♪ Gavin> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina , I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we're looking at the first execution in the state in more than 13 years, as well as, presidential campaign politics.

But first, I'm joined by Associated Press reporter Jeffrey Collins to talk about the latest on the death penalty in the state.

Jeffrey, thanks for joining us.

Jeffrey> You're welcome, Gavin.

good to be here.

So, Jeffrey, just want to kind of start off by getting a broad overview of Freddie Owens, who was executed last Friday.

Give us a background on who he was and what he did to get onto death row.

Jeffrey> Freddie Owens in 1997, authorities say he shot and killed a Greenville convenience store clerk.

His codefendant testified, that killed the woman because she couldn't get the safe open.

He was convicted, sentenced to death in 1999.

Two different times, his death penalty, his death sentence was overturned.

His conviction was never overturned, but his death since overturned, and both times he was sentenced to death again.

Hovering over that case, there was one, he was never prosecuted for.

Between the, between being found guilty in 1999, and being sentenced in the Greenville County Jail, he brutally assaulted and killed a fellow inmate.

And he was charged with murder.

Those charges were dropped until 2019, when all of his appeals were up, on the other, in the Greenville convenience store clerk case.

And so, but his confession, he confessed to it immediately after killing the inmate, was read each time he was sentenced to death.

So that kind of floats over this case.

And then, you know, obviously, there were years and years and years of appeals.

There was a long pause, we'll probably talk about shortly.

And then we get to Friday.

Gavin> And on last Friday there were decisions being made up until the point of the execution with the U.S. Supreme Court, saying no.

And then of course the governor, who has the ability to grant clemency to death row inmates, also saying no.

Was that expected in some ways based on what you've seen in the past with these, how these go forward.

Jeffrey> The fact that, yeah, the requests were not unusual and the fact that they were denied were not unusual as well.

The Supreme Court rarely intervenes, especially in its current makeup.

It's, it's much harder to get them to come in.

And what's typically a six-three court, on the governor side of things, it's never happened before.

South Carolina's executed 44 inmates since the death penalty restarted in 1976.

No governors grant clemency to any of them.

Gavin> It's always the tough on crime stance essentially too.

But over the years, Jeffrey, we have had different conversations with the Department of Corrections.

You've seen this play out at the Statehouse to, trying to restart executions.

It's been 13 years, like we said, since we've had one of those, until last Friday.

We have several inmates on death row, at Broad River Correctional Institution over in Columbia.

What were some of the key moments over the past 13 years, to get us to this point, from when lethal injections stop back in 2011 to now, Freddie Owens was put to death by lethal injection last Friday.

Jeffrey> The last execution was in 2011, and it was a man who had a voluntarily gave up some of his appeals.

So that was part of it.

Part of it was just because the ebb and flow of court cases, especially in the first few years after 2011, no one came up.

And then by the time folks started to run out of appeals, inmates started to run out of appeals, Brian Sterling became corrections director.

He had looked, you know, he kind of did an overview of the agency, looked at everything and discovered that the drugs that South Carolina, they used three drugs at the time, some of them were out of date.

And so, you know, they're expired.

So he went to go look for new drugs.

Well, by that point, the death penalty, you know, atmosphere, so to speak, had come around where companies no longer sold prisons, death penalty, drugs that could be used in the death penalty.

So once that happened, South Carolina couldn't buy it, with the buyers, the people they bought from were going to be made publicly known.

So there was a fight for a few years to pass what's called the "shield law."

That gives privacy to all sorts of areas of the death penalty, not just the, you know, who supplies the death penalty drugs, but the names of anyone involved in executions are kept secret.

The exact method involved was kept secret.

We don't know how much drug, is put into the inmate.

All that kind of thing is kept secret.

That was a key component.

Along with the passage, they tried to work the firing squad in to give a choice to inmates, but that didn't quite satisfy the court.

So essentially, what it had to get up to the the "shield law" point where the courts were satisfied.

And we're at the point now where executions have restarted.

Gavin> And it's interesting that it took so long to, because the State House has always been solidly Republican.

Governors have been Republican too.

This has been a priority to get things moving, so to speak, when it comes to upholding these sentences that were handed down, you know, by jury convictions to, to actually uphold the rule of law here.

So was it shocking that it took 13 years?

I mean, we talked to Brian Sterling about it over and over again to get that shield law, which was so critical after a bunch of other, you know, options were put into place, including making the electric chair the default option of lethal injection, drugs weren't available, and then the firing squad, like you're talking about.

