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Man says he lied when he testified against inmate who is set to be executed

https://apnews.com/article/south-carolina-execution-freddie-owens-lethal-injection-0fc84d5a5b1e39c0c06b8cc318b2887a

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.

Man says he lied when he testified against inmate who is set to be executed

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.

33 comments

Maeve

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That the United States holds ourselves a bastion of democracy and human rights is absolutely absurd. The death penalty shouldn't exist; This is quite possibly murder.

CosmicTurtle0

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I don't have a problem with the death penalty as a concept.

I have a problem with the fact that it disproportionately is given to people of color where evidence is dubious and circumstantial.

Treason and sedition should still be capital crimes.

DmMacniel

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And the state Supreme Court refused to stop Owens’ execution

When the blind justice has a hard-on for killing people...

atzanteol

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First execution in nearly 10 years.

thesohoriots

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In South Carolina? First on-the-books in nearly 10 years.

DmMacniel

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still bloodthirsty that they refuse that execution even though new information have come to light.

atzanteol

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Anybody can say anything. They held a trial. Testimonies were given under oath. Other witnesses testified.

You can't throw out every conviction after-the-fact because somebody says something new. It would be trivial to overturn sentences and lock up the courts for decades.

DmMacniel

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they fucking LIED UNDER OATH. The entire case needs to be reevaluated.

Tyfud

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This is the correct answer. It sounds like they're admitting to perjury. So the case needs to be re-evaluated or set for a mistrial if it was a critical witness testimony that's been proven to be lying under oath.

Catoblepas

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Do you think that if the prosecution made a secret deal with the witness, a deal that the jury didn’t know about, would that make another trial or reexamination of evidence necessary? Because that’s what happened.

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.

leftytighty

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This is a person's life asshole

418_im_a_teapot

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One of these outcomes is irreversible. Preventing that outcome should take precedence over any other factor in the case.

spankmonkey

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Guess innocence isn't as important as the death penalty. They should have known that someone lied under oath at the time, right?

Or maybe they could not execute him and take the time to find out if the new information is true or not.

NotMyOldRedditName

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Or you know... just don't execute people ever because they can't ever be 100% sure.

DmMacniel

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that would even be better

atzanteol

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Guess innocence isn’t as important as the death penalty. They should have known that someone lied under oath at the time, right?

Don't be obtuse. Multiple lines of evidence were presented to convince 12 people that he was guilty.

Guess we should just release everybody from prison because we can never know with 100% certainty that anyone ever did anything.

catloaf

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There are a lot of options between release and execution. Maybe we should consider those.

Samvega

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Don’t be obtuse. Multiple lines of evidence were presented to convince 12 people that he was guilty.

No matter how many people believe that Haitian immigrants are eating cats, it doesn't become true just because it is believed by many.

leftytighty

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I hope, if your life ever ends up on the line, you're met with more sympathy and care than you are willing to show others. You're being non-chalant about killing someone. Maybe you're young and will develop empathy, but if this is you and always will be you then frankly I'd make the trade here.

artichokecustard

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but the cheap labor?? the us wouldn't survive without the prison system, don't know why they're wasting good drugs on the guy though, why waste a life unless we get to make some burgers out of him or something, right? god bless

Samvega

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Anybody can say anything.

Anybody can say anything to convict someone of a crime.
But, once the convenience of finding someone guilty has been done, it doesn't matter what anybody says.

In the end, the human world works on fabricating answers more than it does on finding more truthful ones.

SnotFlickerman

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Knowing about how deeply police intimidate, manipulate, and gaslight inmates/people in custody to get these confessions, both confessions should be under deep scrutiny.

"Criminals" intimated into confession is literally just the police refusing to do their actual jobs and using emotional and mental manipulation to "crack the case." They didn't find the killer, they just bullied a plausible suspect into "admitting" they did it.

Fucking sickening.

spankmonkey

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Confessions in police custody without being verified as voluntarily provided by defense counsel should not be admissible in court as a confession.

The death penalty should be abolished.

Appeals should have the same reasonable doubt standard as a trail. If new information introduces reasonable doubt is juat as important as whether they followed procedures during the trial. The whole idea that 'it should have been introduced at trial' is commonly used to dismiss appeals based on evidence that was excluded or not available at the time, especially for defendents that can't afford high priced lawyers.

SnotFlickerman

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The whole idea that ‘it should have been introduced at trial’

It's almost as if the entire "justice system" is designed to protect a certain class of person while fucking over everyone else. Cue the people so shocked that this "justice system" can easily be abused by people acting in bad faith to enable fascism. People have been brainwashed into believing that the USA isn't just Diet Fascism. Fascism with a pretty face, fascism with "free speech" so the plebes have a steam valve to release their frustration while also being told that protesting is too disruptive so they need to stick to "free speech zones" miles away from what they're protesting. Wild that it's so hard to put together when the original Constitution only allowed land-owning white men to vote.

superkret

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FFS if you insist on keeping this barbaric custom, at least limit it to cases that are 100% sure.

tlou3please

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That's kinda what it comes down to for me though. Can you EVER be 100% sure? Even if you're 99.5% sure, odds are sooner or later you'll execute someone who was innocent. And in my opinion that one single lost innocent life means the practice is unjustifiable.

I wonder how many people who disagree with me are pro life.