Freddie Eugene Owens (March 18, 1978 – September 20, 2024), alias Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, was an American man convicted and executed in South Carolina for the 1997 killing of Irene Grainger Graves, a convenience store clerk. Owens was 19 when he and an 18-year-old accomplice killed Graves during a robbery in November 1997.
While the accomplice pleaded guilty and was later jailed for voluntary manslaughter, Owens was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 1999. The death sentence was overturned twice before re-sentencing trials restored the death penalty for Owens, which was subsequently upheld by the higher courts. Owens was also charged with murdering Christopher Bryan Lee, a fellow prisoner, in 1999.
Owens was executed on September 20, 2024. He was the first person in South Carolina to be executed after the state's 13-year moratorium on executions.
Personal life Born in South Carolina on March 18, 1978, Freddie Eugene Owens, whose mother was 18 when she gave birth to him, was placed under foster care at the age of five, and he reportedly experienced abuse and neglect from his family. He was eventually returned to his biological mother, who married another man after separating from his birth father, who was abusive towards his wife and children. However, Owens's stepfather abused his mother and Owens witnessed his grandmother shooting a person when he was seven. Owens was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder at a young age due to his upbringing.
First murder case and trial On November 1, 1997, in Greenville, Owens and his three friends – Lester Young, Nakeo Vance and Steven Andra Golden – went outdoors together with the intention to commit armed robbery.
While Young and Vance were in another location, Golden and Owens barged into a convenience store and held the store's female clerk at gunpoint. According to Golden, who testified in Owens's murder trial, Owens gunned down the 41-year-old clerk, Irene Grainger Graves (April 6, 1956 – November 1, 1997), after she failed to open the safe, and she died of a gunshot wound to the head. Golden and Owens fled the scene with $37.29 from the cash register and met up with Vance and Young, who were later told that a woman was shot by Owens during a robbery attempt. At the time of her death, Graves was a single mother with two sons and one daughter.State v. Owens , South Carolina Supreme Court (United States).
Owens was arrested on November 11, 1997, and together with 18-year-old Golden, was charged with murder. Golden made a plea bargain with the prosecution, who agreed to have the murder charge and death penalty taken off the table. Golden was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Young and Vance were also charged in connection with the crime but the outcomes of their cases were unknown.
On February 8, 1999, Owens stood trial before a jury at a Greenville County trial court for charges of murder, armed robbery, criminal use of firearms, and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Owens reportedly denied murdering Graves and protested his innocence in spite of Golden's testimony that Owens killed Graves during the robbery. Later sources revealed that the CCTV captured two men - Owens in a ski mask and Golden in a stocking mask - entering the store. The man wearing the ski mask (Owens) is seen shooting and killing Graves.
On February 15, 1999, the jury found Owens guilty of all charges, and his sentencing trial was scheduled to take place two days later.
Prison killing and sentencing Less than 12 hours after he was convicted of the murder of Irene Graves, on February 16, 1999, Freddie Owens killed a fellow prisoner while he was in prison. The victim was identified as 28-year-old Christopher Bryan Lee, who was serving a 90-day jail term for a traffic offense.
On February 17, 1999, a day after the murder of Lee, Owens at his sentencing hearing, made a full confession inside the courtroom and recounted how he murdered Lee inside the prison cell he shared with Lee and ten other inmates. Allegedly, Lee taunted Owens about his conviction and even bragged to Owens that his cousin was one of the jurors. Enraged at this, Owens attacked Lee. He struck him in the face, used a ballpoint pen to stab his eye and throat, he repeatedly strangled him with a sheet. Owens ended the assault by bashing Lee's head and burning his eyes and hair with a cigarette lighter and also suffocating Lee by forcibly closing the left nostril and shoving a pen inside the right nostril. Lee died as a result, and Owens, who maintained his innocence, stated he did so because he was falsely accused. Lee's bereaved family called for an official probe into the death of Lee.
After Owens made the confession, the prosecution and defense made their final submissions on the sentence. Although the defense implored the jury to show mercy on account of Owens's troubled childhood and psychiatric condition, the prosecution argued in rebuttal that the confession and circumstances of Graves's murder demonstrated that Owens was a violent and hot-blooded killer who posed a menace to society. They also brought to the jury's attention the tragic consequences Graves's death brought upon her family, including the fact that her three children were left orphaned and had to be sent away to their grandmother's care. They argued that, no matter how terrible the circumstances of Owens's background, they did not excuse his abhorrent actions and murderous behavior, and that he should assume full responsibility for what he did. For this, the prosecution sought the death penalty for Owens.
On that same day, the jury returned with their verdict, sentencing Owens to death for the murder of Graves. For the other charges of robbery, criminal use of firearms, and conspiracy to commit armed robbery, Owens received additional jail terms of 30 years, five years and five years respectively.
