Prison warden in South Carolina: Electric chair, firing squad and lethal injection are ready

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina's prison warden said Wednesday that the state's stockpile of a lethal injection drug is clean, that the electric chair was tested a month ago and that the firing squad has the ammunition and training needed to carry out its first execution in more than 13 years next month.

Corrections Director Bryan Stirling was ordered by the state Supreme Court to provide Freddie Owens' attorney with an affidavit confirming that all three methods of execution are available for a prisoner scheduled to be executed on September 20.

Owens' lawyers have said they will review the statement and, if they find it inadequate, ask the state Supreme Court or federal judges to review it.

It is one of at least two legal battles between the state and Owens ahead of his execution date next month.

Owens has until Sept. 6 to decide how he wants to die, and he has given his attorney, Emily Paavola, a power of attorney to make that decision for him. The state Supreme Court has approved a request from the prison system to consider whether that is permissible under South Carolina law.

The power of attorney was signed under the name Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah. Owens changed his name in prison, but appears under his old name at his state hearings to avoid confusion.

In the affidavit, Stirling said technicians at the State Law Enforcement Division's lab tested two vials of the sedative pentobarbital, which the state plans to use for lethal injections.

Technicians told him the drug was stable, pure and strong enough to kill, under the guidelines of other jurisdictions that use a similar method, Stirling wrote.

The state previously used a three-drug cocktail, but those drugs had expired, which is one reason no executions have been carried out in South Carolina since 2011.

Stirling did not provide any further details about the drugs. This was in accordance with the new state law that keeps the names of the drug's suppliers and anyone helping to carry out the executions secret. The passage of the law in 2023 also helped resume executions, allowing the state to purchase pentobarbital and keep the suppliers secret.

The state's electric chair, built in 1912, was tested on June 25 and worked perfectly, Stirling wrote, without giving further details.

And the firing squad, authorized by a 2021 law, has the necessary weapons, ammunition and training, Stirling wrote. Three volunteers were trained to shoot a target placed on the heart from 15 feet away.

Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for killing Greenville supermarket clerk Irene Graves in 1997. Prosecutors said he and his friends robbed several stores before entering the store.

One of the friends testified that Owens shot Graves in the head because she couldn't open the safe. A surveillance system couldn't clearly show who fired the shot. Prosecutors agreed to reduce the murder charge against the friend to manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 28 years in prison, court records show.

After Owens was convicted of murder at his first trial in 1999, authorities said he killed his cellmate in the Greenville County Jail before the jury could decide on a sentence.

Investigators said Owens described to them in detail how he killed Christopher Lee, gouging him in the eyes, burning him, choking him and beating him while another prisoner was in the cell, lying quietly in his bunk. He said he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to a confession a prosecutor read in court the next day.

Owens was charged with Lee's murder in prison immediately after the killing. According to court records, prosecutors dropped the charges in 2019, with the possibility of re-filing them around the time Owens had exhausted all appeals of his death sentence in the Graves murder case.

Owens still has one last chance to save his life: In South Carolina, only the governor has the ability to grant clemency and convert a death sentence into a life sentence.

However, no governor has done so in the 43 executions in this state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

Governor Henry McMaster said he would follow longstanding tradition and not announce his decision until prison officials make a call from the death chamber minutes before the execution.

McMaster told reporters Tuesday that he had not yet decided what to do in Owens' case, but as a former prosecutor, he respected jury verdicts and court decisions.

“If the rule of law has been upheld, there is really only one answer,” McMaster said.

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