Window & Gutter Cleaner Walks Free After 30 Years

On the slimmest of evidence — one fingerprint on the back door and a check written to mentally disabled Elmore for gutter cleaning and window washing in December 1982 — Elmore was arrested and convicted. He pleaded guilty in exchange for his freedom. This was his 11,000th day in jail.

After 30 Years, S.C. Ex-Death Row Inmate Is Freed: GREENWOOD, S.C. — Edward Lee Elmore glanced at the ceiling when a judge asked him if he was sure he wanted to plead guilty to the murder he has spent decades denying. He whispered to his lawyer, who had told him “freedom is justice,” and then looked toward the heavens again. “Yes sir,” he said quietly. With those words, he ended a 30-year stint in prison that saw 30 of his friends on death row die. Elmore was convicted three times of killing of Dorothy Edwards, with appeal courts overturning each verdict. Elmore lived nearby and did odd jobs for the 75-year-old widow, who was found in the closet of her Greenwood home in January 1982. She had been savagely beaten and stabbed more than 50 times, dying from a loss of blood and blows that caved in her chest, prosecutor Jerry Peace said.

Prosecutors agreed his punishment should be the 11,000 days Elmore spent behind bars, much of it on death row. He got off death row in 2010 when his attorneys argued he was mentally disabled and had a low IQ. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled states can’t execute the mentally disabled, and his punishment was reduced to life in prison. On Friday, prosecutors dropped rape and burglary charges, and an hour after the hearing, Elmore walked out of the Greenwood County courthouse a free man to the cheers of those brothers and sisters. “What a great day,” Elmore said in the parking lot.

Elmore’s lawyers first asked the judge to throw out the charges. Defense lawyer Diana Holt has pointed out before that investigators found evidence at the crime scene that indicated Edwards fought for her life, but Elmore was uninjured when he was arrested hours later. A single blond hair was found on Edwards’ body. Elmore has black hair, and none of that was found at the scene. In the courtroom was former New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner, who has followed the case for more than a decade and recently wrote a book about it. He said police were anxious to make an arrest to allay a community’s fears that a rapist and murderer was among them and the little evidence that links Elmore to the crime was planted. “Don’t dare call it justice,” he said after the hearing. “A man served 30 years for a crime he did not commit.” Elmore’s lawyer wanted to see him exonerated. But she told him he could be convicted again in a trial and talking an Alford plea, where he maintains his innocence but admits there is a lot of evidence against him, was the best thing he could do. “Freedom is justice and that’s why he is doing it today,” Holt said. When Innocence Isn’t Enough.

Mr. Elmore had occasionally washed windows and cleaned gutters at the woman’s house, the last time two weeks before the murder. Less than 90 days after the body was found, his trial began. Edward Lee Elmore, right, is accompanied by his lead counsel Diana Holt, centre, and previous counsel Marta Kahn, during his hearing.