Not Caring about Guilt or Innocence: An Execution Case that Illustrates a Pattern
by Sarah Terzo
On September 20, 2024, Freddie Owens was executed by lethal injection in South Carolina.
A Retracted Testimony
The state of South Carolina executed Owens, who took the name Khalil Allah while on death row, even though the chief witness against him retracted his testimony and now claims Allah was innocent.
According to the witness, Steven Golden, in his affidavit, “I don’t want [Allah] to be executed for something he didn’t do.”
The court convicted Allah of the murder of Irene Graves during a robbery at a convenience store. Graves was 41 and a mother of three. The murderer shot her in the head.
There was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Allah to the crime. Security cameras showed two men in the store with guns, but their faces were covered, and no one could identify them.
Police arrested Golden, then 18, days after the robbery. He told investigators that Allah had been with him and was the shooter. Golden, who claims to have been high when police questioned him, says prosecutors told him that Allah had already confessed and was ready to testify against him.
Golden recalls:
They told me I might as well make a statement against [Allah], because he already told his side to everyone, and they were just trying to get my side of the story. I was scared that I would get the death penalty if I didn’t make a statement.
Prosecutors then promised Golden that if he said that Allah was the shooter, Golden wouldn’t receive the death penalty or life in prison. Terrified of being executed or locked up for life, Golden agreed
A Deal Kept Secret from the Jury
But a few days before Allah was scheduled to be executed, Golden submitted an affidavit, admitting that he lied out of fear. He also said the prosecutors hid the agreement from the jury. In fact, they instructed him to lie and falsely testify that there was no deal.
When Allah’s public defender, Gerald “Bo” King, attempted to get clemency for Allah, the attorney general’s office claimed there had never been a deal. Golden, they said, was making the whole thing up.
However, King proved they were lying. He produced paperwork that Golden’s lawyer had drafted verifying the agreement. The paperwork clearly said that if Golden testified against Allah, he would be spared the death penalty and life in prison.
King also verified that prosecutors never disclosed the deal to the jury that convicted Allah.
King says:
[Allah’s] conviction and sentence were premised on a witness whose testimony was obtained through an agreement that wasn’t disclosed, and that should give everyone pause.
Golden’s murder charge was changed to voluntary manslaughter. His sentence was 28 years in prison. Allah’s sentence was death.
Golden says another reason he testified against Allah was that he was afraid the actual shooter or his buddies would kill him if he named him:
I [testified] 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.
The attorney general’s office pushed for Allah’s execution despite Golden’s affidavit. They claimed that Golden’s retraction was “not credible.” They maintained that his original testimony was the truth, and he was now lying.
King appealed to the state Supreme Court, and the justices sided with the attorney general. They ruled that Golden’s confession that he lied did not amount to “exceptional circumstances,” and didn’t warrant calling off the execution.
Ironically, Golden’s word was considered credible enough to sentence a man to death, but not credible enough to save his life.
Golden didn’t have a compelling motive for confessing that he lied. It did not reduce his sentence and left him open to an attack from the actual shooter. He had an obvious motive for testifying against Allah. However, the justices didn’t take this into account.
The Murder of Christopher Lee
Although Allah may not have killed Irene Graves, he killed someone else. The day he was (possibly falsely) convicted of murder, he killed a fellow inmate named Christopher Lee. The murder took place during the hours between the guilty verdict and the sentencing.
In his confession, Allah said he beat Lee to death because Lee taunted him about his conviction. Whether Allah meant to kill Lee or just give him a beating is unknown, but his guilt is not in question. He was never prosecuted for that murder.
Details of the killing come from an article in the Post & Courier that casts Allah in a very negative light. Its headline calls him a “notorious killer” and reporter David Ferrara states he killed Irene Graves, giving no credence to any other story.
Ferrara also claims that Allah committed other violent acts while on death row, but I couldn’t verify whether this is true with official documents, as he didn’t link to a source.
Abuse Throughout Life
Allah was brutally abused from early childhood and sexually abused as an adolescent. At his trial, a social worker, teachers, and mental health experts all testified that he grew up in a tumultuous home in abject poverty, frequently watching his mother being beaten by her boyfriend.
Allah suffered his own physical abuse as a child as well as neglect. When he was very young, he was found with his siblings abandoned in a house without electricity, heat, or food.
Multiple sources also state that Allah experienced sexual assault and physical abuse while in juvenile detention as a young adult.
Allah took a life, but he was only there in that cell because he was convicted in an unfair trial where prosecutors withheld an important fact from the jury. The only witness against him admitted to lying. It’s very likely he was executed for a crime he didn’t commit.
Reactions to the Execution
After the execution, the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of North Carolina said in a statement to Fox Carolina:
Freddie Owens did not kill Ms. Graves. His death tonight is a tragedy. Mr. Owens’s childhood was marked by suffering on a scale that is hard to comprehend. He spent his adulthood in prison for a crime that he did not commit. The legal errors, hidden deals, and false evidence that made tonight possible should shame us all.
In an email from September 21, South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty reminded recipients that the true killer of Irene Graves is still out there, unpunished. It states, “This is an insult to victims of violence, and it is an insult to the family of Irene Graves, whose family deserves to know her real murderer.”
It also says:
We are not here to make excuses for the harm Khalil did cause during his life. He is responsible for the death of Christopher Lee, and we grieve with Mr. Lee’s loved ones who did not deserve to lose him.
But there is also no justice for young Khalil, a child who experienced physical harm in his household, as well as physical and sexual harm in juvenile prison facilities.
More often than not, those on death row are the victims of someone else’s violence long before they commit violence themselves. This is why we stand against all executions. At its core, the death penalty is a declaration that some victims of violence matter more than others.
Allah’s killing is set to kick off a spree of executions in South Carolina. His was the first execution in the state in thirteen years. In the coming months, five other people are set to be executed there.
That the first person executed in this new series of legalized murders may well have been innocent didn’t trouble the Attorney General’s office, the original prosecutors, or the justices on the South Carolina Supreme Court.
It should, however, trouble those of us who support the value of all human life and anyone who cares about justice and fairness.
Allah’s case isn’t an isolated incident, but shows a systemic problem with capital punishment. Those of us who have been following individual cases over the years have seen others where there was great doubt about a person’s guilt, but they were executed anyway. The recent execution of Marcellus Williams is another tragic example.
It often seems that our justice system doesn’t actually care whether the person executed is guilty, only that the killing takes place.
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For more of out posts on the death penalty, see:
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