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.
Yes we really need to change the standard for confessions. The other day a guy with a truck tried to run me over walking my dog, I called the police with his license plate, and because there were no cameras the cops won’t investigate. This man deliberately tried to hit me, a random stranger, with his car like a psychopath and the cops said there’s nothing they can do, no evidence. I said, “I’m the evidence. Eye witness testimony.” They said it’s not enough.
So if the cops feel like “someone saying something,” isn’t good enough, then why are they accepting confessions?
And it’s kinda funny the police now innately care about video footage since we force them to wear bodycams. How intrinsic to their mindset is the whole “no video, no evidence, can’t be charged,” mindset? Back in the 90s and before, going to trial over eye witness testimony was common. Majority of court cases don’t/didn’t have video footage.