin’ Marvin Speedway gas station on Laurens Road in Greenville. Both could be seen on CCTV, one man wearing a ski mask, the other a stocking over his head. They were carrying guns and demanded that the clerk, Graves, open the safe.

When she couldn’t, the man in the ski mask shot Graves, a mother of three. The two men made off with $37.29 taken from the register.

In closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury that the necessary elements to find Owens guilty of murder would be proven simply by finding that he was present during the armed robbery.

“The one issue you are here to decide is was Freddie Owens present in the Speedway when Ms. Graves was killed,” The prosecutor told juror in closing statements. “Who was the shooter is not important. Because the state does not rest its case upon the fact that we can prove at this stage who was the shooter....If you find that both of these individuals are present and you find that Ms. Graves was killed by one of them.... then they are both guilty.”

In court filings, Owens’ attorneys argued that executing Owens would be unconstitutionally disproportionate for someone found guilty of “accomplice liability of felony murder” — the legal theory that an individual can be found guilty of murder that occurred while they were the accomplice in committing a felony.

“It seems like the court here has introduced a way for you to find someone guilty of a murder that is not historically in line with how you would find someone guilty of a capital murder, because you could under this theory find someone who did not fire a gun, you could put them to death. That’s pretty unique,” Kendrick told The State.

Owens has always maintained his innocence and there is no forensic evidence proving that he was the man in the ski mask, according to his attorneys.

But in their ruling, the justices found that the original trial court had appropriately instructed the jury on how to infer malice, one of the requirements for finding someone guilty of murder, from Owens’ actions the night of the murder. They also agreed with the S.C. Attorney General’s Office, which represents the state during the appeals stage, that there was other evidence to convict Owens.

The evidence, which was reintroduced at Owens’ third and final sentencing trial, “showed conclusively Owens was the person who shot the clerk,” according to the Supreme Court.

“However, even if the jury determined Owens was the man in the stocking mask,” the Supreme Court justices wrote, “he was a major participant in the murder and armed robbery who showed a reckless disregard for human life by knowingly engaging in criminal activity that carries a grave risk of death.”