Ellis Wayne Felker

Ellis Wayne Felker (c. 1948 – November 15, 1996) was convicted and executed for a murder he may have not committed.

History

Ellis Wayne Felker was a suspect in the 1981 disappearance of a Georgia woman, Evelyn Joy Ludlum who was working her way through college as a cocktail waitress. He was put under police surveillance for 2 weeks, during which time Ludlum's body was found in a creek, raped, stabbed and murdered. Felker had a prior conviction for aggravated sodomy, a sentence that he served twelve years for.

Controversy

An autopsy performed by an untrained technician determined that Ludlum had been dead for 5 days when found. Realizing that this finding would eliminate Felker as a suspect due to his surveillance, the findings were changed. Later study of the autopsy notes by independent analysis showed that Ludlum had been dead no more than 3 days when found.

After Felker's conviction, it came to light that prosecutors had illegally withheld boxes upon boxes of evidence, including possible DNA samples of the perpetrator and a signed confession made by another suspect who was mentally retarded. The District Attorney in charge denied under oath that such evidence existed and the presiding judge at one of Felker's hearing stated that Felker's right to a fair trial had been severely compromised.

Execution

Despite all the mounting evidence and doubts of his guilt, the Supreme Court of Georgia refused to order a new trial or even grant a stay long enough to sort through the mountains of paperwork in the case that had been withheld allowing the defense time to investigate the case further for possible exoneration. This was due to the fact that he had been on death row for sometime and had not appealed any of the evidence until a death warrant was issued.

Felker's was origanlly scheduled to be excicted in May of 1996,but a stay was granted and the execution was delayed during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta and he was eventually executed on November 15, 1996 at the age of 48, living some 17 years longer than he should have after being sentenced to death.

Ellis Wayne Felker was put to death by electrocution in Georgia's electric chair at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson, GA. The previous night, when fellow death row inmate Larry Lonchar was executed for three murders, Felker had requested to be able to videotape Lonchar's execution to prove that the electric chair was cruel and unsual punishment.

Exoneration attempt

In 2000, a Georgia judge ruled that DNA testing would be performed in the first-ever attempt by a court to exonerate an executed person in the United States. The results were ruled as inconclusive; however this finding alone would not have been enough to grant a new trial, or exoneration and release.

ee also

* List of individuals executed in Georgia
* Capital punishment in the United States
* Wrongful execution

ources

* [http://www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/6418/ Felker v. The State, 1984]
* [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-8836.ZO.html Felker v. Turpin (U.S. Supreme Court, 1996)]
* [http://www.justicedenied.org/executed.htm Justice Denied's page on Felker and numerous other possible innocents executed in the United States]
* [http://www.truthinjustice.org/felker.htm Atlanta Journal article from 2000]
* [http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510911996?open&of=ENG-2M4 Amnesty International info on Felker's case]