Georgia Man Exonerated 23 Years After Wrongful Capital Murder Conviction

Devonia Inman, sen­tenced to life in a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in which Georgia pros­e­cu­tors hid excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, has been exon­er­at­ed 23 years after his wrongful conviction. 

On December 20, 2021, one month after Judge Kristina Cook Graham grant­ed Inman a new tri­al based on evi­dence that the pros­e­cu­tion had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sup­pressed mul­ti­ple police records and phys­i­cal evi­dence that anoth­er man had com­mit­ted the killing, the Alapaha Judicial Circuit District Attorney Chase L. Studstill moved to dis­miss all charges against Inman. Alapaha Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge Clayton Tomlinson grant­ed the motion, exon­er­at­ing Inman and order­ing his immediate release.

Inman spoke to reporters out­side the Augusta State Medical Prison fol­low­ing his release. ​“I’m hap­py,” he said. ​“It’s been a long time.” 

“For 23 years, I’ve felt like my life was on hold,” his moth­er, Dinah Ray said. ​“I can breathe now.”

“At least 186 peo­ple who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in the United States have been exon­er­at­ed since 1973. But those num­bers are just the tip of the ice­berg of the wrong­ful use of the death penal­ty in this coun­try,” Death Penalty Information Center exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham said. ​“Devonia Inman is one of more than 70 peo­ple to be exon­er­at­ed in just the last five years in wrong­ful mur­der pros­e­cu­tions in which dis­trict attor­neys had sought the death penal­ty or cas­es in which police or pros­e­cu­tors had threat­ened defen­dants or wit­ness­es with the death penal­ty to coerce their coop­er­a­tion in wrongful prosecutions.”

Inman was con­vict­ed in a death-penal­ty tri­al in 2001 for the September 19, 1998 rob­bery and mur­der of the man­ag­er of a Taco Bell in Adel, Georgia in the restau­rant park­ing lot. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked him to the crime, although a dis­tinc­tive home­made ski mask that the pros­e­cu­tion said belonged to the killer was recov­ered from the victim’s stolen car. Later DNA test­ing on the mask iden­ti­fied the killer as Hercules Brown, a for­mer employ­ee at the Taco Bell.

The pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed four key wit­ness­es against Inman, three of whom sub­se­quent­ly recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny, say­ing they had been pres­sured or coerced by police. They includ­ed an alleged jail­house infor­mant who pro­vid­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny that Inman had con­fessed to the mur­der, and a woman described in press reports as a friend of Inman’s who claimed to have seen Inman with a lot of cash the morn­ing after the Taco Bell rob­bery. A fourth wit­ness, who received a $5,000 pay­ment for her tes­ti­mo­ny, claimed to have seen Inman dri­ving the victim’s car. However, a man who was next to her at the time tes­ti­fied it had been too dark for any­one to have iden­ti­fied the driver.

Several wit­ness­es had told the defense that Brown had admit­ted to hav­ing com­mit­ted the mur­der. However, when Inman’s lawyers attempt­ed to present them at tri­al, judge Buster McConnell barred them from tes­ti­fy­ing. With the ski mask in its pos­ses­sion and aware that Inman was argu­ing at tri­al that Brown was the killer, pros­e­cu­tors with­held from the defense evi­dence that police had found anoth­er home­made ski mask in Brown’s car when he was arrest­ed on drug and weapons charges out­side an Adel super­mar­ket in September 2000. Brown also was arrest­ed for, and plead­ed guilty to, the mur­ders of two oth­er peo­ple dur­ing anoth­er armed rob­bery in an Adel gro­cery store months after the Taco Bell killing.

Having suc­cess­ful­ly hid­den this evi­dence, District Attorney Bob Ellis — lat­er sen­tenced to fed­er­al prison after lying to the FBI over whether he coerced a woman fac­ing crim­i­nal charges to engage in sex­u­al acts with him — then told the jury there was not ​“one scin­til­la of evi­dence” that Brown was involved in the murder. 

The evi­dence that Brown had been appre­hend­ed with a sim­i­lar mask, Graham wrote, ​“would have been inde­pen­dent, reli­able and admis­si­ble evi­dence tend­ing to con­nect Hercules Brown to the mur­der, cor­rob­o­rat­ing the defense’s the­o­ry of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty,” Graham wrote. The prosecution’s mis­con­duct, she ruled, ​“demon­strates the fun­da­men­tal unfair­ness of Mr. Inman’s tri­al, under­mines the Court’s con­fi­dence in the out­come of the tri­al and relat­ed con­vic­tion, and jus­ti­fies grant­i­ng habeas corpus relief.” 

