Freddie Owens
Wednesday’s execution marked the first time a death row inmate has been executed in South Carolina in 13 years.
This 2014 file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Jerry Wayne Owens. Owens, who turns 46 on Sunday, was found guilty by a jury of the murder of Greenville shop clerk Irene Graves in what prosecutors said was a robbery that brought him $50.
His co-defendant signed a sworn declaration this week saying Owens was not even at the robbery and killing that night, but the execution went on.
The South Carolina Supreme Court denied a stay of Owens’ execution, ruling the claims contradicted the testimony offered at his trial.
Owens was executed Friday evening at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina.
At 18:55 local time (22:55 GMT), an injection of the drug pentobarbital was administered and he was declared dead. He made no final statement.
After prison officials said they did not have the drug used for lethal injections last year, his death in April resumed executions in the state.
The previous ruling that sentenced Owens to die for Graves’ killing came in 1999, and he was also convicted of murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy.
CNN affiliate WHNS reports that he killed a cellmate in jail the day after being convicted.
Owens and Steve Golden, who was 18 at the time of Graves’ murder, had both tried to rob the convenience store where she worked and held her up at gunpoint before Owens killed her Oniel D.
During Owens’s trial, Golden testified that Owens shot Graves dead when she couldn’t open a safe underneath the counter.
Graves had been a 41-year-old mother of three when she was killed.
Owens’ lawyers sought to stop his execution several times, including twice in September. However, the court dismissed all petitions for extraordinary relief.
In their most recent effort, lawyers cited an affidavit signed by Golden on Wednesday stating that Owens had not killed anyone.
The court rejected the bid to stop the execution by noting that “the new affidavit was ‘squarely inconsistent with Golden’s testimony at Owens’s 1999 trial’ and a statement he made to police shortly after their arrest.”
Prosecutors said other witnesses testified Owens had told them he shot Graves.
Owens’s mother and advocates against the death penalty petitioned the state for clemency, but were denied by Governor Henry McMaster.
Owens’s mother, in a statement released hours before his death said: “A grave injustice is to be perpetrated against my son.”
“Freddie has been protesting his innocence since from the day one,” said Dora Mason, Freeman’s mother, according to the Greenville News.
Prisoners in South Carolina can select a method of death: Lethal injection, the electric chair or firing squad.
The Greenville News reported that Owens left the decision to his attorney, who selected the lethal injection method for him.
Members of Graves’ family were also present during the execution, according to journalists who witnessed it.