Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 22, 1994 TAG: 9410240055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HARDY LENGTH: Medium
"Hello? ... He's been released? ... When's he going to come home?" she asked.
The news struck Honaker speechless, but the smile that spread across her face did all the talking: One decade after her son was wrongly convicted of rape and sentenced to three life terms in prison, Eddie was coming home.
Ever since April, when DNA tests first cast doubt on Edward Honaker's 1984 conviction of raping a woman on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Roanoke man's family had been forced to wait helplessly as Gov. George Allen considered a clemency request.
Encouraged by the DNA evidence at first, relatives began to worry as weeks turned to months, with still no decision from the governor.
Then a letter from Honaker arrived this week at his mother's, making her wonder if she would ever see him walk free. "I want to go home so bad that I can almost taste it," Honaker wrote from the Nottoway Correctional Center. "I hope and pray I'm wrong about Gov. Allen, but I sure do have my doubts."
Later in the week, as word got out that Allen was close to making a decision, Anna Honaker never strayed far from her telephone. She used her remote control to scan the local television stations for the latest updates.
"I didn't sleep at all last night, I'm so anxious for him to get home," she said Friday morning.
As Anna Honaker spoke, Allen was holding a news conference in Richmond to announce his decision. But all Honaker could do was watch "The Price is Right" and wait, sitting next to a telephone placed within easy reach on a kitchen chair.
When the call finally came, Honaker answered on the first ring. It was her daughter-in-law, Sheila Honaker, who had just learned from a television reporter that Allen had granted a pardon.
As she heard the news, Honaker clenched her fists and pumped them in the air. "Thank the Lord!" she said.
"I never had no doubts," she said later. "I just told Eddie to keep praying. I never did give up. I knew God was going to let him out some day.''
But for all the Honakers, the news they had waited so long to hear was taking some time to sink in. "We won't believe if for sure till he sets foot here on the front yard and hollers at us," Sheila Honaker said.
by CNB