Black Man Exonerated and Released from Death Row 23 Years After Wrongful Conviction for Murder of White Woman. Prosecution Withheld Records/Physical Evidence that Another Man Committed the Crime

From [DPIC] 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.

He was convicted of murdering Donna Brown, a white woman.

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.”