South Carolina Court Rejects Death Row Inmate’s Innocence Claim, Refuses to Halt Execution

Gov. Henry McMaster will decide whether to commute Freddie Eugene Owens’s sentence just minutes before the execution is scheduled to begin.

Undated photo of Freddie Eugene Owens. Courtesy of the South Carolina Department of Corrections

South Carolina’s Supreme Court in a Sept. 19 ruling declined to stop the scheduled execution of Freddie Eugene Owens, which would be the state’s first execution in 13 years.

Owens was convicted in 1999 of the murder of Irene Graves during a robbery of a Speedway convenience store in 1997.