Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010

Horry County killer's bid for new trial denied

Lawyer for plea hoped for break

CONWAY -- An Aynor man serving a life sentence for stabbing his girlfriend to death outside Carolina Forest High School was denied a request for a new trial Tuesday during a post-conviction relief hearing aimed at convincing the judge he didn't receive a competent defense.

Edwin Cornelius, 28, pleaded guilty in June 2008 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in the death of 18-year-old Natalia Holmes, who died May 18, 2006.

Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Culbertson denied his plea for a new trial Tuesday at the Horry County Courthouse. Cornelius can appeal the decision, officials said.

Cornelius did not testify or speak during the hearing, but his attorney, Paul Archer, questioned Ralph Wilson, who represented Cornelius at the time of his plea. Prosecutors originally offered Cornelius a plea agreement that would have sent him to jail for 40 years, but he rejected that offer, Wilson said.

He said he had hoped, with Cornelius' guilty plea in 2008, that Circuit Court Judge Larry Hyman would sentence him to 30 years. Instead, Cornelius received the maximum sentence.

"I had no idea what the sentence would be," Wilson said. "You can't always predict what a judge is going to do. I honestly thought we would get a 30-year sentence."

The evidence in the case was "overwhelming" against Cornelius and the decision for him to plead guilty spared Holmes' family the ordeal of a trial, he said.

"My job is to do the very best for my client that I can," said Wilson, who is a former 15th Circuit Solicitor and during his 30-year law career has handled 17 death penalty cases and more than 100 murder trials. "There's no question about the homicide, the murder in the case. There were tons of witnesses who saw him. ... If we had gone to trial he would have gotten life without parole. No question."

Wilson also described how police found the broken knife used to stab Holmes in Cornelius' jacket when he was arrested.

At the time of his plea, prosecutors said Cornelius stabbed Holmes 15 times after the two argued as he dropped her off at school that morning. One of the wounds broke the tip of the knife in her arm.

During the incident, witnesses at the school said they also tried to get Cornelius to stop stabbing her, but he only paused for a minute, then continued, according to authorities.

Three of Cornelius' family members were at Tuesday's hearing, but they declined to comment after the proceedings.

In 2008, his mother, Linda Cornelius; brother Eddie Cornelius; and Wilson told Circuit Court Judge Larry Hyman that Edwin Cornelius was mentally and physically abused. They said he had been hospitalized several times for mental illnesses beginning in 1995.

Wilson testified Tuesday that prosecutors used a state psychologist and he hired a private psychologist to evaluate Cornelius, and both agreed he was mentally fit to stand trial.

"I had no doctor to say his mental illness was related to the crime," Wilson said as the reason he didn't ask for a guilty but mentally insane option for Cornelius. "I thought we were going to get a break because he was pleading guilty. It was a strategy, and it didn't work."