WALLA WALLA, Wash. (AP) — A 58-year-old man who confessed to strangling and stabbing a woman inside a church in 1998 was executed Tuesday morning by injection.
James Homer Elledge spoke no final words before he was put to death. He had taken no legal steps to prevent his execution and had told his lawyer not to put on a defense during the penalty phase of his trial.
Elledge pleaded guilty in 1998 to aggravated first-degree murder for the death of Eloise Jane Fitzner. He was on parole for a 1974 killing when he killed Fitzner and sexually assaulted another woman at the Lighthouse Free Methodist Church in Lynnwood.