COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCBD)- State Sen. Deon Tedder (D-Charleston) is urging South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) to delay the execution of Freddie Eugene Owens just hours before the 46-year-old man is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Friday night. McMaster, a Republican, has said he will wait to announce his decision on clemency until prison officials call him minutes before the execution begins at 6 p.m. Owens, 19 at the time, was convicted of killing a convenience store clerk in Greenville back on Halloween night in 1997. He murdered a cellmate a short time later. This would mark the first time an inmate has been executed in the state since 2011. South Carolina had to pause executions because companies that made the drugs used for lethal injections refused to sell them to states until a Shield Law was passed last year that protects makers of these drugs. While attorneys for Owens have filed motions to stop the execution, a co-defendant recently came forward claiming he lied during testimony and that Owens was innocent. The co-defendant, Steven Golden, signed a sworn statement on Wednesday saying Owens wasn’t at the store when Irene Graves was killed during a robbery. Instead, he said he blamed Owens because he was high on cocaine and police put pressure on him by claiming they already knew the two were together and that Owens was talking. Golden also said he feared the real killer. “I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to police. I am still afraid of that. But Freddie was not there,” Golden wrote in his statement, which does not name the other person. In a Sept. 20 letter to the governor, Tedder said the state "has a duty to thoroughly vet this new information before carrying out an execution that has been pending for years." "This is not a matter of whether or not we agree with the death penalty as a punishment in general, it is imperative that our state get it right when carrying out actions that cannot be undone," he wrote. "We do not want South Carolina to carry out its first execution in over a decade on the wrong person." Tedder asked McMaster to "at least consider the new information relevant enough" to stay the execution until Golden's new statement is investigated. "If the state relied heavily on Steven Golden’s testimony and found him credible enough to place Mr. Owens at the scene of the crime, the state should carefully consider its actions today after that same man revealed in a sworn statement that he was coerced to falsify information about Mr. Owens and that Mr. Owens, in fact, was never at the store during the robbery," he continued. Protests and vigils are expected near Broad River Correctional Institute where the execution is scheduled, as well as around the state. The Associated Press contributed to this report.