Rob Lee, one of Freddie Owens’ attorneys, talks about Owens’ life in prison during a vigil at Washington Street United Methodist Church in Columbia on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — The mother of Freddie Owens urged Gov. Henry McMaster to spare her son’s life in a statement released hours ahead of his scheduled execution.
Owens, 46, is set to die at 6 p.m. Friday, 25 years after he was convicted of killing gas station clerk Irene Graves during a string of robberies on Halloween night 1997. On Wednesday, the only witness to the shooting — who was convicted as Owens’ accomplice — signed a statement saying he falsely identified and testified against Owens, claiming now that Owens wasn’t even with him that night.
“Freddie is more than his conviction. He is a human being, a son, a brother, and a friend,” his mother, Dora Mason, said in a statement released by the Greenville nonprofit Fighting Injustice Together. “He deserves compassion, understanding, and a fair chance at justice. Instead, the system has failed him and the victim at every turn.”
Mason expressed sympathy for the family of Irene Graves, who was a single mother of three, while asking the people of South Carolina to consider whether the state should execute Owens.
“To my son, Freddie, I want you to know that I love you more than words can express,” Mason said in her statement. “You have always been my guiding light, and your strength and resilience inspire me every day. I will stand by you until the very end.
“To the governor, the Legislature, and the people of South Carolina, I ask: Is this truly justice? Is this truly what we call compassion and mercy?”
Mason, who still lives in Greenville, pointed to the same arguments that Owens’ attorneys have made over the last several weeks as they sought unsuccessfully to stop the execution and get a new trial.
In the month since Owens was scheduled for execution, his attorneys have claimed that Steven Golden, Owens’ convicted accomplice, had a secret deal with a prosecutor in exchange for testifying against his friend. On Wednesday, Golden recanted what he told law enforcement and jurists about that night, alleging the “real shooter” was someone else entirely that Golden still doesn’t want to name out of fear of retaliation. He came forward, he said, “to have a clear conscience.”
The state Supreme Court dismissed those arguments, noting Golden admitted at trial he was testifying to avoid the death penalty. Justices also indicated they didn’t believe Golden’s new story, calling it “squarely inconsistent” with what he’s said since his 1997 arrest.
Owens’ attorneys also tried to halt the execution through federal court.
But on Wednesday, a federal judge declined to stop Owens’ execution over a pending lawsuit questioning how much information state officials can reveal about the lethal injection drugs to be used in Owens’ execution. Owens’ attorneys appealed that decision, but another federal judge on Friday upheld it.
Activists walk outside the Governor’s Mansion in protest of Freddie Owens’ execution Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
The only remaining way for Owens to avoid execution is for Gov. Henry McMaster to grant him clemency. McMaster said he will not give his decision until 5:45 p.m., but South Carolina’s former attorney general — who has staunchly defended the death penalty — has suggested it’s unlikely he will commute Owens’ sentence.
Owens will die by lethal injection, his attorney decided. This will be the first time the state uses a single dose of the sedative pentobarbital instead of its previous three-drug cocktail.
Freddie Owens
Owens was born prematurely into a family life his attorneys have described as violent and chaotic. Both his biological parents and his stepfather used and dealt drugs, and all three abused Owens and his three siblings. His father and stepfather were in and out of prison throughout his childhood, according to court filings.
Owens went into foster care at 5 years old after social workers found him and his siblings alone in a house with no food or electricity. He dropped out of school in 9th grade after repeating several grades and often getting into trouble for fighting with other students. As a teen, he spent time in the state’s juvenile justice system, where the other teenagers abused him physically and sexually, his attorneys have said.
SC justices again refuse to stop Friday’s execution, despite new claims of innocence
At some point, which doctors can’t pinpoint, Owens suffered damage to his frontal lobe, the part of the brain that controls a person’s impulses and emotions. He experienced violent outbursts, anxiety, depression, paranoia and seizures at different points in his life, according to court filings.
Owens was 19 years old when Graves was shot in the head as two masked men robbed the Speedway convenience store where she worked one of her three jobs. The youngest of the three children she left behind was 8 years old.
