Court hears plea to stop execution

By ERIC FRAZIER AMES ALEXANDER , Staff Writers COLUMBIA --

 In perhaps the Carolinas' most unusual death penalty case, defense lawyers on Tuesday told the S.C. Supreme Court a convicted killer shouldn't be executed because someone else - a mentally ill woman - has confessed to the crime.Defense lawyers urged the justices to grant a new trial to death row inmate Richard Charles Johnson, 38, convicted of the 1985 murder of an S.C. Highway Patrol trooper.They pointed to Connie Sue Hess, a Nebraska woman who was present when Trooper Bruce Smalls was shot during a traffic stop on Interstate95. Hess, who has a 15-year history of mental illness, has given conflicting statements to police implicating both Johnson and a second man. But in 1999, with Johnson just a week away from execution, Hess said in an affidavit that she killed Smalls. The execution was delayed, and the case came back before the state's highest court Tuesday in what could be Johnson's last appeal.