S.C. high court rules Freddie Owens' execution can proceed despite new affidavit

Sept. 19 (UPI) -- South Carolina death row inmate Freddie Owens will die as scheduled on Friday despite the introduction of an affidavit by his co-defendant proclaiming Owens' innocence, the state's high court has ruled.

Owen is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. EDT Friday for the 1997 murder of a convenience store clerk in Greenville, S.C., marking the state's first execution in 13 years.

As the execution approached on Thursday, Owens' attorneys introduced a statement from his co-defendant in the 1999 trial for the slaying of clerk Irene Graves during the commission of a robbery at a Speedway convenience store.

Steven Golden, who drew a 30-year sentence for the crime, said in an affidavit that, contrary to his trial testimony, Owens was, in fact, not the triggerman, and was not even at the scene of the robbery.

Rather, it was another unnamed robber who killed Graves, Golden stated.

"I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to the police," he said in explaining his years of silence. "I am still afraid of that."

Golden said he agreed to finger Owens in 1997 in exchange for a deal to escape the death penalty himself but decided to reveal what he knew because he does not want Owens to be executed for something he did not do.

Owens, now 46, was 19 at the time of Graves' death. His lawyers argued in an emergency motion the new information was sufficient to halt the execution and to warrant a new trial, but the South Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday ruled otherwise, according to multiple reports.

"This new affidavit is squarely inconsistent with Golden's testimony at Owens' 1999 trial, at the first resentencing trial in 2003, and in the statement he gave law enforcement officers immediately after he participated in committing the crimes in 1997," the high court order read.

The justices also ruled that "considerable other evidence" places Owens as the triggerman, including confessions to his girlfriend, his mother, another accomplice and two law enforcement officers.