South Carolina completes its first execution in 13 years

As reported in this AP piece, “South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death Friday as the state restarted executions after an unintended 13-year pause because prison officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections.”  Here is more:

Owens was convicted of the 1997 killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk during a robbery.  While on trial, Owens killed a person incarcerated at a county jail. His confession to that attack was read to two different juries and a judge who all sentenced him to death….

Owens’ last-ditch appeals were repeatedly denied, including by a federal court Friday morning.  Owens also petitioned for a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court.  South Carolina’s governor and corrections director swiftly filed a reply, stating the high court should reject Owens’ petition. The filing said nothing is exceptional about his case.  The high court denied the request shortly after the scheduled start time of the execution.

His last chance to avoid death was for Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison.  McMaster denied Owens’ request as well, stating that he had “carefully reviewed and thoughtfully considered” Owens’ application for clemency.

Owens may be the first of several people to die in the state’s death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other people are out of appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared the way to hold an execution every five weeks.

South Carolina first tried to add the firing squad to restart executions after its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and no company was willing to publicly sell them more.  But the state had to pass a shield law keeping the drug supplier and much of the protocol for executions secret to be able to reopen the death chamber.

To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using just the sedative pentobarbital.  The new process is similar to how the federal government kills people on death row, state prison officials said….

South Carolina has put 43 people to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of three executions a year.  Only nine states have put more people to death.

Since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled.  The state had 63 condemned people in early 2011.  It now has 31 after Owens’ death Friday.  About 20 people have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals.  Others have died of natural causes.