A Georgia man who spent 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit is now a free man – just in time for Christmas.
On Monday, December 20, Devonia Inman was released from Augusta State Medical Prison.
His release came a month after a Supreme Court judge granted his request for release from habeas corpus. The District Attorney for the Alapaha Judicial Circuit quickly dismissed all remaining and underlying charges against Inman, formally exonerating him of the 1998 Taco Bell murder.
For more than two decades, Inman has maintained his innocence and denied any involvement.
fall background
In 1998, an Adel’s manager, Georgia Taco Bell, was robbed and shot in the restaurant’s parking lot. The killer stole $1,700 and the victim’s car. Police later found the abandoned car nearby with a distinctive homemade ski mask inside. District Attorney Bob Ellis was the district attorney at the time. He was later sentenced to federal prison following a scandal over whether he had traded sex for favors.
As reported by the Georgia Innocence Project:
At Inman’s 2001 death penalty trial, the state suggested that he wore the ski mask when he shot and killed the victim. Inman’s attorneys attempted to call witnesses to present evidence that another man, Hercules Brown, had actually committed and admitted to the murder.
Worse, while Inman was in prison for over two years awaiting trial, Hercules Brown violently assaulted two people in the community and killed two others and is now serving life in prison without parole.
But the judge at Inman’s trial refused to allow the jury to hear testimony about Brown, and the prosecutor claimed there wasn’t “a shred of evidence” connecting Brown to the Taco Bell murder.
Despite Inman’s alibi and the complete lack of physical evidence connecting him to the crime, Inman was convicted of armed robbery and malicious murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, which meant he would die in prison.
In fact, there was considerable evidence linking Brown rather than Inman to the crime, although all was not known to Inman at the time. Inman later learned that at the time of his trial, the state was indeed withholding evidence linking Hercules Brown to Taco Bell’s murder.
While Inman was in jail awaiting trial, police stopped Brown as he was about to commit a robbery and found a homemade ski mask in his car that resembled the distinctive homemade ski mask used in the Taco Bell murder.
However, the jury that convicted Inman never heard about the mask found in Brown’s car because prosecutors did not disclose the police report describing the mask. Additionally, years after the trial, the Georgia Innocence Project secured DNA testing on the ski mask used in the Taco Bell murder. The results showed that Brown’s DNA – and only his DNA – was on that mask.
In addition, three of the four critical witnesses against Inman recanted their testimony years ago, saying they were pressured or coerced by the police. The one witness who did not recant was paid $5,000 for her alleged eyewitness testimony — a testimony that was directly contradicted by another person who was with her at the time of the crime.
“I spent 23 years behind bars for something I didn’t do,” Devonia Inman said. “It took a very long time to fix the problem even though it was so clear that I wasn’t at fault. I’m glad I can finally go home and I’m grateful to everyone who helped make this possible.”
way to relief
“Despite so much compelling information showing that the state convicted the wrong man, it took massive teamwork spanning almost a decade to right this apparent injustice and free an innocent man from prison,” said Christina Cribbs, Senior Attorney for the Georgia Innocence Project. “It simply cannot and should not take that long for the state to correct false and unfair convictions in Georgia.”
January 2014: After investigating the case and securing DNA tests that revealed Hercules Brown’s DNA on the Taco Bell murder mask, the Georgia Innocence Project, in conjunction with attorneys from Eversheds Sutherland, sought a new trial against Inman.
Judge Buster McConnell – the same judge who presided over Inman’s original death penalty case – heard the new trial motion. GIP and partners presented the new DNA evidence implicating Brown, as well as testimony from another witness at the trial who said police forced him to give false testimony against Inman. However, Judge McConnell denied the motion, ruling that the new evidence was insufficient to warrant a new trial.
Inman then tried to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, but the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.
2016: GIP’s friends at the Troutman Pepper law firm have agreed to take on Inman’s case as lead counsel, with GIP’s attorneys continuing to act as consultants.
January 2018: Troutman Pepper filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Inman, arguing that he was indeed innocent and that his constitutional rights were being violated when, among other things, the state withheld information about the homemade ski mask found in the possession of Hercules Brown would.
