Freddie Owens' execution is scheduled for Friday, his co-defendant now says he's innocent

Two days before South Carolina's scheduled execution of Freddie Eugene Owens, his co-defendant in the robbery and murder of a Greenville convenience store clerk says Owens was innocent. 

Steven Golden, the man prosecutors said robbed the store with Owens, signed a statement Wednesday saying Owens was not the person who shot Irene Graves on Halloween night 1997.

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

Owens is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Friday at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. 

Owens was convicted of murdering Graves and received the death penalty In 1999. During court proceedings, prosecutors said Owens and Graves walked into the gas station to rob the store. Minutes later, they said Owens shot Graves in the head.  

Despite not having forensic evidence, detectives during the trial used statements from Golden and Owens’s girlfriend to implicate him in the murder. Owens pled innocent during the trial and told law enforcement he was at home in bed at the time of the robbery turned murder.  

“The detectives told me they knew Freddie was with me when I robbed the Speedway. They told me I might as well make a statement against Freddie 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. I signed a waiver of rights form and then signed a statement on November 11, 1997,” Golden said. 

Golden said he cast Owens’s name as the murderer because he feared for his life. 

“In that statement, I substituted Freddie for the person who was really with me in the Speedway that night. 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 said. 

Golden was sentenced to 30 years in prison shortly after Owens was sentenced.

More on Freddie Owens: Freddie Owens will be put to death by the state; here's a timeline of events

While incarcerated at the Greenville County Detention Center waiting for a verdict in his death sentence trial, Owens beat to death his cellmate, 28-year-old Christopher B. Lee. He admitted to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigators that he punched, kicked, and choked Lee until he was sure Lee had stopped breathing. He also stabbed Lee multiple times in the face and eye with a pen.  He said he killed Lee because he was wrongfully accused of shooting Graves.

On Aug. 23, the South Carolina Department of Corrections gave Owens the notice that he was set to be executed. 

“They said that if I testified that what I said about Freddie in my written statement was true, they would drop the death penalty and life in prison. I took the deal. I testified at Freddie's 1999 trial that my 1997 l statement was true,” Golden said. 

Owens was originally scheduled to be put to death on June 25, 2021, but he and other death row inmates listed filed a lawsuit that halted the execution.   

“I'm coming forward now because I know Freddie's execution date is September 20 and I don't want Freddie to be executed for something he didn't do. This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience,” Golden said.  

If Owens isn't granted a stay for his execution or given clemency from Gov. Henry McMaster, Owens will be the first person executed in the state since Jeffery Brian Motts, 36, in 2011.