Edward Lee Elmore was released from prison in South Carolina on March 2 after agree­ing to a plea arrange­ment in which he main­tained his inno­cence but agreed the state could re-con­vict him of mur­der in a new tri­al. He had been on death row for near­ly 30 years after being con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1982 for the sex­u­al assault and mur­der of an elder­ly woman in Greenwood, South Carolina. The state’s case was based on evi­dence gath­ered from a ques­tion­able inves­ti­ga­tion and on tes­ti­mo­ny with glar­ing dis­crep­an­cies. Elmore’s appel­late lawyers dis­cov­ered evi­dence point­ing to Elmore’s pos­si­ble inno­cence that pros­e­cu­tors had with­held. Originally, state offi­cials repeat­ed­ly claimed the evi­dence had been lost. The evi­dence includ­ed a hair sam­ple col­lect­ed from the crime scene. After being test­ed for DNA, the evi­dence sug­gest­ed an unknown Caucasian man may have been the killer. In February 2010, Elmore was found to have intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties and thus was inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion; he was tak­en off death row. In November 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit grant­ed him a new tri­al because of the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in han­dling the evi­dence. The court found there was ​“per­sua­sive evi­dence that the agents were out­right dis­hon­est,” and there was ​“fur­ther evi­dence of police inep­ti­tude and deceit.”

Raymond Bonner, a for­mer New York Times reporter who wrote a book about the case (​“Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong”), said Elmore’s jour­ney through the jus­tice sys­tem ​“stands out because it rais­es near­ly all the issues that shape debate about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: race, men­tal retar­da­tion, a jail­house infor­mant, DNA test­ing, bad defense lawyers, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and a strong claim of inno­cence.” He not­ed, ​“Once a per­son has been con­vict­ed, even on unimag­in­ably shaky grounds, an almost inex­orable process — one that usu­al­ly ends in exe­cu­tion — is set in motion. On appeal, gone is the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence; the pre­sump­tion is that the defen­dant had a fair tri­al. Not even over­whelm­ing evi­dence that the defen­dant is inno­cent is nec­es­sar­i­ly enough to get a new trial.” 

(R. Bonner, ​“When Innocence Isn’t Enough,” New York Times, March 2, 2012). See Innocence and Intellectual Disabilities.

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