Edward Lee Elmore

Edward Lee Elmore (January 13, 1959 - December 3, 2018) was an intellectually disabled man who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1982 rape and murderer of Dorothy Edwards, a wealthy South-Carolinian. He is notable for being South Carolina's longest-serving death row inmate—having served 29 out of 31 years in prison on death row—and for substantial criticism surrounding his prosecution. He was removed from death row in 2010 after the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia that the execution of the mentally disabled constituted cruel and unusual punishment. He was released from prison after being sentenced to time served after an Alford plea on March 3, 2012.

Elmore maintined his innocence throughout the entirety of his legal battles, and his case has been widely criticised as a miscarriage of justice with many organizations questions claiming his innocence. The story of his numerous trials and appeals was told in Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Raymond Bonner.

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