CBS News
Suspect just arrested in two-decade old cold case murder to be released
WALLKILL, N.Y. — A suspect just arrested in the 2003 cold case murder of a college student in a northern New York City suburb is about to be released, CBS New York’s Lisa Rozner and Ali Bauman report.
Edward Holley, 42, was charged last week but by law, he had to be indicted within six days. That didn’t happen, so he’ll be released from jail Thursday, authorities say.
Last Thursday, New York State Police charged Holley with second-degree murder two decades after Wallkill resident Megan McDonald’s body was found badly beaten and abandoned on a dirt road.
Her family expressed relief but almost a week later, Holley is being freed because he wasn’t indicted on the murder charge in the required six-day window.
His attorney, Paul Weber, says Holley maintains his innocence.
“There’s a lot of holes in this, and I think there are two other players that are probably the people that they should be focusing on,” Weber said. “They did not meet the burden of probable cause for the arrest.”
Investigators allege Holley and the college student had broken up days before her disappearance and that he owed her a substantial amount of money.
“There’s no phone records, no contact between them. … She broke up with him, and he moved on,” Weber said.
McDonald’s family released a statement saying they are “disappointed. However, his temporary release was expected. After patiently waiting for over 20 years, we are confident that the police have arrested the right person – Edward Holley. The process may not be easy or follow our preferred path, but we will not rest until justice is secured for Megan.”
Last week, Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler lamented that police didn’t consult with his office before making the arrest, saying, “Complicated cases are normally at least partially presented to a grand jury before an arrest is made.”
Hoovler warned that this could happen saying, “Grand jury presentations on ‘cold’ homicide cases involving complicated fact patterns can rarely be commenced and completed within six days.”
“They have to ultimately prosecute this thing, and you have to follow their rules,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant who served as commanding officer of the Bronx cold case squad.
Asked if it’s common for police to make an arrest in a cold case like this without working with the district attorney, Giacalone said, “No. The issue that it comes down to when you’re dealing with cold cases, the idea is to bring the prosecutor in at the earliest part of the reinvestigation.”
Before his arrest, Holley was already in jail for violating probation on a drug possession charge. He was scheduled to be released Thursday in that case but would have been held longer if he’d been indicted.
Wednesday evening, Hoovler announced that he requested a special prosecutor be appointed in this case. The DA said in his prior job in private practice, he represented a client potentially tied to the case..
Wallkill is some 77 miles northwest of Manhattan.
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CBS News
South Carolina Supreme Court refuses to stop upcoming execution of Freddie Owens, the state’s first in 13 years
The South Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stop the execution of Freddie Owens who is set to die by lethal injection next week in the state’s first execution in 13 years.
The justices unanimously tossed out two requests from defense lawyers who said a court needed to hear new information about what they called a secret deal that kept a co-defendant off death row or from serving life in prison and about a juror who correctly surmised Owens was wearing a stun belt at his 1999 trial.
That evidence, plus an argument that Owens’ death sentence was too harsh because a jury never conclusively determined he pulled the trigger on the shot that killed a convenience store clerk, didn’t reach the “exceptional circumstances” needed to allow Owens another appeal, the justices wrote in their order.
The bar is usually high to grant new trials after death row inmates use up all their appeals. Owens’ lawyers said past attorneys scrutinized his case carefully, but this only came up in interviews as the potential of his death neared.
The decision keeps on track the planned execution of Owens on Sept. 20 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
/ AP
South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. The state didn’t set out to pause executions, but its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell the state more if the transaction was made public.
It took a decade of wrangling in the Legislature – first adding the firing squad as a method and later passing a shield law – to get capital punishment restarted. That legislation also revived the state’s use of the electric chair.
Earlier this year, attorneys representing a group of South Carolina’s death row inmates argued before the South Carolina Supreme Court that both electrocution and the firing squad as execution methods should constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
In January, Alabama executed condemned inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen hypoxia, a controversial death penalty method used for the first time in the United States. Before the execution, the U.N. warned the method could “amount to torture” and violate human rights treaties.
Owens sentenced to death for woman’s 1997 murder
Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for killing convenience store clerk Irene Graves in Greenville in 1997. Co-defendant Steven Golden testified Owens shot Graves in the head because she couldn’t get the safe open.
There was surveillance video in the store, but it didn’t show the shooting clearly. Prosecutors never found the weapon used and didn’t present any scientific evidence linking Owens to the killing at his trial, although after Owens’ death sentence was overturned, prosecutors showed the man who killed the clerk was wearing a ski mask while the other man inside for the robbery had a stocking mask. They also linked the ski mask to Owens.
Golden was sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, according to court records.
Golden testified at Owens’ trial that there was no deal to reduce his sentence. In a sworn statement signed Aug. 22, Golden said he cut a side deal with prosecutors, and Owens’ attorneys said that might have changed the minds of jurors who believed his testimony.
The state Supreme Court said in its order that wasn’t compelling enough to stop Owens’ execution, and while they believed the evidence that Owens was the clerk’s killer, even if he didn’t kill her it, wasn’t enough to stop his death.
“He was a major participant in the murder and armed robbery who showed a reckless disregard for human life by knowingly engaging in a criminal activity that carries a grave risk of death,” the justices wrote.
Owens has at least one more chance at stopping his death. Gov. Henry McMaster alone has the power to reduce Owens’ sentence to life in prison.
The governor has said he will follow longtime tradition and not announce his decision until prison officials make a call from the death chamber minutes before the execution. McMaster told reporters he hasn’t decided what to do in Owens’ case but as a former prosecutor, he respects jury verdicts and court decisions.
“When the rule of law has been followed, there really is only one answer,” McMaster said.
Earlier Thursday, opponents of the death penalty gathered outside McMaster’s office to urge him to become the first South Carolina governor since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976 to grant clemency.
“There is always hope,” said the Rev. Hillary Taylor, Executive Director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “Nobody is beyond redemption. You are more than the worst thing you have done.”
Taylor and others pointed out Owens is Black in a state where a disproportionate number of executed inmates have been Black and was 19 years old when he killed the clerk.
“No one should take a life. Not even the state of South Carolina. Only God can do that,” said the Rev. David Kennedy of the Laurens County chapter of the NAACP.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are 35 inmates on death row in South Carolina, and no clemencies have been granted in the state.
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