When South Carolina executes a man for the first time in more than a decade this Friday, the state will use the most common method of execution in the United States.
Convicted murderer Freddie Owens is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20. It will be the first execution carried out by the state in 13 years, and the first under a new legal arrangement that requires condemned prisoners to choose their method of execution from a selection of lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad.
Owens, who also goes by the name Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, declined to choose his own method of execution, saying it was akin to suicide and thus against his Islamic faith. One of his attorneys, Emily Paavola, was instead granted the power by the S.C. Supreme Court to choose his method of execution . Despite expressed concerns about the strength and potency of the drugs chosen to be used, she chose lethal injection as the method by which Owens will die.
Owens is in prison for the 1997 murder of Irene Grainger Graves, a 41-year-old convenience store clerk and mother of three. Graves was shot and killed by a 19-year-old Owens during an attempted robbery in Greenville County, after she was unable to open the store’s safe. After his 1999 murder conviction, Owens also killed fellow inmate Christopher Bryan Lee during a dispute inside the jail. Lee, 28, was serving 90 days in the county jail for a traffic offense at the time, the Greenville News reported.
Fifteen minutes before Owens’ scheduled execution, McMaster, Attorney General Alan Wilson and Corrections Director Bryan Stirling will get on a phone call with the execution chamber. The warden will ask whether any pending legal issues will impede the execution, and whether the governor will issue clemency to the prisoner.
If the answer to both questions is no, the officials will stay on the line to be told when drugs are being administered, when the prison officials are checking for a pulse and when a doctor comes in to pronounce the prisoner dead.
Most-common method of execution
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, there have been 1,414 executions carried out by lethal injection across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It’s by far the most-common method of execution, followed by 163 executions in the electric chair, 12 in the gas chamber and three by firing squad.
Lethal injection is carried out by injecting the prisoner with a cocktail of drugs meant to induce unconsciousness, paralysis and then death. It was first adopted in Oklahoma in 1977 as a supposedly more humane alternative to methods such as electrocution or hanging, and eventually became the default mode of execution in the United States.
Today, it is used by 27 states and the federal government either as the primary or an alternate method of execution. It is also used in China, Guatemala, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The Maldives and Nigeria also have lethal injection on the books, but have never carried out an execution using the method.
In using lethal injection, a prisoner is strapped to a gurney, hooked up to a heart monitor and has an intravenous line placed in their arm. Ironically, proper sterilization procedures are followed and the area is disinfected with rubbing alcohol before the line is laid. This is done just in case a prisoner receives a last-minute reprieve .
In a standard execution, pentobarbital is administered first to knock the prisoner out, followed by pancuronium bromide to paralyze muscle movements, including those necessary for breathing, and finally potassium chloride to cause cardiac arrest leading to the prisoner’s death.
History of lethal injection in S.C.
South Carolina first adopted the method in 1995 as an alternative to the electric chair. Since then, 36 prisoners have been executed by lethal injection in the state. But South Carolina was unable to carry out a lethal injection after 2011 because of a lack of the necessary drugs.
Because those sentenced to death had the option to choose between the electric chair and an injection, choosing an injection effectively delayed executions indefinitely. By 2021, state lawmakers added a third option — death by firing squad — to force those on the state’s death row to make a choice so that executions could proceed.
Then in 2023, the S.C. Legislature passed a shield law allowing the state to keep its suppliers and procedures for executions secret, removing the potential for blowback on drug companies that had made them reluctant to supply the drugs. Later, the state Department of Corrections revealed it would proceed with executions going forward solely using a pentobarbital injection, rather than the three drug cocktail. That drug on its own will eventually lead the prisoner to stop breathing similar to an opioid overdose.
“Justice has been delayed for too long in South Carolina,” Gov. Henry McMaster said in a statement at the time. “This filing brings our state one step closer to being able to once again carry out the rule of law and bring grieving families and loved ones the closure they are rightfully owed.”
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