COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina executed inmate Freddie Owens on Friday, resuming executions after an inadvertent 13-year hiatus because prison officials were unable to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.

Owens was convicted in 1997 of killing a Greenville store clerk during a robbery. During the trial, Owens killed an inmate in a county jail. His confession to the attack was read to two different juries and a judge, all of whom sentenced him to death.

Owens, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m.

When the curtain to the death chamber opened, Owens was strapped to a stretcher with his arms outstretched.

He mouthed a word to his lawyer, who smiled back. He seemed to be conscious for about a minute, then closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

His breathing became shallower and his face twitched for four or five minutes before the movements stopped.

About 13 minutes later, a doctor came in and pronounced him dead.

Owens’ final appeals were repeated disputedincluding a federal court on Friday morning. Owens also requested a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor and the South Carolina corrections commissioner immediately filed a response saying the Supreme Court should deny Owens’ request. The filing said his case was not unusual.

The Supreme Court rejected the request shortly after the execution was scheduled to begin.

His last chance to avoid death was when South Carolina Republican Governor Henry McMaster commuted Owens’ sentence to life in prison. McMaster also denied Owens’ request, saying he had “carefully considered and thoroughly considered” Owens’ request for clemency.

McMaster had previously said he would follow historical tradition and announce his decision minutes before the lethal injection is due to begin, when prison officials call him and the attorney general to ensure there is no reason to delay the execution. The former prosecutor had promised to review Owens’ case. Petition for clemency However, he said he tends to trust prosecutors and juries.

First execution in 13 years

Owens may be the first of several inmates to die in the state’s death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other inmates have lost appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared the way to carry out an execution every five weeks.

South Carolina initially tried to Troop to resume executions after the supply of drugs for lethal injections was exhausted and no company was willing to sell them publicly. But the state had to Shield Law Keeping the drug supplier and large parts of the execution protocol secret in order to be able to reopen the death chamber.

To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol that uses only the sedative PentobarbitalThe new procedure is similar to the way the federal government kills inmates, state prison officials say.

Under South Carolina law, convicted prisoners have the choice between lethal injection, the new firing squad, or the electric chair, built in 1912. Owens allowed his lawyer to choose how he diedand said he felt that if he made this decision he would be complicit in his own death and that his religious beliefs were not against suicide.

While in prison, Owens changed his name to “Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah,” but he is still referred to as Owens in court and prison records.

The crimes

Owens was convicted of the 1999 murder of Irene Graves. Prosecutors said he shot the single mother of three, who worked three jobs, in the head when she said she couldn’t open the store’s safe.

But another murder looms over his case: After his conviction, but before passing sentence for Graves’ killing, Owens fatally attacked a fellow inmate in prison, Christopher Lee.

Owens gave a detailed confession about stabbing Lee, burning his eyes, choking him and stomping on him. According to an investigator’s written report, he concluded by saying he did it “because I had been wrongly convicted of murder.”

This confession was read to every jury and judge who subsequently sentenced Owens to death. Two of Owens’ death sentences were overturned on appeal, but he ended up on death row again.

Owens was charged with Lee’s murder but never brought to trial. Prosecutors dropped the charges, with the right to refile them in 2019, around the time Owens ran out of regular appeal options.

Final remedies

In his final appeal, Owens’ lawyers argued that prosecutors never presented scientific evidence that Owens pulled the trigger in Graves’s killing. The main evidence against him was a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and testified that Owens was the killer.

Owens’ lawyers filed a statutory declaration Two days before the execution, Steven Golden said Owens was not at the store, contradicting his testimony in court. Prosecutors said other friends of Owens and his ex-girlfriend testified that he had bragged about killing the clerk.

“South Carolina is on the brink of executing a man for a crime he did not commit. We will continue to advocate for Mr. Owens,” attorney Gerald “Bo” King said in a statement.

Owens’ lawyers also said he was only 19 years old at the time of the murder and suffered brain damage from physical and sexual abuse in juvenile detention.

The organization South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is planning a vigil outside the prison about 90 minutes before the anniversary of Owens’ death.

South Carolina reinstates the death penalty

South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. It took a decade of back and forth in Parliament – ​​first adding the firing squad as a method and later passing a protection law – before the death penalty was reinstated.

South Carolina has executed 43 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state averaged three executions per year. Only nine states have recorded more executions.

But since the accidental pause in executions, the number of people sentenced to death in South Carolina has declined. At the beginning of 2011, there were 63 condemned prisoners in the state. At the beginning of Friday, there were 32. About 20 prisoners were taken from death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others died of natural causes.