By  Margaret Quamme

For The Columbus Dispatch Sunday February 19, 2012 5:55 AM

Anatomy of Injustice is both a fascinating and disturbing study of a single case in which a man was condemned to death for a murder that he most likely didn’t commit. It is also a dexterous look at the legal ramifications of capital punishment in the United States during the past century.

Raymond Bonner examines the case of Edward Lee Elmore, a black handyman who was tried and convicted in 1982 of the murder of Dorothy Edwards, an elderly white widow for whom he had done a few chores.

Bonner, a former lawyer and investigative journalist, follows the investigation, the first trial and subsequent ones, the appeals, and the ultimate outcome of the case.

Edwards of Greenwood, S.C., was found dead on a Sunday morning by Jimmy Holloway, a neighbor with whom many believed Edwards had been having an affair. Her body was covered with shallow stab wounds and had been stuffed into a bedroom closet. The surfaces of the house had been wiped clean. A pair of bottle tongs protruded from a kitchen drawer, and a bloody, serrated cake spatula was placed neatly atop a chest of drawers upon which were “several sweaters, all neatly folded; a bra; and several family photos in silver frames.” Edwards’ wedding ring and other jewelry were in clear sight; nothing seemed to have been stolen.

On the slimmest of evidence — one fingerprint on the back door and a check written to Elmore for gutter cleaning and window washing in December — Elmore was arrested and convicted.

Elmore, whose only previous troubles with the law had stemmed from minor fights with his girlfriend, was a physically slight man of limited intelligence who had grown up in poverty, and was described by those he worked for as “polite, deferential, sweet-natured” and “not at all physically threatening.”

In matter-of-fact, well-researched prose, Bonner details the many ways, deliberate or just plain sloppy, in which justice was botched in Elmore’s case. During Elmore’s first trial, his lawyers — one evidently an alcoholic and another who told friends he didn’t care much for work — “did virtually nothing” to clear their client: They consulted no experts, interviewed no neighbors or witnesses, and allowed the county prosecutor — “a Greenwood institution” who was “renowned, powerful, and feared” — to introduce whatever evidence he wanted. In this and subsequent trials, evidence was apparently tampered with or hidden.

The hero of Bonner’s story is Diana Holt, who took on Elmore’s case in 1995, when she was 36 and finishing law school after many personal struggles of her own, including an abusive stepfather and problems in school.

Holt followed Elmore through appeal after appeal, taking a personal interest in making sure he didn’t get lost in the system.

Bonner makes it clear that Elmore’s case isn’t necessarily typical of capital punishment appeals, many of which are conducted on the basis of “legal innocence” as opposed to “factual innocence”: In other words, many of the defendants may have committed a crime but been badly defended, whereas Elmore appears not to have committed a crime at all. But Bonner’s description of decades of bungling is an appalling reminder of the ways class and race can shape outcomes in the American legal system.

margaretquamme

@hotmail.com

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Book Review | Anatomy of Injustice: Law student’s efforts reveal botched case