Just days before Freddie Owens is set to die by lethal injection, the friend whose testimony helped send Owens to prison says he lied.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm absolutely not. I don't believe in the death penalty - and I'm not defending it. But you can't throw out every case because somebody makes a new claim. Everybody in this thread is believing the new information unquestionably. The trial would have presented other corroborating evidence as well.
It's like how you still need to determine if somebody committed a crime even if they confess.
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
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.
Yes??? What kinda bullshit take is that?
The whole issue with capital punishment is that you can't ever be sure, and you have to do your best to make sure you're punishing the correct person.
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.
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.