Just days before inmate Freddie Owens is set to die by lethal injection in South Carolina, the friend whose testimony helped send Owens to prison is saying he lied to save himself from the death chamber.

Owens is set to die at 6 p.m. Friday at a Columbia prison for the killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk in 1997.

But Owens’ lawyers on Wednesday filed a sworn statement from his co-defendant Steven Golden late Wednesday to try to stop South Carolina from carrying out its first execution in more than a decade.

Prosecutors reiterated that several other witnesses testified that Owens told them he pulled the trigger. And the state Supreme Court refused to stop Owens’ execution last week after Golden, in a sworn statement, said that he had a secret deal with prosecutors that he never told the jury about.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    You’re being non-chalant about killing someone.

    I’m absolutely not. I don’t believe in the death penalty - and I’m not defending it. But you can’t throw out every case because somebody makes a new claim. Everybody in this thread is believing the new information unquestionably. The trial would have presented other corroborating evidence as well.

    It’s like how you still need to determine if somebody committed a crime even if they confess.