news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Charles Walker, who at one point was 15 hours away from execution for a 1992 murder, avoided a second chance at the death penalty by pleading guilty Monday to a lesser charge.

Superior Court Judge L. Todd Burke sentenced Walker to 30 years on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and accessory after the fact. Burke credited Walker with time served. That means Walker, 42, has 15 years left to serve.

He was sentenced to die in 1995 in the killing of Elmon Tito Davidson Jr. The death sentence was unusual because Davidson's body was never found.

At his first trial, the jury determined that Walker did not fire the fatal shot but acted in concert with two others. Davidson's body was thrown into a trash bin and later disappeared.

At the time of the killing, Walker was a New Yorker who ran an illegal drug operation in Greensboro, according to testimony.

Walker was scheduled to die in December 2004. But just hours before it was to occur, the state Supreme Court upheld a stay of execution by Guilford County Superior Court Judge John O. Craig III.

Craig later dismissed defense claims that had led him to issue the stay. But he then ordered the state to hand over two Greensboro police investigative files previously withheld from the defense. Walker's attorneys had argued the files held information that would have addressed the credibility of key prosecution witnesses and may have affected the jury's verdict.

In January 2006, Craig ordered a new trial because those files had not been available to the defense in the 1995 trial.

Read more in Tuesday's News & Record.