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.
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.
It’s not that cut-and-dry. Yes the monetary cost is higher, mostly due to appeals and such and I’m not suggesting we do things to make the conviction and sentence less certain. But there’s an argument to be made that a lifetime of solitary imprisonment, necessary for this hypothetical criminal, is more cruel than death.
I’m not sure there are people so unrecoverable that they need a lifetime in solitary. I’m fact I’m not sure how you pass the cruel and unusual criteria with that. Even in super max prisons for people who WANT to go out and kill strangers for example, they are able to regularly socialize and exercise and have mental stimulation. So no I don’t think there are a lot of people where spending extra money to kill them would be “more humane”. Seems more like a straw man/hypothetical than a practical reality.
I did literally use the word “hypothetical” to couch my statement. It should probably be reserved for people whose existence is dangerous to society as part of a larger movement, cult leaders or treasonous generals or some such that have a substantial influence beyond their confinement. I know: martyrdom, you can’t kill an idea, etc. Not sure I buy it.