Jeffrey> The, you know, just the whole atmosphere around the death penalty is changed.

You know, I started at the Associated Press about 25 years ago, and there were death penalty trials all the time.

I mean, you know, South Carolina, after Freddie Owens was executed, has 31 inmates on death row.

In 2011, I talked about that last execution, double that there were, I think there may have been like 62, 63 somewhere in there, inmates on death row.

And it's not because people left because they're executed.

A number of them had their death sentences reduced.

Some died of natural causes.

But in that same period of time, only three inmates have been sent to death row, have been convicted and sentenced to death and sent to death row.

And so, you know, part of that like I said, is an atmosphere thing.

I think part of it and part of it is I think just, they do a better job.

Defense attorneys do a better job of defending these clients.

It used to be, you know, in Freddie Owens' case, he had a public defender, and he had someone from the private bar who, pro bono, works with him.

It happened to be Senator Karl Allen.

I mean, now instead, when you come up for a death penalty trial, you have lawyers that are trained and do nothing but these very serious cases that are going to be potentially capital cases.

So they look at every nook and cranny of the case and it becomes, you know, if you're going to you have to have if you're a prosecutor, you have to have your case very buttoned up to even get to that point.

So this is kind of a difference in how we look at the death penalty, I think, as a state, to a certain extent.

Gavin> And Jeffrey, you were one of the three media representatives there watching in on the death chamber during the execution.

You've covered several executions in the past.

Was this, for lack of a better word, typical, what you saw there?

Obviously, there were some changes to how the drugs were administered since the last time, I should say the drug cocktail that was used since the last time that we had a lethal injection case.

Tell us about what happened there.

And then also what you observed, if it was any different than maybe what you've seen before.

Jeffrey> It was, the one key difference, is it took longer.

It seemed, in my mind to take longer.

I, I couch it a little bit because it was, you know, 13 years since I had seen one.

So, I mean, you know, memories get a little hazy sometimes, but it seemed to take about twice as long as I recall.

To get to the point from which the the execution starts to the point at which it looks like the inmate has stopped breathing.

That seemed to...

But, as you call it, typical.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't see anything unusual.

There was no obvious signs of distress or discomfort or pain, but it's, it's, you know, the death penalty is it, is a hard thing to determine that, right?

Because, I mean, how are we going to determine if the inmate feels pain, what we're going, you'd have to ask 'em.

And no one, you can't do that.

So it's hard to tell if there's anything like that happening.

But yes, I mean, you know, there were you know, there's, there's always indications and signs.

You know, there were, like I said, no grimacing, nothing like that.

The, you know, Freddie Owens and his lawyer, longtime lawyer, they had some interaction back and forth.

There's a glass window, so it was more trying to mouth things back to each other and make gestures.

But they had some interaction.

But yes, in general, it wasn't all that much different from the other eight I've seen, or the other seven lethal injections I've seen.

Gavin> And that's, that was a big moment there for Department of Corrections to 13 years.

I mean, there's a lot riding on this in terms of making sure things were in place.

I mean, they were kind of scant with the details in terms of a lot of different things that you've been asking for.

But that's under that "shield law," too.

So I guess, for lack of a better word, again, this kind of worked the way that they had planned it to essentially.

Jeffrey> Didn't see anything that was out of the ordinary, unusual outside of that 30, 35 minute delay.

Because typically when they start these right at six or just a little bit after, and that was a court delay.

In fact, you know, they had us in there at 5:57, like they typically do to witness the execution.

And, and you just sat there in silence and then finally, the General Counsel for the Department of Corrections made a short statement.

He's in the room and said, you know, "the Supreme Court's, U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing the case, that's the delay."

But I mean, outside of that, yes, it seemed like there were no issues or any problem.

Gavin> Jeffrey, we've about a minute left, there have been a total of five executions, are said to be five executions across the country over the past week, starting with South Carolina.

Last Friday, the Missouri and Texas this past Tuesday, and then Alabama and Oklahoma are set to hold executions today, on Thursday.

According to the AP, your news organization, this is kind of an anomaly.

It's just a matter of how things work out.

Then Alabama is to use nitrogen gas to execute Allen, Allen Miller.

This will be the second time the state has used that method.

So, where does our state go from here?

Now that things have restarted, things seem to be working the way that officials expect them to go.

Are there other cases coming down?

Are there other executions planned at this time?

Jeffrey> There are five other inmates who are out of appeals, and the State Supreme Court is allowing these executions to take place every five weeks.

If prison officials in the courts determine that's the, that works.

