Only hours before the prisoner Freddie Owens will die was executed by lethal injection in South Carolina, the friend whose testimony helped put Owens in prison claims he lied to avoid the death chamber.

Owens is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Friday in a Columbia prison for killing a Greenville store clerk in 1997. It will be South Carolina’s first execution in 13 years.

But Owens’ lawyers filed an affidavit from friend and co-defendant Steven Golden on Wednesday in an attempt to stop South Carolina from carrying out the execution.

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 said in a sworn statement that he had a secret deal with prosecutors that he never told the jury about.

On Wednesday, Golden signed another affidavit stating that Owens was not in the store when Irene Graves was killed during a robbery.

Instead, he blamed Owens because he was under the influence of cocaine and the police put pressure on him by claiming they already knew the two were together and that Owens was talking. Golden also said he was afraid of the real killer.

“I thought the real shooter or his accomplices would kill me if I reported him to the police. I’m still afraid of that. But Freddie was not there,” Golden wrote in his statement, which did not name the other person.

Golden testified at Owens’ trial and said prosecutors promised to consider his testimony in his favor, but he still faces the death penalty or life in prison. He was ultimately sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to the lesser offense of manslaughter, court records show.

“I am speaking out now because I know Freddie’s execution date is September 20th and I do not want Freddie to be executed for something he did not do. This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience,” Golden wrote in his statement.

Prosecutors have said Golden is not the only evidence linking Owens to the crime, as other friends testified that they plotted with Owens to rob the store. Those friends said Owens bragged to them about killing Graves. His ex-girlfriend also testified that he confessed to the murder.

There was surveillance video from the store, but the shooting was not clearly visible on it. Prosecutors never found the weapon used and presented no scientific evidence at his trial linking Owens to the murder — although after Owens’ death sentence was overturned, prosecutors showed that the man who killed the clerk was wearing a ski mask, while the other man who committed the robbery was wearing a stocking mask. They also linked the ski mask to Owens.

Prosecutors argued last week that Golden’s decision to change his story should not be enough to stop the execution because Golden has now admitted to lying under oath, showing he cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

“There is no indication that Golden will testify; there is no reason why Owens would admit to shooting Ms. Graves to police officers, his girlfriend and his mother if he was not the shooter, as now alleged,” the state Attorney General’s Office wrote in court documents.

Also Thursday, a group called South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty delivered a petition with more than 10,000 signatures to Governor Henry McMaster’s office urging him to reduce Owens’ sentence to life in prison.

“Justice seeks reparations. You cannot make reparations for someone you kill,” said the group’s executive director, Rev. Hillary Taylor, as she read one of the comments on the petition.

Owens’ final appeal was denied. His last chance to avoid death is for McMaster to commute his sentence to life imprisonment.

McMaster said he would follow historic tradition and announce his decision minutes before the lethal injection begins, when prison officials will call him and the attorney general to make sure there is no reason to delay the execution. The former prosecutor vowed to review Owens’ clemency request but said he tends to trust prosecutors and juries.

Owens would be the first person to be executed in South Carolina in 13 years. The state has had difficulty obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injections because companies refused to sell them if their identities were public knowledge.

The state added a Squad option and passed a law keeping the details of the executions secret. The state Supreme Court then cleared the way for the death chamber to reopen this summer. This law revived the use of the electric chair in the state.

Five other prisoners are currently pending appeal, and the state can schedule executions every five weeks.

Earlier this year, lawyers representing a group of South Carolina death row inmates argued before the South Carolina Supreme Court that both the electric chair and the firing squad were acceptable methods of execution. cruel and unusual punishment.

In January, Alabama executed convicted prisoner Kenneth Eugene Smith by nitrogen hypoxia, a controversial method of capital punishment used for the first time in the United States. Before the execution warned the method could “amount to torture” and violate human rights treaties.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are 35 inmates on death row in South Carolina, and no pardons have been granted in the state.