Forced to choose how to die, South Carolina inmate lets lawyer pick lethal injection

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A condemned inmate forced to choose how he'll be put to death ended weeks of suspense by leaving the decision to his lawyer, who reluctantly told South Carolina prison officials on Friday to prepare for a lethal injection, rather than the electric chair or a firing squad.

Freddie Owens said in court papers that deciding the execution method would be taking an active role in his own death, and his Muslim faith teaches him that suicide is a sin.

Attorney Emily Paavola sent in the form to prison officials and released a statement saying she is still unsure prison officials have released enough information about the drug to assure it will kill him without causing unbearable pain or agony that could be cruel and unusual punishment.

“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. I sincerely hope that the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ assurances will hold true,” she wrote.

If his lawyer didn't make a decision, state law would have sent Owens to the electric chair. Owens had said he doesn’t want to die like that.

Owens' death is now set for Sept. 20, as South Carolina uses a new lethal injection procedure after a 13-year pause in executions.

South Carolina's executions have been postponed since 2011 over struggles to get the lethal injection drug. The death chamber was reopened after lawmakers voted last year to keep the supplier of the sedative pentobarbital secret and the state Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair and firing squad also were legal execution methods.

The state has used three drugs for executions in the past, but moved to one dose of pentobarbital — similar to the federal government's execution method — to make obtaining it easier.

Owens and five other inmates have exhausted their appeals and the justices have have set a schedule of possible execution dates every fifth Friday well into 2025.

Attorneys for Owens, 46, have filed several legal motions since his execution date was set two weeks ago, but so far there have been no delays.

Still undecided by the state Supreme Court is a request by Owens to postpone his death so his lawyers can argue his co-defendant lied about having a deal to avoid the death penalty or a life sentence in exchange for testifying that Owens pulled the trigger to kill clerk Irene Graves after she struggled to open the safe in a store they were robbing in 1997.

The store's video didn't clearly show who killed Graves and scientific evidence wasn't presented at trial. Prosecutors said the co-defendant's testimony was bolstered by Owens confessing the killing to his mother, girlfriend and investigators.

State attorneys said that issue, and whether a juror could have been biased against Owens after seeing a bulge and correctly assuming it was a stun belt under Owens' clothes, has been dealt with in a half-dozen appeals and two additional sentencing hearings that also ended with a recommendation of death after other judges overturned his initial punishment.

“Owens has had ample opportunity to litigate claims regarding his conviction and sentence. He is due no more," the South Carolina Attorney General's Office wrote in a court filing.

Owens' lawyers are also asking his death sentence be set aside at least temporarily because he was 19 when the clerk was killed and scans of his brain show it wasn't fully developed. They also said a jury was never asked to determine if Owens alone killed Graves and said his sentence is too harsh because less than 1% of murder convictions during an armed robbery lead to death sentences.

Owens also tried to delay his execution by saying the state didn't release enough information about the drug.

When they upheld the new shield law, the state Supreme Court said prison officials had to give a sworn statement that the pentobarbital to be used under the state's new lethal injection procedure is stable, pure and — based on similar methods in other jurisdictions — potent enough to kill.

Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said technicians at the State Law Enforcement Division laboratory tested two vials of the sedative and assured him the drugs fit the criteria. He released no other details, under the guidelines of the shield law,

Owens' lawyers wanted more, like the full report from the lab, the expiration date of the likely compounded drug and how it would be stored. They included in their court papers a photo of a syringe of a execution drug from 2015 in Georgia that crystalized because it was stored too cold.

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled late Thursday that prison officials had released enough information, siding with their lawyers who said any additional information could be “puzzle pieces” that allow death penalty opponents to determine who provided the drug and pressure them into not selling it to the prison system again.

No matter what happens in court, Owens has one more avenue to try to save his life. In South Carolina, the governor has the lone ability to grant clemency and reduce a death sentence to life in prison.

However no governor has done that in the state’s 43 executions since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976.

Gov. Henry McMaster has said he will follow longtime tradition and not announce his decision until prison officials make a call from the death chamber minutes before the execution.