lord i ve started to walk in the light will you trust god no matter how bad it looks. it s not bad as it seems, because god is still in control. bishop spearman was pastor to edward lee elmore, the man accused of murdering dorothy edwards. i have come to know edward in the late 70s. i pastored his home church. and his mother and i were best of friends. they didn t have a whole lot. one of 11 siblings, elmore s father was killed by a hit-and-run driver when elmore was two. he grew up in dire poverty. he had a low i.q. i was a special ed teacher so i knew that he was slow.
that s all i have to ask you. in his closing argument to the jury, willie t. portrayed elmore as a sadistic killer who tortured his victim before beating her to death. but diana thought the depiction was highly prejudicial and the evidence riddled with holes. she also thought elmore had done well under the circumstances. even under withering cross-examination by the brilliant willie t., mr. elmore said what he has always said. very simply, i didn t do it. in order to solve the mystery of who did murder dorothy edwards, diana began looking for alternate suspects and she found one in the neighbor who discovered the body. james holloway. i read the testimony of james holloway and my head just about spun off my little spindly neck. i was like, wow! holloway had spent an unusually long period of time at
elmore moved back in with his sister and has begun the process of adjusting to a world very different from the one he left. there you go. so much had changed, you know, since trying to get used to everything. still trying to adjust to things. it s so technical, right, phones and computers and all that stuff. it s really, really hard. i m trying to learn how, you know. i m trying to cope with it. eddie s case taught me a lot of things about our justice system. it taught me to be distrustful, skeptical. geography can make the difference. money, of course. gender, of course. race is the one that is just a dagger to the heart. but it also taught me to never give up on it. that even 30 years later, someone will listen. as long as you don t give up,
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 had done.
can do to settle this matter? and i said, in fact there is. he goes free at the bond hearing, and he is going to continue to say the truth he said all of these years, i m innocent. and the prosecutor said, okay. but the plea required that elmore say in open court that the state could likely prove their charges against him at a trial. it wasn t the exoneration they were hoping for, but it would mean freedom. new tonight, he was once on death row. now he is a free man. after 30 years, edward elmore was released from prison today. oh, thank the lord. give me a minute i m a little overwhelmed right now. i mean, so excited. i couldn t hardly speak. locked up all them years something i didn t do, and comes along, she believed in me.