After he was sentenced for murdering Graves, Owens and a 19-year-old man named Fred Walker Jr. – who was alleged to be Owens's accomplice in the prison killing – were both charged with the murder of Lee. Subsequently, the second murder charge against Owens was withdrawn in 2019 around the time he exhausted all his appeals against the death sentence.
Appeals and re-sentencing bids On September 4, 2001, Freddie Owens appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court against his conviction and sentence. Although the Supreme Court affirmed his convictions for murdering Graves and the robberies, the court vacated his death sentence and multiple jail terms for the case itself, and Owens was granted a re-sentencing trial due to procedural errors behind his original sentencing trial.
On February 17, 2003, Owens was once again sentenced to death. Circuit Judge John Kittredge opined that due to the brutality of the murder and other instances of violent behavior in prison, it reflected that Owens had a "total and utter disregard for the rights and safety of others" and his case was the "worst of the worst" that made the death penalty the only appropriate sentence for him.
On November 20, 2004, a year after the death sentence was restored in his case, Owens was once again granted a second re-sentencing trial after his appeal was allowed by the South Carolina Supreme Court, after it ruled that there were trial errors in his first re-sentencing trial.State v. Owens , South Carolina Supreme Court (United States).
The second re-sentencing trial, which was held before a jury, took place in 2006, and for the third time, Owens was sentenced to death. Owens did not receive any prison sentence for the firearm-related charges, as South Carolina law forbids sentencing a convict for firearm offenses if the convict was given the death penalty or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Although Owens appealed against his third death sentence, the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected his appeal and upheld the death sentence on July 14, 2008. The court unanimously ruled that the prosecution did not breach their duties to a fair trial for Owens when they presented evidence of Owens's disciplinary issues in prison prior to his sentencing. Examples of his misbehavior included setting fires in his cell, sexual misconduct, using vulgar language, as well as past incidents of Owens stabbing a guard and a prisoner and possessing at least seven home-made knives.State v. Owens , South Carolina Supreme Court (United States).
Death row Conversion to Islam and cancelled execution attempts While the legal process was ongoing in his case, Freddie Owens remained on death row at Broad River Correctional Institution while awaiting his execution. In 2015, Owens converted to Islam and he went by the Muslim name Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, although he continued using his original name in court proceedings for clarity.
Additionally, Owens also took an interest in history, especially African history. Owens had suggested that his niece write a paper about the Nubian Queen Amanirenas, who resisted Roman rule in the ancient Kingdom of Kush. Regularly, Owens would converse with his lawyers about the University of Timbuktu, bonobo apes, and the history of cartoon character Betty Boop. Owens took up writing in prison; he often penned essays, poems and his own personal thoughts, and also learned to read and write Arabic as part of his further devotion to his newfound Islamic faith.
Originally, Owens's death sentence was ordered to be carried out on October 3, 2008, but the execution did not proceed due to the U.S. Supreme Court granting a stay of execution for Owens while pending an appeal. Later, Owens was rescheduled to be executed on January 9, 2009, but the execution date was delayed for legal reasons. Twelve years later, a third death warrant was approved, rescheduling Owens's new execution date as June 25, 2021, but it was again ultimately staved off due to Owens's last-minute appeal and the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the executions of Owens and another inmate, Brad Sigmon, should be postponed until they were given the choice of death by electrocution or firing squad.
At the time of Owens's third death warrant, there was an unofficial moratorium on executions in South Carolina since 2011 due to lack of supplies of drugs used for lethal injection executions, in addition to the expiration of the existing drug supplies and refusal of drug companies to sell their drugs to the state for the purpose of carrying out executions. Prior to 2024, 43 convicted murderers were executed in South Carolina between 1985 and 2011; Jeffrey Motts was the most recent person at that point to be executed, with his execution taking place on May 6, 2011, for the murder of his cellmate at Perry Correctional Institution (where Motts was serving a life sentence for murdering his great-aunt and her brother-in-law in 1995).
In 2021, ten years after the state's last execution, the South Carolina state governor, Henry McMaster, signed new laws to revive the electric chair and introduce execution by firing squad as alternative methods should the option of lethal injection be unavailable, and to allow inmates to choose whichever execution method they preferred. In September 2023, it was reported that the state had managed to purchase drugs to restart executions by lethal injection.
Legal challenge against execution protocols In 2023, Owens was one of the several death row inmates who filed a lawsuit to the courts of South Carolina, seeking to ban the use of firing squad and electrocution on the grounds that they were cruel and unusual punishments and would cause unnecessary pain and suffering to the condemned.Owens v. Stirling , South Carolina Supreme Court (United States). The state's legal representatives submitted that the execution methods fit the existing protocols and the law did not require that death be instantaneous or painless.