Washington State Executes Man for Murder in Church

WALLA WALLA, Wash. - A 58-year-old Washington state man who asked for the death penalty after murdering a woman in the church where he worked as a janitor three years ago was executed on Tuesday, officials said.

Shortly before 1 a.m. local time (4 a.m. EDT), James Elledge -- who admitted stabbing and strangling 47-year-old Eloise Fitzner, a neighbor who criticized him in a letter to his wife -- was strapped to a gurney at a state prison in Walla Walla and injected with lethal chemicals.

Elledge became the first person executed in the state in three years and the fourth since the death penalty was reinstated in 1981. He declined the traditional last meal and ate nothing after taking breakfast Monday morning, prison officials said, describing his mood as ``somber''.

 He made several phone calls during an extra hour in the exercise yard, but made no final statement before his execution. He spent his last several hours in a holding cell and met with his lawyer before dying, officials said.

 At his trial, the former resident of Lynnwood, Washington, just north of Seattle, said he would not seek clemency. But death penalty opponents petitioned vainly to save his life, saying that he once protected a prison guard during a riot and that he might be mentally ill.

 After a legally mandated review last month, the Washington state Supreme Court affirmed Elledge's death sentence, and Gov. Gary Locke earlier this month rejected a clemency bid by death penalty opponents, including the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites).

 Details of the riot incident at an Atlanta penitentiary were not disclosed during the trial. Nor were allegations that Elledge forced another woman to have sex with him at his trailer home shortly after murdering Fitzner.

 ``The rape victim did not wish to have the matter prosecuted. She said she had done her best to convince (Elledge) she was willing to have sex with him because she didn't want to die like her friend,'' said Seth Fine, deputy prosecutor for Snohomish County, where Lynnwood is located.

 At the time of the Lynnwood murder in 1998, Elledge had been on parole for three years after serving part of a sentence for killing a woman who managed a Seattle motel in 1974.

He lured the two women to the basement of the Lighthouse Church in Lynnwood, where he had found work as a janitor after being paroled.

 Elledge had repeatedly said he did not deserve to live, after acknowledging during his trial that part of him was ''wicked''.