Justice Postponed

http://blog.cleveland.com/earlyedition/2007/06/indictment_in_1998_rape_slayin.html


Indictment in 1998 rape, slaying
Posted by James Ewinger June 29, 2007 19:34PM
Categories: Metro

A Summit County grand jury indicted a man Friday for a 1998 slaying and child rape that put an innocent man in prison for seven years.
Earl Mann

A dogged campaign by the wrongfully convicted Clarence Elkins and his family to find the real killer paid off with a multicount capital murder indictment of Earl Mann, 34, who is serving 10 years in prison for raping three girls.

Elkins who had served his time in the same prison as Mann, slipped authorities one of Mann's discarded cigarette butts to test for DNA. That and other evidence eventually led to Mann being charged with the killing of Judith Johnson, Elkins' mother-in-law and raping Elkins' 6-year-old niece the same night.

Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh's office will seek a death sentence. The charges include two counts of aggravated murder, three counts of rape, attempted murder and aggravated burglary charges.

Elkins, who was convicted in 1999 and freed in 2005, said Friday that the indictment was little consolation for his seven years in prison and the ordeal that his family endured.

"I'm angry. At the same time glad they're doing the right thing," he said.

Elkins said he still does not understand why the state took years to indict Mann when "it didn't take them maybe a couple of hours to come after me."
Clarence Elkins

He said he favors the death penalty -- in general, and for Mann in particular -- and will attend the trial.

"I can't wait to have this person held accountable," Elkins said. Mann has been in prison since 1999, serving a 10-year sentence for the rapes.

Elkins and his supporters have pointed to Mann since 2005.

The scales finally tipped his way when tests on the cigarette butt showed that Mann's DNA matched DNA from a vaginal swab from Johnson as well as the girl's underwear and a hair from her nightgown.

Prosecutor Walsh would not discuss the evidence Friday, but said investigators have been building the case against Mann since his name first surfaced in 2005. She identified him last year as the primary suspect in the slaying.

She said Friday's indictment was no rush to judgment, because Mann's current sentence does not lapse until 2009.

Told of the indictment, Elkins' sister-in-law, Cindy Elkins said, "It's about time. What took them so long?"

Walsh said the challenge was for prosecutors and investigators to prove to themselves that Elkins was innocent, then to continue a separate campaign to build an air-tight case against Mann.

Melinda Elkins, estranged wife of Elkins, is the one who developed the Mann theory.

She wondered why the girl who was raped ran to a neighbor's house and the neighbor did not call police. The neighbor was Mann's girlfriend.

By the time Melinda Elkins started weighing evidence, she discovered that by then Mann was serving the sentence for raping three girls.

In a letter to The Plain Dealer last year, Mann maintained his innocence in the slaying.

The charges that Walsh announced include the same death-penalty specifications that Elkins faced when a jury convicted him in 1999.

But that jury spared Elkins' life, by convicting him of a lesser form of the offense, consigning him to life in prison.

No arraignment date has been set for Mann because authorities have to move him from Lucasville prison.

The case began with the strangulation of Johnson, 59, in Barberton. Elkins was arrested within days, and convicted less than a year later.

He lost his first appeal in 2000, failed to get a new trial in 2002 after the little girl who was raped recanted her story that Elkins did it. In 2003, the 9th Ohio District Court of Appeals denied him a new trial.
Print | Permalink (Learn More)
Share: Reddit | Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | What is this?
COMMENTS (2)Post a comment
Posted by swampfox111 on 07/08/07 at 11:38AM

Here are the facts: 22% of our 2.3 million inmates(largest in the world)...... are innocent-No system is perfect but I suppose we have the best one.....So that tabulates to approximately 506,000 innocent
inmates across our Nation......Mr. Elkins I'm grateful you are free!
Let me see....do these so-called professional's who convicted Mr.
Elkins keep their career's at his expense.....go figure..
THX
Inappropriate? Alert us.
Post a comment
Posted by Meltemi on 12/24/07 at 1:23PM

I have read and watched this story unfold with complete horror. It is amazing what lengths prosecutors, detectives, those in power, go to not to admit fault. They should be stripped of their position and placed in prison themselves. They are utter parasites. I fully support Mr. Elkins and send my sincerest well-wishes to him for having suffered so. Let's support him further by demanding monetary compensation. A couple of hundred thousand, per year falsely imprisined is a good start.