About 50 people gathered outside the Department of Corrections’ main prison campus in Columbia about one hour before the scheduled execution of Freddie Owens on Friday. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Freddie Owens was executed Friday evening by lethal injection, after his attorneys’ last-chance appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed to stop it.
Owens was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m., making him the first inmate executed in South Carolina in nearly 14 years.
He made no final statement. When the execution began, Owens looked at his attorney. She smiled at him, and he appeared to smile back, said Associated Press reporter Jeffrey Collins. He and other media witnesses who spoke to reporters afterward agreed that Owens showed no outward signs of suffering.
The execution, which was scheduled for 6 p.m., was delayed by 35 minutes as officials waited on a ruling from the nation’s high court.
Owens’ attorneys asked justices Friday to put his sentence on hold pending the outcome of a challenge they filed a week ago in federal court seeking more information on the drug to kill him, saying they needed the details to ensure his execution would be painless and effective.