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Electric chair tested and firing squad prepared, South Carolina prison director says
South Carolina’s prisons director said Wednesday that state is ready to carry out an execution next month that would mark its first in more than 13 years. Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said South Carolina’s supply of a common lethal injection drug is pure, its electric chair has been tested and the firing squad has the ammunition and training needed to put condemned inmate Freddie Owens to death in September.
Stirling was ordered by the state Supreme Court to submit a sworn statement to the lawyer for Owens certifying that all three methods of putting a prisoner to death are available for his scheduled Sept. 20 execution.
Owens’ lawyers have said they will review the statement, and if they don’t think it is adequate, they will ask the state Supreme Court or federal judges to consider it.
It’s one of at least two legal issues of contention between the state and Owens ahead of next month’s execution date.
Should the state carry out Owens’ execution as planned, he would be the first condemned inmate in South Carolina to be put to death since 2011. The current controversy over his execution comes amid a wider debate about capital punishment — in South Carolina and across the United States. In South Carolina specifically, lawmakers in 2021 allowed a firing squad to be added to the execution protocol, as part of the same legislation that revived its use of the electric chair after a shortage of lethal injection drugs interrupted death penalty proceedings within the state and elsewhere.
The law made electrocution South Carolina’s default execution method, if lethal injection drugs were unavailable, and codified death by firing squad as alternative option for condemned inmates. South Carolina initially scheduled its first execution by firing squad for April 2022 but the state’s highest court temporarily blocked it from happening. Then, 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.
Electrocution, one of the oldest execution methods, was first introduced in the U.S. more than a century ago to replace hangings. Critics argue that it causes unnecessary suffering and indignity, and carries a wide margin of error that could mean multiple shocks over a long period of time are required for an inmate to die. Execution by firing squad is a newer concept. Since 1960, four death row inmates have been executed this way, all in Utah, which is one of four states that allow it, including South Carolina, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
Earlier this year, Alabama executed condemned inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen hypoxia, a controversial death penalty method used for the first time in the United States.
South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP
Owens has until Sept. 6 to decide how he wants to die, and he signed his power of attorney over to his lawyer, Emily Paavola, to make that decision for him. The state Supreme Court has agreed to a request from the prison system to see if that is allowed under South Carolina law.
The state suggested in court papers that the justices question Owens to make sure he understands the execution method choice is final and can’t be changed even if he were to revoke the power of attorney.
The power of attorney was signed under the name Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah. Owens changed his name in prison but goes by his old name in his legal hearings with the state to avoid confusion.
In the sworn statement, Stirling said technicians at the State Law Enforcement Division laboratory tested two vials of the sedative pentobarbital, which the state plans to use for lethal injections.
The technicians told him the drug is stable, pure and under guidelines from other jurisdictions that use a similar method is potent enough to kill, Stirling wrote.
The state previously used a three-drug cocktail but those drugs expired, part of the reason no execution has been carried out in South Carolina since 2011.
Stirling released no other details about the drugs under the guidelines of the state’s new shield law, which keeps secret the name of the supplier of the drug and anyone who helps carry out the execution. The law’s passage in 2023 also helped restart executions so the state could buy pentobarbital and keep the supplier private.
The state’s electric chair, built in 1912, was tested June 25 and found to be working properly, Stirling wrote, without providing additional details.
And the firing squad, allowed by a 2021 law, has the guns, ammunition and training it needs, Stirling wrote. Three volunteers have been trained to fire at a target placed on the heart from 15 feet away.
Owens, 46, was sentenced to death for killing convenience store clerk Irene Graves in Greenville in 1997. Prosecutors said he and friends robbed several businesses before going to the store.
One of the friends testified that Owens shot Graves in the head because she couldn’t get the safe open. A surveillance system didn’t clearly show who fired the shot. Prosecutors agreed to reduce the friend’s murder charge to voluntary manslaughter and he was sentened to 28 years in prison, according to court records.
After being convicted of murder his initial trial in 1999, but before a jury determined his sentence, authorities said Owens killed his cellmate at the Greenville County jail.
Investigators said Owens gave them a detailed account of how he killed Christopher Lee, stabbing and burning his eyes, choking him and stomping him while another prisoner was in the cell and stayed quietly in his bunk. He said he did it “because I was wrongly convicted of murder,” according to a confession read by a prosecutor in court the next day.
Owens was charged with murder against Lee right after the jail killing. Court records show prosecutors dropped the charge in 2019 with the right to restore it around the time Owens exhausted his appeals for his death sentence in Graves’ killing.
Owens has one more avenue to try to save his life: In South Carolina, the governor has the lone ability to grant clemency and reduce a death sentence to life in prison.
However no governor has done that in the state’s 43 executions since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976.
Gov. Henry McMaster 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 Tuesday that 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.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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