So there will be, the next execution would be set up for October 25th, and then there'd be in five week intervals until we get about to the spring.

Ultimately, each inmate will have a choice between lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad.

And if they don't make a choice, the default is electrocution.

Gavin> Yeah, that firing squad, like we said, were one of the few states that have that now and no one's chosen that.

It's a matter of them, I guess, just determining how they wish to go at that point.

Jeffrey> Right.

And there's the argument for the firing squad it's the least, you know, it has the least suffering involved because you're hit by three bullets in the heart, if the aim is true.

And I would not be surprised if somebody decides to take that route at some point, maybe even before this, this run of executions concludes, Gavin> Will definitely put South Carolina on the map for, for that, I would assume a lot of attention would come for something like that.

So Jeffrey Collins, we'll be watching as this unfolds in the coming weeks or months.

Thanks as always.

Jeffrey> You're welcome Gavin.

Gavin> Joining me now to discuss the latest on presidential politics is Scott Huffmon.

He's a Winthrop political science professor and also the director of the Winthrop Poll at Winthrop University.

Scott, thanks for joining us, as always.

Scott> My pleasure.

Gavin> So Scott, let's talk about swing states.

We are less than 40 days away from the election on November 5th.

The voter registration delay in South Carolina is October 6th.

Early voting starts here on October 21st.

South Carolina went for Trump by an eight point margin in 2020.

In 2022, Republican Governor Henry McMaster defeated his Democratic opponent by 17 points.

We are not a swing state.

It's very obvious there, but we are wedged between two of the seven battleground states.

So tell us how he became this island.

And I know we've talked about this before, but it's almost a matter of not, if we become a swing state, but when?

Scott> Well, you know, of course Georgia and North Carolina are both swing states.

And the interesting thing about them, why they became swing states has to do with the nature of their in-migration.

People moving in to North Carolina and Georgia are more likely to be moving into urban areas for jobs.

So it's, you know, blue voting people, moving into blue voting areas.

And the people leaving North Carolina and Georgia, it's a lot smaller number, because both states you're growing tend to be leaving from rural, more red areas.

Now that makes those areas even more red, but lower in population.

The difference in South Carolina among growth south states, we're a bit of an exception.

A lot of the people moving into South Carolina are retirees moving to the coast, and so they bring conservative politics with them.

So, South Carolina's even move towards purple, is slowed by that.

A lot of these folks, you know, came from up north may have union pensions, but, you know, very conservative politics come down here.

And that has changed our purpleness, for lack of a better term.

If we see greater movement into the Greenville, Columbia, Charleston areas over the next few years, we'll definitely start growing purple.

We won't be a swing state anytime soon.

Gavin> And really, honestly, when you start thinking about the purpling, the making it a little bit more democratic versus the solid red that it is.

That's going to be something that would probably even happen more so down in the first Congressional District, where it was kind of purple before redistricting made it again, solidly red.

And then there's only one Democratic district out of the seven congressional districts, and that's the Sixth District, with Jim Clyburn.

So, it would be a long, long road ahead until we saw some drastic changes to that map.

Scott> Well, you know, and then gerrymandering in South Carolina is, a team sport at this point.

You know, both sides want to make sure that they have safe seats.

So while they decry the other side trying to do something, they're always carrying water for them as well, because they want their seats to be safer.

We have something like over 40% of our state House seats uncontested in this election, and over 50% of our state Senate seats uncontested.

That means they're gerrymandered in such a way that, the only contest that matters, is the primary for that party.

With that level of gerrymandering, you can take a district like the First and it, start to move in one direction, and you can slightly redraw it, make one district even more blue and another district even more red.

Gavin> And Scott, when we look at those swing states again, Georgia has a Republican Governor and two Democratic U.S. senators elected in 2020, when the state went for Biden.

North Carolina has two Republican Senators and a Democratic Governor.

That open race is a major focus right now, as Republican Gubernatorial candidate, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson appears to be dead in the water with his campaign, less than six weeks out, following a damning report that ties him to graphic past comments on a pornographic website.

How do you see this race affecting the ticket in North Carolina?

Does Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein have an easier chance of winning than Harris, at the same time?

Scott> You know, actually, this is one of those races where usually the presidential race has coattails and helps the gubernatorial race and down ticket races.

This is one of those strange elections, where it might be kind of an up ticket focus.

A lot of people are going to turn out for that gubernatorial race, and a lot of them are going to be voting for Josh Stein, but a lot of them are also going to be voting against Mark Robinson.

And to the degree that those especially the unaffiliated, and in North Carolina they register by party.

