Anthony Green was executed by the State of South Carolina for the murder of Susan Babich
According to court documents Susan Babich was walking towards her car and had just opened the door when she was fatally shot by Anthony Green. Green would take her purse before fleeing in another vehicle
Anthony Green would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Anthony Green would be executed by lethal injection on August 23 2002
Anthony Green Photos
Anthony Green FAQ
When Was Anthony Green Executed
Anthony Green was executed on August 23 2002
Anthony Green Case
Anthony Green was put to death Friday evening for the killing of a Naval wife and mother out shopping at a mall 15 years ago.
On Thursday, Gov. Jim Hodges denied requests from Green’s attorneys and humanitarian groups to halt the execution. The state Supreme Court had earlier denied Green’s call to stop the execution and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied his appeal Thursday afternoon. The U.S. Supreme Court, Green’s last chance for a stay, refused to block Green’s execution Friday afternoon.
Green died by lethal injection at 6:18 p.m., a prisons official said. No protesters were seen outside the prisons complex where executions are held. Green is the 27th person executed since South Carolina reinstated the Death Penalty in 1977 and the second this year.
Green, 37, had been on death row since 1988 for the murder of 36-year-old Susan Barbara Babich of Hanahan. She was robbed and shot in the head with a rifle moments after she parked her car at The Charles Towne Mall in November 1987. Green was arrested about a half-hour later with a rifle and Babich’s checkbook in his car. He told police he shot the woman because she saw him sneaking up on her.
“Because of the act of one selfish individual, our family’s perspective on society, as well as how we approach everyday activities, has been forever changed,” the Babich family wrote in a statement forwarded by her brother Daniel Merton. Green did not issue a statement before his sentence was carried out. No one from Babich’s or Green’s families attended for the execution.
Green’s attorney Teresa Norris was present and flipped through a Bible before the maroon curtain to the death chamber was opened. As the lethal chemicals were administered, Green’s mouth shut tight and his chest rose and fell with steady breaths. His breathing soon became rushed and his head jerked slightly to the left. Norris clutched her Bible as Green lay dying.
The Babich family thanked the jurors on Green’s case and the South Carolina justice system. The Babich family’s statement said they chose not to attend Friday “for it will serve no purpose in our lives. We seek not mere revenge but what the justice system has deemed necessary and appropriate. “Justice has prevailed,” they wrote, “and will be served in our conscious absence.”
Opponents of the death penalty argued that Green’s execution showed the racial bias in sentencing in South Carolina. Green is black, Babich was white. During his time as a solicitor, now-state Attorney General Charlie Condon sought death sentences in 40 percent of his cases of black-on-white homicide, the South Carolina Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said. Condon only sought death, the coalition said, in 2.9 percent of cases in which the victim and defendant were black.
In July, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asked South Carolina not to execute Green while it studied whether putting him to death would violate his human rights. The group said if Green were to die at the state’s hand before “an opportunity to examine his case, any eventual decision would be rendered moot … and he would suffer irreparable damage.” Condon has said the brutality of Green’s crime spoke for itself.
