Dennis A. Perry, 59, was convicted in the 2003 murders of Harold and Thelma Swain. He has been at large since July 2020 after a judge overturned the conviction.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Georgia man sentenced to life in prison for a 1985 double murder has been awarded over a million dollars by the state.
Dennis A. Perry, 59, was convicted in the 2003 murders of Harold and Thelma Swain. He has been at large since July 2020 after a judge overturned his original conviction and granted him a new trial.
The charges against Perry were officially dropped in July 2021.
HR 593 was passed Tuesday, authorizing a $1.2 million payout to Perry in compensation for his time in prison.
After an initial payment of $307,500.00, the remainder of this amount is to be paid in the form of an annuity in equal monthly installments over a 20-year period.
However, before any money can be paid to Perry, the resolution has yet to be signed by Governor Kemp, which is expected of him.
What happened?
On March 11, 1985, Harold and Thelma Swain attended a meeting at the Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Waverly.
One of the attendees apologized around 9 p.m. and found someone in the antechamber of the church, according to a press release from the Brunswick Judicial Circuit.
The man told the woman he needed to speak to 66-year-old Harold Swain. The woman left when Swain was about to meet the man. Witnesses heard a scuffle and then four shots, the press release said.
Thelma Swain, 63, ran into the anteroom and was also shot, according to the court. The killer escaped from the building shortly thereafter.
The case eventually went cold but was reopened in 1998, leading to the arrest of Dennis Perry. Although Perry maintained his innocence, he was still convicted of murder. To avoid the death penalty, Perry accepted a deal in which he waived his right to appeal directly, according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
What has changed?
During the original 1985 investigation, detectives found a pair of glasses with hair in the hinges that they believed belonged to the killer, the Brunswick Judicial Circuit says. While DNA testing in 2003 showed the hair didn’t belong to Perry, he was still convicted. The Georgia Innocence Project says Perry’s conviction was largely based on circumstantial evidence and character evidence.
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The breakthrough in the case came in 2018 when the Perry case became the subject of the podcast Undisclosed. The podcast thoroughly investigated the case and identified an alternate suspect, according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
When the DNA was tested against a family member of the alternate suspect, it was a match.
How was he exonerated?
In 2020, the Georgia Innocence Project and King & Spalding, the law firm representing Perry, presented the evidence in court, but then-Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson refused to give her consent to a new trial.
Based on evidence presented by Perry’s legal team, Chief Justice of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit Stephen Scarlet reversed the conviction, freed Perry and granted him a new trial in July 2020.
With a new district attorney on the case, the charges were officially dropped in July 2021.
After two decades behind bars, Perry was officially exonerated of the crime.
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