FOX NEWS
South Carolina will carry out its first execution in more than 13 years next month following struggles to obtain lethal injection drugs.
Freddie Eugene Owens, 46, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 20 for the 1997 killing of store clerk Irene Graves during a string of robberies in Greenville. Owens also killed his cellmate at the Greenville County Jail after his conviction in 1999, but before his sentencing.
Once one of the busiest states for executions, South Carolina had trouble in recent years obtaining lethal injection drugs because of pharmaceutical companies’ concerns that they would have to disclose that they had sold the drugs to state officials, according to The Associated Press.
The state legislature has since passed a shield law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers private.
In July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way to allow the state to resume executions.
Owens is expected to have the choice of being executed by lethal injection, electrocution or the new option of a firing squad. The last U.S. execution to be carried out by a firing squad was done in Utah in 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
The prison’s director has five days to confirm that all three execution methods will be available for Owens to choose from. Owens’ lawyers must also be provided proof that the lethal injection drug is stable and correctly mixed, according to the high court’s 2023 interpretation of the state’s secrecy law on executions that helped clear the way for South Carolina to again carry out the death penalty.
Owens will then have about a week to notify the state which execution method he wants to use. If he does not make a decision, the state will use the electric chair by default.
A lawyer for Owens said the defense is waiting for prison officials to submit a sworn statement next week about the purity, potency and quality of the lethal injection drug under the terms of the state’s new shield law and will await a determination on whether it is acceptable to both the state and federal courts.
