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South Carolina has executed its archetypal decease enactment inmate successful 13 years, administering a lethal injection to Freddie Owens.
Owens, 46, was recovered blameworthy by a assemblage of sidesplitting store idiosyncratic Irene Graves during an equipped robbery successful Greenville successful 1997.
He was executed contempt his co-defendant signing a sworn connection this week claiming Owens was not contiguous astatine the clip of the robbery and killing.
The South Carolina Supreme Court refused to halt Owens’ execution, saying the claims were inconsistent with grounds made astatine his trial.
Owens was executed astatine the Broad River Correctional Institute successful Columbia, South Carolina, connected Friday evening.
He was pronounced dormant astatine 18:55 section clip (22:55 GMT) aft being injected with a cause called pentobarbital. He made nary last statement.
His decease followed a intermission successful executions successful the authorities due to the fact that situation officials were incapable to procure the cause required for lethal injections.
Owens was sentenced to decease successful 1999, 2 years aft sidesplitting Graves, aft being convicted of murder, equipped robbery and transgression conspiracy.
The time aft helium was recovered guilty, helium killed his cellmate successful jail, reports CNN affiliate WHNS.
According to reporting connected his proceedings by South Carolina paper The State, Owens was 19 erstwhile helium and Steve Golden, past 18, held Graves astatine gunpoint portion attempting to rob the convenience store wherever she worked.
Owens changeable and killed Graves aft she failed to unfastened a harmless beneath the counter, according to grounds provided by Golden astatine Owens’s trial.
At the clip of her death, Graves was a 41-year-old azygous parent of three.
Lawyers for Owens tried to halt his execution a fewer times, including doubly successful September. But the tribunal denied each request.
In the latest attempt, lawyers pointed to an affidavit signed by Golden connected Wednesday, which claimed Owens was innocent.
The tribunal denied the petition to halt the execution by saying that the caller affidavit was “squarely inconsistent with Golden’s grounds astatine Owens’s 1999 trial” and the connection helium gave to constabulary close aft their arrest.
Other witnesses testified that Owens had told them helium changeable Graves, prosecutors said.
Advocates against the decease punishment and Owens’s parent besides appealed to the authorities for clemency, which was denied by Governor Henry McMaster.
Hours earlier his execution, Owens’s parent said successful a connection it was a “grave injustice that has been perpetrated against my son”.
“Freddie has maintained his innocence since time one,” his mother, Dora Mason, said, according to section quality outlet the Greenville News.
Inmates successful South Carolina are allowed to take whether they privation to dice by lethal injection, electrical seat oregon firing squad.
Owens deferred the determination to his lawyer, who chose the lethal injection enactment for him, according to the Greenville News.
Journalists who witnessed the execution said members of Graves’ household were besides present.
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