And if you don't register by Democrat or Republican or third party, you register as unaffiliated.

Those unaffiliated people who turn out to vote against Mark Robinson to the degree, they also vote for the Democrat at the top of the ticket, Kamala Harris.

It can help her as well.

The North Carolina Republican Party is really, just struggling at this moment.

Even if Robinson drops out, his name remains on the ballot no matter what.

And if he does drop out, Republicans have to very quickly name a replacement and then start a massive campaign to say, hey, you'll be clicking the box for Mark Robinson, but you'll really be voting for "John Smith."

Gavin> And is that feasible right now, with Robinson saying that he's not dropping out, that he's denying these claims, but also and at the same time trying to get them authenticated.

Scott> With Mark Robinson, apparently anything's possible.

I really thought, I had seen virtually everything.

And every election pops up with something brand new and even more, eye popping.

So I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Robinson did ride this all the way through, but his money has dried up, and his staff are, you know, leaping off the ship.

Gavin> And it's interesting because it just, just makes North Carolina so much more in play now when, you know, Republicans were really trying to hold that one there.

I mean, anything that you can deduce from all this, Scott, that it might now be more of a blue state.

I mean, somewhat more likely at this point, it seems like.

Scott> Well, among the, the close swing states, in the last election, if you kind of look at the seven closest states in the last election, their swing states this time.

North Carolina was the only one that went for, Trump.

And so if that flips it, then that's a big deal for Kamala Harris.

But you got to remember the victories in all seven of those swing states in the last election.

If you add up the votes, the margin of victory for each one of those states altogether, it only came to 0.24% of the electorate who decided the election, essentially, although that counts for 17.5%, the Electoral College votes.

But every vote counts in a swing state.

Gavin> Sure does.

And now, Scott take me back to South Carolina again.

We have no statewide races.

We have congressional races.

We have state House and state Senate races, all very important in their own right.

But when you're, we also have of course, the presidential race is on the ballot here.

So when you're looking at results from Election Day in South Carolina, we're talking about our growth in our state.

What areas are you looking at specifically for any changes or, or demographics that maybe reinforce what's already in play?

Scott> I'm actually looking for turnout among various demographics.

We have a very, very small but growing Hispanic community.

I remember from, you know, 2010 to 2020, the Hispanic population doubled, but it went from 2.5% to 5%.

So it is very small, but to the degree it's growing, it's an important demographic component to keep an eye on.

We have also seen a big change in how people turnout based on education.

We learned that in the 2016 race, about how polling now has to weight for education, W-E-I-G-H-T for education as well as other demographics.

So looking to see kind of in exit polls, how that kind of tumbles out.

Also interested to see in counties and that have a, you know, extra sales tax penny for roads and how those play out and how changing demographics in some areas might affect more or less than other areas.

Gavin> Yeah, I was actually looking into all those different referendums.

There's, you know, billions of dollars on the ballot across the state.

You know, from the Lowcountry, Midlands, up to the upstate, the conservative upstate, you know, people who do really not want taxes.

And now you have these referendums for folks to actually tax themselves as extra penny, a lot of it going either for a school bond or just capital investments, water, sewer, infrastructure like that.

Can you drill down on maybe the need for these versus just going the typical route and trying to get money through the State House, or is that just maybe folks see this as the easiest way to get money for much needed projects?

Scott> Well, frankly, they need to do all of the above.

I mean, you know, the Greenville-Spartanburg area is considered, you know, one of the larger, quote-unquote, "inland ports."

And so you need good roads, good infrastructure between there and the coast.

Well, you know, we in the state get most of our road and infrastructure money from gas taxes.

Our gas taxes are not that high compared to, say, Georgia.

And as we get better and better gas mileage cars, electric vehicles especially and hybrid vehicles, they're using the roads, way as much, or more but aren't paying those gas taxes.

So especially areas that are highly dependent on in and outgoing traffic, they need to make sure that those roads are in good shape, those bridges won't collapse.

And so it's now up to the counties, if the state won't find a way to come up with the money.

Gavin> And Scott let's pivot to polling, one of your favorite topics because you do direct the Winthrop poll.

Everyone's glued to polls, national polls, battleground state polls, polls of polls.

What do you look for when there's a new poll out?

How do you deduce one that's maybe a little more valid than others?

Scott> Well, you know, first off, if it's, if the polling outfit is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research Transparency Initiative, then, you know, they've had to go through a number of elements that have to be publicly shown that, what their methodology is.

Problem is, it takes you 15 clicks to, to find the methodology from a news story.

