Death penalty opponents began rallying outside the Broad River Correctional Institution Friday afternoon as South Carolina prepared to execute its first death row inmate in more than 13 years.
Freddie Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for the murder of Irene Graves, a gas station clerk, in the early morning hours of Nov. 1, 1997. A jury found that Owens, 19 at the time of Graves’ murder, had shot and killed the mother of three during a robbery at a Speedway convenience store in Greenville.
Friday, following a series of unsuccessful appeals in the last few weeks, he was executed by lethal injection …