SC Supreme Court Denies Death Row Inmate’s Request; Execution Method Selected

Statement from the Supreme Court of South Carolina

The Supreme Court of South Carolina strongly rejected the plea of the man who is set to be the first person to face execution in the state in over 13 years. Freddie Eugene Owens was seeking further information regarding the cocktail of drugs employed for lethal injections. Owens is scheduled to meet his fate on September 20 for the murder of a Greenville store assistant during an armed robbery that happened in 1997. He was sentenced to death in 1999.

The Path to Execution

After a ruling by the state’s supreme court in July that allowed for the resumption of executions and brought an end to Owens’s effort to set aside his sentence, a date was scheduled. As per the law, Owens was given the freedom to choose between lethal injection, the electric chair, or a firing squad. However, Owens, citing religious reasons, passed the decision over to his attorney, Emily Paavlova. According to Owens, selecting a method of execution was equivalent to actively participating in his own death, an act akin to suicide, which his Muslim faith considers a sin.

Objections to Lethal Injection Details

In their appeal for more thorough information, Owens and his attorney contested the adequacy of the information furnished by the South Carolina Department of Corrections regarding the “availability of lethal injection”. They claimed that the details offered did not include “basic facts needed to assess the quality, reliability, potency, purity, and stability of the lethal injection drugs.”

Specific Request and Final Decision

Owens sought access to the actual report of the drug testing, documentation of the drug’s age and the conditions under which it was stored. However, based on testing by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s Forensic Services Laboratory using “widely accepted protocols and methodologies”, along with other data and a review by the staff of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, the court denied the specific dating and storage requests for the pentobarbital.

The Court’s Ruling

The court confirmed that the information that had been provided was ample enough for Owens to make an informed choice about his execution method. When this rejection was delivered, his attorney – Paavlova, reluctantly submitted the form to prison officials, stating her uncertainty as to whether the prison had supplied enough information about the lethal injection. She questioned if they could assure that it would execute him without triggering unbearably painful or agonizing consequences, which could amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Paavlova released a statement stating, “I have known Mr. Owens for 15 years. Given the circumstances and the information currently available to me, I made the best decision I felt I could on his behalf. I sincerely hope that the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ assurances prove to be true”.

If his lawyer had not made a choice, the state law would have designated the electric chair as Owens’s method of execution. But Owens had expressed his unwillingness to go out in such a manner.