The Roadblocks to Exoneration

Christina Cribbs, Senior Attorney from Georgia Innocence Project, sharply crit­i­cized the sys­temic road­blocks that delayed Inman’s exon­er­a­tion. ​“Despite so much com­pelling infor­ma­tion show­ing that the State con­vict­ed the wrong man, it took a mas­sive team effort that spanned almost a decade to cor­rect this obvi­ous injus­tice and free an inno­cent man from prison,” she said. ​“It sim­ply can­not and should not take so long for the State to cor­rect wrong­ful and unjust con­vic­tions in Georgia.”

Prosecutors and the courts repeat­ed­ly delayed Inman’s exon­er­a­tion despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence of his inno­cence. Although DNA test­ing by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in 2011 exclud­ed Inman and impli­cat­ed Brown, pros­e­cu­tors opposed and Judge McConnell denied Inman’s peti­tion for a new tri­al. Then, in 2014, the Georgia Supreme Court refused to hear Inman’s appeal.

In 2018, in front of a new judge, the Georgia Innocence Project and the Atlanta-based law firm Troutman Pepper filed a new habeas cor­pus peti­tion alleg­ing that Inman was actu­al­ly inno­cent. The Georgia attor­ney general’s office opposed Inman’s peti­tion and moved to dis­miss it. When the tri­al court denied its motion to dis­miss the peti­tion, state pros­e­cu­tors then filed an inter­locu­to­ry appeal to try to pre­vent Inman from pre­sent­ing his evi­dence to the court. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the tri­al court’s rul­ing, and in a remark­able set of con­cur­ring opin­ions, two jus­tices urged the Georgia attor­ney general’s office to end its oppo­si­tion to grant­i­ng Inman a new trial.

Chief Justice Harold Melton wrote that the evi­dence con­nect­ing Brown to the mur­der ​“rais­es some very trou­bling issues” and urged the attor­ney gen­er­al to ​“close­ly re-exam­ine this case in order to ensure that jus­tice is tru­ly being served.”

Justice David E. Nahmias wrote: “ Everyone involved in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem should dread the con­vic­tion and incar­cer­a­tion of inno­cent peo­ple. During my decade of ser­vice on this Court, I have reviewed over 1,500 mur­der cas­es in var­i­ous forms. In those cas­es, tri­al courts, habeas courts, and this Court through appel­late review have occa­sion­al­ly grant­ed new tri­als to defen­dants who appeared not to be guilty of crimes of which they were con­vict­ed. Of the mul­ti­tude of cas­es in which a new tri­al has been denied, Inman’s case is the one that caus­es me the most con­cern that an inno­cent per­son remains con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to serve the rest of his life in prison.

“This is, in short, a case that the Attorney General and his senior staff should review — should per­son­al­ly and ful­ly review – before it goes much fur­ther. The Attorney General should decide whether it is real­ly in the inter­est of jus­tice for the State of Georgia to con­tin­ue fight­ing to block dis­cov­ery regard­ing Inman’s claims and assert­ing pro­ce­dur­al defens­es to pre­vent a hear­ing on the mer­its of those claims — and indeed whether the State should con­tin­ue resist­ing Inman’s efforts to obtain a new tri­al. No one can say for sure what the result of a new tri­al would be, but with the new evi­dence that has been uncov­ered since Inman’s orig­i­nal tri­al — includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the DNA of Hercules Brown, and not of Devonia Inman, on the home­made mask found in the mur­der victim’s stolen car — there is no doubt that a new tri­al would be very dif­fer­ent than the one in which Inman was found guilty.

“Let jus­tice be done.”

Nonetheless, on remand, the attor­ney general’s office con­tin­ued to oppose Inman’s peti­tion for relief and wait­ed the full thir­ty-day appeal peri­od before announc­ing it would not chal­lenge the tri­al court’s grant of relief. With the case returned to local pros­e­cu­tors, the Alapaha Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s office moved to dis­miss the charges against Inman, end­ing his 23-year odyssey through the Georgia judicial system.