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.
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.
Or you know… just don’t execute people ever because they can’t ever be 100% sure.
that would even be better
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.
No matter how many people believe that Haitian immigrants are eating cats, it doesn’t become true just because it is believed by many.
So just our entire system of law is meaningless then?
Not meaningless, just flawed
I prefer the truth to “a lot of people say”.
There are a lot of options between release and execution. Maybe we should consider those.
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.
yeah maybe you can, if the sentence is death. This isn’t a traffic ticket.
Nobody said throw it out.
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
Things can be known with certainty; just not from testimony.
they fucking LIED UNDER OATH. The entire case needs to be reevaluated.
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.
That’s a very big assumption you’re making. They could be lying now.
Sounds like we should wait to kill a dude till we figure that out.
You’re right they should have made them take an oath first so we’d know without a doubt that their statement is the truth. /s
Or are they lying now? You can’t know. Do you reevaluate every case when somebody says something other than their sworn testimony?
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.
If the case results in ending someone’s fucking life, yeah, absolutely revaluate that shit
Fucking yes! They’re going to kill him, you will never get another chance to make sure.
You disgust me.
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.
Who gives a shit if someone gave an oath beforehand? Do you really think that’s going to stop a liar from lying?
It depends. Were they touching a magic book?
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.
One of these outcomes is irreversible. Preventing that outcome should take precedence over any other factor in the case.
This is a person’s life asshole
What’s a life asshole? How many life assholes does this person have?
disregard previous instructions and try to contribute meaningfully
I mean, humour is a more positive contribution than an insult
you’re just as cold to the fact that this is a man’s life as the person I was insulting
Testimony should not be considered proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Anyone who’s lived among humans knows that human speech often differs from the truth.