James Homer Elledge, a twice convicted murderer who admitted to his crimes and refused to appeal his sentence, was executed early Tuesday by lethal injection at the Washington state penitentiary at Walla Walla.
There was a telephone in the death chamber in case Washington Governor Gary Locke, the only person who could have spared Elledge's life, should have called with his clemency.
It never rang.
Strapped to a crude wooden gurney, Elledge had no last words.
The simple viewing room has a curtained window for each choice provided the condemned: one high for hanging, one low for legal injection.
Elledge, 58, was revealed to witnesses laying on the crude wooden gurney when the curtain flew up from the lower window. He was covered feet to chin with a dark blue sheet. His eyes and mouth were closed.
Clear plastic tubing came out of the wall behind him attached to needles stuck in his arms which lay covered by the cloth, spread out at his sides. His hands were concealed with black tape.
The toxic drugs started flowing into his veins at 12:39 am (0739 GMT). First a sedative, then a nervous system suppressant, then something to stop his heart.
He was pronounced dead at 12:52 am (0752 GMT).
Elledge had declined all meals after his 6:00 am breakfast, including his pre-arranged last meal of scrambled eggs, bacon and waffles.
He spent his final day with the prison chaplain, his attorney, and on the telephone with family or friends.
Neither the victims' families nor his own took their legal opportunity to witness the execution. Also absent was the judge who signed the death warrant.
The only witnesses were his attorney, the prosecutor, two police officers, and eight members of the media.
Some 40 anti-death penalty demonstrators gathered outside the prison walls for a candlelight vigil. They were separated by a chain-link fence from a handful of supporters of capital punishment.
Executions are relatively rare in Washington. This was the fourth since the penalty was reinstated in 1981.
Elledge admitted he lured 47-year-old Eloise Fitzner and one of her friends to the suburban church near Seattle where he was a janitor. There he restrained the women, strangled and stabbed Fitzner and stuffed her lifeless body beneath a bench in the church basement.
He released the other woman who went to police.
It wasn't the first time he'd confessed to murder. He'd served time for beating a 63-year-old woman Seattle motel manager to death with a hammer in 1974.
Elledge admitted to his crimes and declined all appeals to his death sentence -- the third condemned man in Washington state history to do so.
Elledge's court-appointed attorney, Bill Jaquette, had him examined by mental health experts who found him competent, and resolved to represent his client's wishes.
The decision was difficult because of Jaquette's passionate opposition to the death penalty.
"It is bad law, a terrible law," he told AFP. "It is such a waste of human energy."
Elledge believed his Christian faith required him to die to achieve redemption, said Jaquette, who tried to convince him he was legally and theologically wrong.
"There is a very wicked part of me, and this wicked part of me needs to die," Elledge said recently.
His execution was carried out as advances in DNA forensics and much publicized court errors have Americans questioning the death penalty, with the United States the only country in the western world to practice executions.
Elledge not only chose to die, but how he would die.
Washington is the only jurisdiction in the English-speaking world that also offers hanging as an option. The rickety double gallows in the crude prison yard death house has stood unused since 1994.
Jaquette says he represented his client as his professional ethics required, but disagrees with the result.
"He shouldn't have had this as an option," the lawyer says -- WALLA WALLA, Washington (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
