Slain Ga. socialite's husband asks for new trial

A millionaire convicted of hiring an assassin posing as a flower delivery man to kill his socialite wife asked Georgia's top court for a new trial Tuesday.

Attorneys for James Sullivan, serving life in prison for paying a hit man $25,000 to shoot Lita Sullivan, told the Georgia Supreme Court a search warrant used to find crucial evidence was full of half-truths and omissions.

The appeal was a last-ditch attempt to toss a 2006 murder conviction against Sullivan. A man carrying a dozen long-stemmed roses gunned down Lita Sullivan on the doorstep of her Atlanta town house in 1987, on the day of a hearing to discuss property distribution in the couple's divorce.

Her death - and the 19-year effort to prosecute her killer - is one of the most high-profile cases in modern Atlanta history.

James Sullivan's attorneys said Tuesday that federal agents relied on the testimony of a confidential informant who had been arrested 38 times to get a warrant to search Sullivan's $5 million Florida mansion. The search yielded a diary and financial documents used in Sullivan's trial.

Prosecutors defended the affidavit as "truthful and complete with the best information at the time." They said there was ample reason to search Sullivan's home even without the informant's testimony.

The court did not issue an immediate decision, but the judges sounded skeptical. Justice Harold Melton suggested Sullivan's concerns had already been vetted by a lower court, and Justice Harris Hines said the informant's shady history is not unique.

"A lot of confidential informants are going to have criminal histories," he said. "You can almost say, most of them."

The case has gone on for more than two decades. In 1992, a federal judge dismissed charges that Sullivan violated interstate commerce laws by arranging his wife's murder through long-distance phone calls. Lita Sullivan's parents later won a $4 million wrongful death lawsuit - which they say still hasn't been paid - but James Sullivan wasn't charged with his wife's murder until 1988.

That was when Belinda Trahan told authorities Sullivan paid her ex-boyfriend, a trucker named Phillip Anthony Harwood, $25,000 to kill Lita Sullivan. Harwood was arrested in 1988 and sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a lesser crime.

Sullivan, who fled to Thailand after hearing of Harwood's arrest, was arrested four years later after a local resident spotted him on "America's Most Wanted." At the trial, Harwood told a jury he called Sullivan from a rest stop in north Georgia after the murder and said "Merry Christmas," to signal the deed was done.

Lita Sullivan's parents, who sat through the hearing, were upset the case was dredged up again.

"It's a travesty," said Lita's father, Emory McClinton. "We should be able to get on with our lives."