(Washington) A man convicted of the 1999 murder of a cashier, Freddie Owens, was executed Friday in South Carolina, the first execution in the state since 2011.
Freddie Owens, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection, US media reported.
This is the first of five executions scheduled in less than a week in the United States, in five different states.
PHOTO SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, PROVIDED BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Freddie Owens, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection
All of them must be carried out by lethal injection, with the exception of that of Alan Miller on September 26 in Alabama by inhalation of nitrogen, a method of execution used for the first time in the world in this state in January and denounced by the UN which compared it to a form of “torture”.
Freddie Owens was sentenced to death for the murder of cashier Irene Graves, a mother of three, during an armed robbery of a convenience store by two masked men on Halloween night in 1997.
Also later convicted of murdering a fellow inmate, he claims to be innocent of the murder of Irene Graves.
Another man, Steven Golden, who was sentenced to 28 years in prison in the case, has retracted his testimony incriminating Freddie Owens and now claims that he was not the one who accompanied him in the robbery.
But final appeals were rejected and Governor Henry McMaster did not issue a last-minute commutation.
This execution constitutes the 14the made in the United States in 2024.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.