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.
And the state Supreme Court refused to stop Owens’ execution
When the blind justice has a hard-on for killing people…
still bloodthirsty that they refuse that execution even though new information have come to light.
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.
you forgot to mention thats just because noone wanted to sell them the tools to do so
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.
I understand you’re speaking casually, but in fact many of us do not say that. It’s always a risky proposition when you conflate an organization with individuals in it.
Yeah but it’s many who do agree with it. In this case there’s enough elected officials who’s constituents want the death penalty to be a thing. Ours isn’t a perfect democracy but to argue our government isn’t a representation of its citizens is just a lie
In that case, you should be talking about which state did the execution, because the death penalty is state-specific. It’s not the country that did it, it’s the state. So target those people.
Also, you’re saying that the government represents its citizens because it’s a democracy. Of course that’s not true. Elected officials might represent the majority of voters, or they might pass legislation that is supported by a majority of voters on a given issue. But then what about the minority? They still exist. Please don’t forget about them. Please don’t pretend that the government is representing them.
(And sometimes that’s a good thing. There are people who have fringe views, and depending on those views I’m happy that they don’t have political power.)
Killing somebody because they killed somebody just seems hypocritical. Regardless of the ethics.
From a strict utilitarian “this person is an active threat to the lives of others and cannot be rehabilitated” perspective, I get it. We kill wild animals for a lot less. Given perfect knowledge I don’t have a hard line against execution.
But that’s a hell of a hypothetical. Lots of violence is circumstantial and not necessarily and indication of future behavior, especially if we actually gave a shit about mental health and improving the living conditions of struggling people. Far too many convictions are improper or outright incorrect. Society should have a responsibility to care for the worst of itself. It all stacks up to “do we trust ourselves, and our government, with something so extreme and irreversible?”
Well it always costs more, in the US Justice system, to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life. So that alone throws out the utilitarian approach. We’re all paying extra just to kill him now than if we just kept him locked up for life because he might be a direct threat to everyone and not be rehabilitated.
But we can stop people from killing. We can get into questions of mercy killing when we start talking about supermax for life. But at the end of the day once someone’s in custody and known to be extremely violent they’re able to be stopped from killing people.
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.
I do, when you start putting the right to kill for crimes, in the hands of the state, you’ve lost the plot in democracy.
I agree. You kill someone, your life should also be over. There is no rehabilitation, you don’t get a second chance. There is no “making it right”, you ended the life of another person and no you go bye-bye as well.
But there needs to be certainty, and the way it is handed out now (especially in red states) is atrocious.
I keep reading these comments of people talking about how the murderer can be rehabilitated and then society is better. No, it’s not. And if someone killed their loved one they would be singing a completely different tune.
FFS if you insist on keeping this barbaric custom, at least limit it to cases that are 100% sure.
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.
I think you can. For example, I am 100% sure that Ethan Crumbley shot his classmates. (That doesn’t mean I think he should be executed though).
With respect, it kind of misses the point to highlight a case where guilt is basically certain. That’s not my concern. My concern is the fringe cases with more ambiguity. I think that if there’s even a 1% chance that an innocent person is executed, the risk isn’t worth it.
even in those cases there is still the question if a person is capable of guilt, because noone with a normally working psyche would entertain the thought of such deeds. i would support up to unlimited detention in a high-security psychiatric care facility (in such cases probably with a minimum stay of 10-15 years), which gives the population the needed security and the perp at least a chance to become a valuable member of society again. capital punishment is just a +1 to the bodycount.
Yes. You absolutely can be. Ten-fifteens-twenty different angles of video evidence. 30+ eye witnesses. There’s a ones a point of insurmountable evidence to the point. It can be done.
Sure, you’ve invented a fictional scenario that has never happened but appears quite certain. But even then there are external factors you can’t account for such as duress.
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.
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.
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.
Yes we really need to change the standard for confessions. The other day a guy with a truck tried to run me over walking my dog, I called the police with his license plate, and because there were no cameras the cops won’t investigate. This man deliberately tried to hit me, a random stranger, with his car like a psychopath and the cops said there’s nothing they can do, no evidence. I said, “I’m the evidence. Eye witness testimony.” They said it’s not enough.
So if the cops feel like “someone saying something,” isn’t good enough, then why are they accepting confessions?
And it’s kinda funny the police now innately care about video footage since we force them to wear bodycams. How intrinsic to their mindset is the whole “no video, no evidence, can’t be charged,” mindset? Back in the 90s and before, going to trial over eye witness testimony was common. Majority of court cases don’t/didn’t have video footage.
You will NEVER get the south to give up capital punishment.
The Bible belt will never accept that God is to be the ultimate judge, just like they will never accept the equality of the races.
No, because that’s the point.
They’re not weak like us, they aren’t troubled by such petty details like due process and justice. This is about order more than law.
Live there for a while, you learn the sheriff is the local feudal lord, and you better bow and scrape if you want to get by.
Opening the possibility that “x will never be accomplished” is probably useless demotivatiomal talk, while giving the commenter the benefit of the doubt in that there might be some purpose I haven’t thought of.
The south is continuing to execute people, mostly on racist bases, and they won’t stop.
You can’t shame someone who has no shame, and the rest of the world acting in shock of their behavior has no impact on them.
They’re like Trump-followers, the trolling and shock value is the point, they get off on it.
The last time the South decided to continue a practice the rest of the country abhorred, they fought a brutal, treasonous war resulting in the death of a million Americans. Words aren’t going to lead to change, they never have before.
People need to understand we either force the South to enter to modern era, or they never will on their own.
So you’re encouraging the recognition that it’s fruitless to get worked up over it? “Don’t feed the trolls” essentially?
