COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — 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.

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.

Earlier this month, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Freddie Owens and kept him on the docket to be the first individual executed in the state in 13 years. This week, attorneys for the 46-year-old Owens,

A South Carolina man scheduled to be executed on Friday was never at the crime scene, according to a key witness, who said he lied on the stand.

Freddie Owens' execution is set for Friday at 6pm at a Columbia prison for the killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk in 1997 after the SC Supreme Court refused to stop it

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.