The Speedway was the third place that Owens and three friends — according to Golden and others — robbed as Halloween turned into the early morning of Nov. 1, 1997.
Golden testified — both in 1999 and 2003 — that it was Owens who shot Graves, 41, because she couldn’t open the store’s safe. The pair of robbers left with $37.29 from the cash register. Owens told friends and family that he had killed Graves, bragging about it in some cases. Beyond Golden, those testifying against Owens at his 1999 trial included his girlfriend and another friend on the robbery spree. Owens’ attorneys have since disputed the reliability of what they said.
In February 1999, a jury convicted Owens of killing Graves. That night, between his conviction and sentencing hearing the next day, Owens killed a fellow inmate at the Greenville County jail, 28-year-old Christopher Lee.
Lee was serving a 90-day sentence for traffic violations. Owens confessed to the crime, then described in detail how he had killed Lee by choking him, slamming his head into the floor and shoving a pen up one nostril, according to court documents.
That case never went to trial. Prosecutors dropped the charges in 2019, soon after Owens exhausted his appeals for killing Graves, with the stipulation that they could bring them back if needed.
Twice, the state Supreme Court sent Owens’ death sentence back to a jury for resentencing. Both times, the jury again recommended sentencing Owens to death.
But Owens has changed during the 25 years he has spent in prison, one of his lawyers, Rob Lee, said during a Thursday night vigil at Washington Street United Methodist Church in Columbia.
“Rather than wallow in the severe isolation of death row, he began to read,” Lee said. “Then, he began to study.”
Owens took an interest in history, particularly African history. He suggested his niece write a paper on Nubian Queen Amanirenas, who resisted Roman rule in the ancient Kingdom of Kush. He regaled his attorneys with facts about the University of Timbuktu, bonobo apes, and the history of cartoon character Betty Boop, Lee said.
He learned to read and write in Arabic to strengthen his Islamic faith. In 2015, he legally changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah. He called his mother every day to check on her.
Owens wrote thoughts and poems and essays, “creating a new recorded history of his life,” Lee said.
“As you know, the state of South Carolina plans to end that history Friday at 6 p.m.,” Lee said Thursday.
Activists remember Owens’ life
During the vigil, a dozen activists made a final call for clemency. They peacefully walked the street outside the Governor’s Mansion, holding signs reading “end the death penalty” and “stop state killing.”
Rev. Hillary Taylor, executive director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, speaks about ending executions at Washington Street United Methodist Church in Columbia on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
Ron Kaz, a member of the board of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, has driven from Charleston to Columbia to sit vigil for 42 of the 43 executions carried out in the state since 1985, he said. He will be back Friday night for his 43rd vigil outside the razor wire of the prison gates.
“For me, it gets harder every time,” Kaz said.
In the time between a person’s crime and execution, a lot can change, he said.
“The people that are getting executed are not the same people who were sentenced to death,” Kaz said.
Paul Palmer, a protestor from Columbia, said he disagreed with the idea that executions bring justice for the relatives of the victims. After his nephew was killed while working a shift at a video poker parlor in the 1980s, the prosecutor asked Palmer’s family whether they wanted to seek the death penalty.
Palmer knew that sentence would not bring the family the peace they were looking for. He pushed instead for a life sentence, which the perpetrators ultimately received, he said.
“I don’t want that kind of justice,” he told his brother-in-law and sister at the time, he said.
Activists pointed out the uneven ways in which the death penalty is often applied. Black people, like Owens, are disproportionately sentenced to death, civil rights leaders have argued.
Of the 282 people executed in South Carolina since 1912, 74% were Black and 26% were white, according to Department of Corrections data.
Of the 32 men on the state’s death row, 15 are Black and 17 are white. People with disabilities, such as Owens’ brain damage, are also more likely to face execution, said Rev. Hillary Taylor, director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
“The death penalty is not justice,” Taylor said. “It doesn’t stop violence from happening. It only creates more victims.”
It is likely activists will be back in Columbia over the course of the next six months as the state Supreme Court schedules five more men who have exhausted their appeals for execution, Taylor said.
“Unfortunately, there may be many future vigils,” Taylor said.