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.
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.
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
Doesn’t sound like a very good friend.
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.
South Carolina
He be dead
