The above shows the space in the Department of Corrections’ Columbia prisons complex for executions, as seen from the witness room. The firing squad chair (left) was added following a 2021 state law that made death by firing squad an option. The electric chair is under the cover. (Provided by the S.C. Department of Corrections)
COLUMBIA — Death row inmate Freddie Owens will die by lethal injection, his attorney decided Friday.
Owens’ execution, scheduled for Sept. 20, is set to be the first in the state since 2011. After he signed his decision-making powers over to his attorney, she had three options for his method of execution: lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad.
The state Supreme Court decided in July that all three were constitutional, despite arguments from inmates, including Owens, that firing squad and electric chair were cruel and unusual.
If Owens’ attorney had not made a decision, he would have died by electrocution, which legislators made the default in 2021 when they added the firing squad as an option.
Owens gave his attorney, Emily Paavola, the right to make the decision because his religious beliefs as a Muslim say suicide is a sin, and he sees deciding his own method of death as a form of suicide, according to court filings. The state Supreme Court agreed earlier this week to allow Paavola to decide.
“I have known Mr. Owens for 15 years. Under the circumstances, and in light of the information currently available to me, I made the best decision I felt I could make on his behalf,” Paavola said in a statement Friday.
Owens was convicted in 1999 of shooting and killing gas station clerk Irene Graves during a robbery two years prior. After his conviction, he killed another inmate at the Greenville Detention Center, where he was kept before his sentencing.
Still pending in the court is the question of whether to halt Owens’ execution after his attorneys claimed new evidence of a secret deal between a major witness and prosecuting attorneys.
Attorneys for the state argued those claims date back to Owens’ original trial and would not be enough to grant him a new verdict, so they should not be enough to stop his execution, according to court filings.
Owens is one of five death row inmates who have exhausted their normal appeals processes and can be scheduled for execution.
Questions over secrecy
Owens was not entitled to specific information about the drugs the state will use for lethal injection, including how they are stored, how exactly the state tested them to ensure they were pure, and when they expire, the state Supreme Court said in a Thursday order.
Owens’ attorneys had argued they needed that information for Paavola to make an informed decision about whether or not the drug would be safe and effective. An expired dose, a dose stored incorrectly or a dose that was not truly pure pentobarbital could cause Owens to suffer as he died, the attorneys argued, pointing to a statement from an expert.
Attorney for death row inmate can decide his method of execution, SC Supreme Court says
Stirling testified in front of a judge that the department had tested and was ready to use any of the three methods of execution. That included sending the pentobarbital to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s forensic laboratory for testing.
The SLED laboratory confirmed that the drug was the correct purity for an execution and that it found no problems with the dose, Stirling said in his signed statement.
“I sincerely hope that the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ assurances will hold true,” Paavola said in a statement Friday.
Attorneys for the state said Owens and his attorneys shouldn’t need any more information to determine the drug is safe. Anything else could begin to infringe upon its new shield law, which legislators put in place last year to help the state get more lethal injection drugs, attorneys argued. The law protects most information about the drug, including where officials got it and how much it cost.
What is the lethal injection drug?
This will be the first time the state uses a new single-drug method of execution rather than a three-drug cocktail.
After years of being unable to restock its expired supply of lethal injection drugs, the state resupplied last September with pentobarbital, a barbiturate often used as a sedative that is fatal in high doses. The same drug is often used to euthanize pets.
Previously, South Carolina joined most other states in using three drugs to execute inmates.
The first was a sedative to put the inmate to sleep; the second was a muscle relaxant, called pancuronium bromide; and the third, usually potassium chloride, stopped the inmate’s heart, according to information released in court filings.
For South Carolina’s last execution in 2011, it used pentobarbital as the first of three drugs. Before that, the combination started with sodium thiopental, a different type of anesthetic, but a federal investigation into the drug took it off the market, The Associated Press reported at the time.
Facing shortages in those drugs, the federal government and some states have switched from a similar three-drug cocktail to just a lethal dose of pentobarbital.
SC set to execute death row inmate next month, the state’s first execution in 13 years
South Carolina adjusted its protocol last September, when Stirling told the state Supreme Court he had gotten a supply of pentobarbital, with the help of the new law keeping the origins of the drug secret. Corrections officials contacted more than 1,300 drug manufacturers, suppliers, compounding suppliers and others in looking to refill the state’s supply of lethal drugs, according to a news release at the time.
The change came down to what was available.
Officials had told inmates’ attorneys they would switch to a one-drug protocol if that was what they could get, according to letters included in court filings.
The state’s new protocol “is essentially identical to protocols used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and at least six other states,” according to the news release. The department does not publicly release its execution protocols.
The federal government switched to using just pentobarbital in 2011, citing shortages in other drugs.
At least nine states — Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington — have executed at least one person using a single drug. Utah’s first execution using the new method took place last month.
Six other states have said they would use a one-drug protocol but have not carried out an execution with it. Of the 13 inmates executed nationwide so far this year, seven have died by an injection of pentobarbital, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Because pentobarbital is a sedative, an overdose done correctly should still put an inmate to sleep before shutting off their brain and other organs, said Robin Maher, executive director for the Death Penalty Information Center.
The one-drug and three-drug methods don’t have much of a difference in terms of effectiveness. At the end of the day, whether or not a lethal injection is effective comes down to whether or not it is administered effectively, Maher said.