It’s been nearly 28 years since the contract slaying of Rebecca McGuire Heath, whose nine months’ pregnant body was found in the back seat of a car in rural Troup County.

But the legal proceedings aren’t over yet.

Charles Edward Owens, 58, of Columbus, who is serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder, claims he never got a hearing on his motion for a new trial in Troup Superior Court and that omission alone entitles him to a new trial.

His attorney, Edward H. Wasmuth Jr. of Atlanta, said the conviction on April 6, 1984, was contrary to the law and the evidence, and Owens “has suffered prejudicial delay by the failure of the court to rule upon his motion for new trial.”

Judge Allen Keeble took the matter under advisement after a hearing last month.

Wasmuth said he agreed to represent Owens without compensation at the request of the appellate section of the Georgia Bar Association, which saw it as a case that had languished for lack of appellate counsel.

Prosecutors said Owens and Gregory Hughes Lumpkin, 56, apprehended Heath from her home in Phenix City, Ala., on Aug. 31, 1981, and drove her to Smokey Road in Troup County, where she was shot through the right eye. The victim’s husband, Larry Heath, who hired the two hit men, was executed in Alabama’s electric chair after he was convicted of murder during a kidnapping.

Lumpkin got a hearing on his motion for a new trial, Wasmuth said in court papers. “The case against Mr. Owens, however, fell into an abyss. … No record exists of any action ever having been taked on Mr. Owens’ motion for new trial.” He said Owens has been denied due process.

“A 25-year delay in the resolution of a motion for new trial is unprecedented and presumptively prejudicial,” he said, and it appears the state’s inattention to the motion was “more than accidental.”

“The state clearly was aware of Mr. Owens’ motion for new trial,” Wasmuth said. “This case was a fairly high-profile murder case, one that should not easily have been forgotten. … These circumstances suggest that not pursuing resolution of the motion for new trial was a choice made by the state, not mere negligence.”

Wasmuth said the state had also failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rebecca Heath was killed in Troup County and not at her home in Phenix City, and the trial court “did not instruct the jury that venue is a jurisdictional fact that must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“I think his arguments are without merit and I think the verdict will ultimately be upheld,” said senior assistant district attorney Lynda Caldwell, who represented the state at the May 22 hearing.

Caldwell said she wasn’t in the district attorney’s office when Owens’ original motion for new trial was filed on May 3, 1984, and “I wouldn’t want to speculate on why” Owens didn’t get a hearing on it.

Owens had also been sentenced to death in Alabama, but the conviction and sentence were overturned on appeal. Ken Davis, who was assistant district attorney at the time, consulted with the family and they agreed to allow Owens to plead guilty to murder and receive a life sentence that runs consecutive to the Georgia sentence.

Davis said if Owens were to receive a new trial in Troup County and be acquitted, he would be transferred to Alabama to begin serving the life sentence there.

Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@ lagrangenews. com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.