Hours Before S.C. Man Is Set to Be Executed for Murder Conviction, Key Witness Says He Lied

South Carolina is set to execute a man on death row the evening of Friday, Sept. 20, representing the 14th execution in the United States so far in 2024.

Attorneys for Freddie Owens have disputed his conviction in the 1997 Halloween night killing of store clerk Irene Graves, claiming prosecutors have not presented any scientific evidence tying to Owens to the crime, according to CBS News, The Associated Press, and The Greenville News.

And now, the man who identified Owens as the gunman says that Owens didn’t kill the 41-year-old woman and wasn’t even in the store that night.

Steve Golden, who served 28 years in prison for his role in the murder, according to CBS, wrote in a sworn statement this week that he lied to a South Carolina jury in the 1999 trial when he said Owens had pulled the trigger.

Owens, now 46, was found guilty of murdering Graves during an armed robbery at a gas station in Greenville, S.C., when he was 19 years old. He has maintained his innocence, but prosecutors have said multiple people have implicated him in the crime, including Golden and Owens’ ex-girlfriend, who both gave statements during the 1999 trial blaming Owens, according to The Greenville News.

Owens is scheduled to be executed on Friday at 6 p.m., despite continued pleas from his lawyers and advocacy groups around the country asking South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life in prison.

Now Golden has said he lied to the jury in 1999.

“Freddie Owens is not the person who shot Irene Graves at the Speedway on November 1, 1997,” Golden wrote in the sworn statement filed to the South Carolina Supreme Court this week, according to The Greenville News. “Freddie was not present when I robbed the Speedway that day.”

Owens had told investigators that he was at home and in bed during the 1997 robbery, according to the outlet.

Golden wrote in his sworn statement this week that the reason he lied was because he was afraid of the person he says is the real killer.

“In that statement, I substituted Freddie for the person who was really with me in the Speedway that night,” Golden wrote, though he did not identify another suspect. “I did that because I knew that’s what the police wanted me to say, and also because I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to the police. I am still afraid of that. But Freddie was actually not there.”

Golden also added, according to The Greenville News, that he testified against Owens because prosecutors game him a deal to “drop the death penalty and life in prison” against him. 

“I took the deal,” Golden wrote, adding that he’s coming forward now because of the state’s plan to kill Owens via execution.

“I don’t want Freddie to be executed for something he didn’t do,” Golden wrote, according to The Greenville News. “This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience.”

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State prosecutors argued this week that Golden’s statement that he lied in the late 1990s could not be trusted given that he says he lied in the first place, according to CBS.

The outlet also reports that the South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty advocacy group sent a petition to Gov. McMaster with 10,000 signatures pleading with him to call off the plans to execute Owens, writing that “South Carolina is going backwards in time by restarting executions.”

If South Carolina carries out its plans to kill Owens via execution, it will mark the first execution carried out in the state in 13 years.