People protest the death penalty in a “free speech zone” set up near the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City just after midnight on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024 as the state prepared to execute death row inmate Taberon Honie. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
South Carolina once again finds itself, tragically, on the wrong side of history. After a hiatus of 13 years, the state this week plans to resume the barbaric practice of putting human beings to death.
Unless Gov. Henry McMaster or a federal court intervenes, death row inmate Freddie Owens, 46, will be executed by lethal injection on Friday, Sept. 20. Death warrants for at least five other inmates could be issued over the next seven months.
McMaster, as governor, has never faced the solemn decision of whether to allow the state to end a life, but he might seek guidance from two other governors who have hard-won experience.
Republican Robert Bentley and Democrat Don Siegelman were both governors of Alabama. Both refused clemency to death-row inmates who were later executed during their tenures.
Both are haunted by what they now consider their own acts of injustice.
In a remarkable admission in the Washington Post last year, Bentley and Siegelman drew attention to the “legally and morally troubling” flaws in the justice system and death penalty laws.
In particular, they’re concerned about prosecutorial misconduct, which could include withholding important information from defense attorneys.
Owens, who changed his named to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, was convicted in 1999 of shooting and killing gas station clerk Irene Graves during a string of robberies in 1997. While in Greenville County jail, Owens killed one of his cellmates, Christopher B. Lee.
But the only eyewitness to the 1997 crime was Steven Golden, Owens’ co-defendant, who said last month that he had a secret agreement with prosecutors saying Golden would avoid the death penalty if he testified against Owens, according to reporting by the Gazette’s Skylar Laird.
Golden said he made false claims at the instruction of prosecutors.
Owens’ attorneys say prosecutors hid the deal from the defense and jury. Under the U.S. Constitution, prosecutors have a duty to disclose evidence favorable to the defense, including plea deals.
In addition, a juror in Owens’ original trial told attorneys that she had seen a stun belt around Owens’ waist, which is against the law as it can prejudice jurors against a defendant.
South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a coalition of clergy and civil rights advocates, also points out that Owens was 19 at the time of the crime. In addition, Owens as a child had been the victim and witness of physical abuse in his home and later had been subjected to physical and sexual abuse in South Carolina’s juvenile prison system, resulting in brain injuries.
No one is arguing that Owens should be a free man.
But based on extenuating circumstances and humane principles, the coalition is asking McMaster to grant clemency and reduce Owens’ sentence to life imprisonment without parole.
McMaster said he will make his decision only minutes before Owens is scheduled to die.
Standards of decency
Beyond the details of Owens’ case, South Carolina’s resumption of the death penalty would set our state morally apart from the nation’s — and even the world’s — evolving standards of decency.
An ever-growing number of states recognize the inhumanity of the death penalty.
Twenty-three states have abolished it. Six other states have gubernatorial moratoriums in effect, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Only five states conducted executions in 2023, the lowest number of states in 20 years. Seven states have so far this year, according to the center.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, placed a moratorium on federal executions six months into his tenure.
Americans in the past supported the death penalty, but that has changed. In 1999, 98 people were executed in the U.S. So far this year, only 13 have been executed.
One reason is that half of Americans believe the death penalty is unfairly applied, according to the Gallup Crime Survey.
In South Carolina, the racial disparity in executions is striking. Of the 284 people who have been executed since 1912, 209 (74%) were Black.
Americans recognize that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
In addition, states spend far more money on death-penalty cases than on life-imprisonment cases.
A stark reality about the death penalty is that it remains the only punishment that is irrevocable, and the justice system sometimes makes mistakes.
Since 1976, 1 person on death row has been exonerated for every 8.3 executions nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That represents a failure rate of 12%, and there’s no room for failure in a death-penalty case.
Executing an innocent person is not only a moral outrage; it often means that the guilty go free.
South Carolina has a deeply troubling record of justice-system mistakes. Since 1988, at least nine people have been exonerated of violent crimes, most recently in 2020 for a murder conviction 18 years earlier, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
The most infamous case of wrongful conviction in South Carolina, of course, is the 1944 execution of George Stinney, who at age 14 was the youngest person to be executed in the 20th century and exonerated 70 years later.
South Carolina has an opportunity to close that tragic, shameful chapter of its past and chart a more humane future.
It would begin with a grant of clemency for Freddie Owens and should eventually include the abolition of the death penalty in our state.