our prospects. i didn t think the court had much incentive to overturn his conviction. we didn t hear anything for month after month. 14 months went by. and then i get an e-mail in my inbox. heart stops. i start hyperventilating. i clicked on it, and the opinion is 190-something pages long. and where is the good part? the most conservative appellate court in the nation had ruled 2-1 that elmore deserved a new trial. everyone in the death penalty community, what happened? we don t win like that, and not there. but we did. the state was reluctant to retry the case, knowing the evidence the defense had unearthed could implicate both police and prosecutors. so they offered elmore a plea bargain. and the prosecutor asked is there anything short of outright
police agent who grew up across the street from dorothy edwards and james holloway and was friendly with both. tom henderson had nothing to do with forensic investigation at all. nothing. he wasn t supposed to be involved in the case any way. because these were people he knew his whole life long. there was really no reason for him to have removed these things from the laboratory. we were arguing that this evidence had in all likelihood been tampered with and quite conceivably that mrs. edwards blood had been put on the garments. it would now be up to the judge to rule whether or not elmore deserved a new trial. the decision would take four months to come down. we presented all this great evidence. we re very excited. we re stoked. then comes the judge s order and the cover letter said, edward lee elmore may well not be guilty. but that will be for an appellate court to find.
about eddie elmore s innocence. she was determined to make sure that i did my job. the state was represented by donald zelenka who reportedly once argued that women who had abortions in the third trimester could be executed for murder. and elmore s fate would be decided by judge ernest kinard. one of the first witnesses called was james gilliam, the inmate who said elmore confessed to him in jail. in the small town of greenwood, both elmore and gilliam knew bishop spearman. and before the hearing, gilliam told spearman the truth. james gilliam and i go back i guess all our life. one night he called me and he will me, i lied and my conscience is bothering me. gilliam said he made a deal with the prosecutor to testify against elmore in exchange for release from prison. with elmore facing the electric chair, he felt bad about what he
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same prosecutor, same defense attorneys, same outcome. a third trial was held to reconsider the sentence and again, the decision was unanimous. 36 jurors had determined that edward elmore should be put to death. 11 years later, a 34-year-old law student named diana holt came to the south carolina death penalty resource center as a summer intern. one of her first assignments was reviewing elmore s case. the first time i saw the name, i was reading through the transcript. diana started having suspicions that the conviction and trial wasn t fair. she was troubled that there were no expert witnesses and rarely challenged any of the prosecution s evidence. diana knew that an incompetent defense was grounds for an appeal.