Some news organizations, CNN is one of them, has a list even more extensive, than that, that you have to prove your poll is up to standards before it gets in.

Problem with aggregators like 5-38 is, in general, their top polls are really, really good.

They can occasionally be gamed by bad polls.

And that happened in 2022 with one poll that was a partisan poll, systematically off by 7.5% on average, and made people mistakenly believe in the red wave, that wasn't.

So when you're looking for a good poll, let me tell you, news organizations might get it wrong, but they're doing their best to get good methodology.

Academic polls may get it wrong.

They are doing their best to get solid methodology.

And again, trends are interesting in national polls.

But as we all know, you can win the national vote and lose the presidency.

It's time to start focusing a lot more on polls in those swing states.

Gavin> And they're also very close to and some of the top issues that we saw on the NBC news poll that came out recently was, inflation and cost of living is the top issue for voters.

Threats to democracy follows, immigration, the situation on the border is third, and jobs and the economy.

So pretty evenly split there, when it comes to a multitude of issues.

And of course, the economy is in pretty good shape according to what we heard from Joey Von Nessen last week.

But I want to talk more about money here, Scott.

With about three minutes left, the Harris campaign is raising big money and spending it.

On average, $7.5 million dollars a day in August, compared to $2.6 million dollars a day on average for Trump, that's according to Bloomberg .

The Harris and outside groups are set to spend $559 million on advertising from Labor Day through the election, compared to 306 million for Trump.

There's a lot of spending in these key swing states.

And then of course, Harris is also sending 24.5 million to House, Senate and state party committees to aid Democrats and down ballot races.

Trump is not doing that, though he has previously done that before.

So what do you make of all this money being thrown out here right now, and this level of spending in the final six weeks?

Scott> Well, with, you know, Trump's family members now in charge of the National Republican Committee, virtually all of that money can go wherever Trump wants it to go.

And he's not wanting it to go to the down ticket races.

Down ticket races are going to be key.

And because there are certain House races that Democrats think they can flip.

And, you know, they talk about maybe even taking over the House, but I think they can get it close.

And there's certain Senate races that are hypercritical to the Democrats, if they're going to keep control of the Senate.

Harris's spending, has to counteract, the deflation that came from, okay, thank goodness it's no longer Joe Biden, we love Harris, and then there's a little bit of deflation.

She's got to remind people who she is and who she's running against to make sure that any bump she got in the polls stays there.

And any drop that Trump is seeing in the polls continues.

So she has got to keep herself in front of all the candidates.

And it takes a minimum of three plus times for an ad to burn in to your memory.

It used to be the fact, that negative ads had very little impact, now they do, but it has more impact on turning out the base than anything else.

And that's what both sides are looking to do.

And then convert that tiny little 3%, who might be persuadable.

Gavin> And Scott, we have a few minutes left here, I wanna ask you about political violence.

Robert Pape had an article in Foreign Affairs titled "Our Own Worst Enemies," looking at American political Violence.

Looking at this and talking about, you know, in 1990, 76% of the U.S. population identified as white.

In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau put that figure just over 58%, and by 2045, that should dip to 50%.

He says that these changes have led to rising anger among conservatives, many of whom see increased ethnic diversity as an existential threat to their way of life.

So when we see assassination attempts, when we see riots, when we see, you know, bombers, the MAGA bomber was only a couple of years ago, as well as foreign influence and homegrown misinformation feeding into all this.

How worrisome, is the scene right now in American politics in 2024, going into November 5th?

Scott> Well, you know, it is concerning.

I, you know, I would hearken back to January 6th, where domestic terrorists tried to, you know, invade Congress and stop them from acting.

And anybody who has a problem with that phrase, needs to Google the term "domestic terrorism."

It literally meets the definition.

And so we could possibly see even more than that.

When people feel like they're losing their voice, that, their efficacy, their sense that they matter is, is shrinking.

Some people will push the envelope.

Now, again, it's not the majority of people, but it doesn't take a majority of people with their hands on a trigger or putting out a bomb.

It's just a few people that can wreak havoc across the country.

So that definitely is something to keep an eye on and to worry about.

You know, it's not going to be that, you know, just tens of thousands of people are going to do this, but hundreds of thousands and millions could be affected by the handful, who do resort to violence.

Gavin> Alright, we're going to leave it there with Winthrop University Political Science professor Scott Huffmon.

Scott, thanks for joining us.

Scott> My pleasure.

Gavin> And thank you for joining us this week.

That's it for us here, for South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well South Carolina.

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