The Georgia Attorney General fought to defend the conviction and keep Inman in prison. The AG asked Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit chief judge Kristina Cook Graham to dismiss Inman’s case without a hearing. Judge Graham denied the AG’s motion, ruling that Inman was entitled to a hearing on the merits of his claims. The attorney general then asked the Georgia Supreme Court for permission to appeal Judge Graham’s decision.
2019: The Georgia Supreme Court denied the AG’s appeal request, and in an extraordinary move, then-Presiding Justice David Nahmias and then-Chief Justice Harold Melton each wrote separately to urge the Attorney General to use his discretionary defense of the manifestly unfair conviction set in Inman’s case. Judge Nahmias (who is now Chief Justice) wrote that he regrets that the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear Inman’s appeal in 2014 and that the Supreme Court cannot change that. Judge Nahmias wrote:
“However, prosecutors can always exercise their discretion to seek justice — to do the right thing. Everyone involved in our criminal justice system should fear the conviction and imprisonment of innocent people… Of the multitude of cases in which a new trial has been refused, Inman’s case is the one that concerns me most that an innocent person will be convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison…let justice be done.”
Instead, the AG fought the case for another two years. In June 2021, attorneys for Troutman Pepper presented the evidence of innocence and constitutional violations in a habeas hearing before Judge Graham. The AG again argued that Inman’s habeas petition should be denied.
Judge Graham contradicted the AG and granted Inman’s habeas corpus motion, ordering the state to give him a new trial. She found that Inman’s constitutional rights had been violated, including by the prosecutor’s failure to disclose evidence suggesting that Hercules Brown committed the crime. Any violation, according to Justice Graham, “demonstrates the fundamental unfairness of Mr. Inman’s trial, undermines the court’s confidence in the outcome of the trial and the conviction that would result, and justifies the granting of habeas corpus.”
The AG awaited the 30-day appeal period, which ended on December 16, 2021, and ultimately decided not to appeal. Now that Taco Bell’s murder convictions have been officially vacated, the case reverted to the local district attorney’s office to determine whether to reindict Inman, offer a plea bargain, or dismiss the underlying charges. Alapaha Judicial Circuit Chase Studstill quickly filed a motion to dismiss the underlying charges, which Chief Judicial Clayton Tomlinson granted Monday morning.
[More in depth coverage on the case can be found on The Georgia Innocence Project website]
Legal representation
Inman is currently represented by a team of attorneys from Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP’s Atlanta office, including Tom Reilly, Tiffany Bracewell, Kasia Hebda and Alan Long, who have served on his case pro bono for over five years.
The lawyers said: “We are delighted to see that Devonia and his family are finally getting the justice that so many have fought for so long. We are honored to have played a role in his long overdue discharge and to work at a firm committed to pro bono causes as important as these.”
“The Georgia Attorney General’s decision to delay and defer the Devonia case by two years is not consistent with the positive trends we are seeing across Georgia and the nation. Prosecutors carry great power, and with that comes great responsibility to administer justice, not just seek victory and defend convictions,” said Clare Gilbert, executive director of the Georgia Innocence Project. “Going forward, Georgia’s rule of ethics for prosecutors, Rule 3.8, must follow national guidelines, which would require prosecutors to try to resolve clear innocence cases like that of Devonia Inman.”
23 years after he was jailed for a crime he did not commit, nearly eight years after a court first heard DNA evidence proving his innocence, and two years after Georgia Supreme Court justices ruled the AG had asked for justice in this case, Inman is finally free and officially exonerated.
The Georgia Innocence Project says Inman is en route to California with his family. Because Georgia is one of 13 states that don’t have a statutory indemnity law to provide financial relief when a conviction is found unjust, fundraisers and charities will help Inman get back on its feet — particularly “After Innocence” and “Northern California”. Innocence Project.’ A personal fundraiser was also set up to help Inman and his family. All monies raised at this MightyCause fundraiser will go directly to Inman. They are not tax deductible.
