Jason, I've been thinking a lot about post incarceration, and I'm wondering if you have thought about people getting released from prison, particularly people who were wrongfully convicted, and how they adapt once they're out.
You Know, My thing, Maggie, is that I think that the overwhelming majority of people coming out of prison, innocent or guilty, all they need is a chance, right, and if you open that door a crack, they're going to go marching through it and they're going to, you know, do the best they can do with the time they have.
It's a lot more to it and just being free, because the prison part it was hard, but it's not harder than being thrown back into a big old ocean and you don't know what's in it or what's there. No more.
From Lava for Good. This is wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling today Davonna Inman. In the early morning of September nineteenth, nineteen ninety eight, Donna Brown closed up a taco bell in adel Georgia. She was walking through the parking lot to her car carrying cash she needed to deposit for work when she was robbed and shot dead almost immediately. Twenty year old Davanna Inman became a suspect when his girlfriend's sister told police Davonna had come over that night
with a whole lot of money. Davgna had an alibi, though he was with his family, including his grandmother and girlfriend, at the time of the murder, but soon when other people came forward implicating Davanna, and he was arrested and charged with the murder of Donna Brown. He faced the death penalty. After a flimsy trial at best, Davonna was
convicted of murder. Years later, DNA evidence would exonerate him and identify the true killer, but that was only after a decade of legal battles with the Attorney General, who sought to uphold his conviction. Still, Davonna is forgiving of him and of others who sought the death penalty.
I forget him too, because everybody deserves mercy, even the people that you think are bad. You know, they had to forgive people for things that they do. My name is Devona Tarone Emmon, and I was incarcerated for twenty three years for something that I didn't do.
The oldest of four kids, Davanna Inman, was born on his grandparents couch in Adel, Georgia on August twentieth, nineteen seventy eight. Adel is a small town of about five thousand people in rural Georgia close to the Panhandle of Florida and Tallahassee.
Devgna was a happy kid, uh, silly kid. You know, love showing off, love dressing up.
This is Davagna's mom, Dinah.
He was a loving Karen person who you know. He would do anything for just about anybody.
When Davanne was a toddler, his parents divorced and he moved with his mom to Sacramento, California. His mom, Dinah, remarried a military man named David Ray, who raised Davongna like his own son. Here's David.
I'm remembering the most about the birthday parties. He always, no matter what, he wanted to be the center attention, even if it wasn't his birthday. But we just love having fun and just open up gifts and.
Eating cake.
Little Divanna dreamed of being in the military, just like his stepdad, who was stationed in the Army.
I liked to dress up and play army all the time.
Yes, he was putting on my big clothing. Yes, and we used to just like go out and play with war and he really liked that.
I can picture him just like as a little boy, dressing up in military clothes. Were you proud of him? Did you want him to go into the military?
Yes, I was fine with it. I ain't gonna say I wanted him to, but he wanted to.
Davagna also dreamt of doing some kind of computer technician or mechanic work. His mom would see him putting his mechanical mind to work on his dirt bikes. He liked to ride them around and have fun and.
Take him apart and see how they come apart and try to put them back together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it didn't. He put them back together sometimes sometimes he did.
Devonna would still travel back and forth to Adell on occasion, and in nineteen ninety seven had a son with a woman from Adell. He named him Travensky. As Divonna got older, he started running with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble in Sacramento, petty crimes like car theft. Eventually, Dinah had enough and send him back to adel to live with his grandmother. But Davonna's time with his grandmother was short lived. It was only a month and a half after he got back to Adell that he would be
arrested for murder. In the early morning of September nineteenth, nineteen ninety eight, Donna Brown was closing up a Taco bell in Ado. Donna was forty years old, a single mother with a seven year old son. It was only her second day as the new manager. Around two am, Donna was walking through the parking lot to her car. She was carrying over seventeen hundred dollars in cash she was going to deposit at a bank when she was robbed at gunpoint. She was fatally shot. The killer took
off with her money and her car. Davanna at the time, he was with his family, including his grandmother and his girlfriend, Christie. Since Adell was a small town with limited resources, the police department was ill equipped to deal with the homicide, so they called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the GBI for help. Two days later, Davanna was picked up for questioning in Donna Brown's murder, and he was held on an unrelated charge. Investigators eventually found Donna's car abandoned
in a pizza Hut parking lot. Inside the car was crucial evidence that police initially did not collect, but we'll get to that later.
Both the GBI and local law enforcement sort of sweep the town and start asking a whole bunch of questions.
This is attorney Jessica Sino. She's not Devonya's attorney, but she's his friend and advocate. She came across Davanna's case in twenty fifteen while visiting the offices of the Georgia Innocence Project. Needing fresh eyes on the case, Jessica gathered her students from Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta, and they dove in. After looking it over, Jessica was convinced that Davonna was innocent.
To me, the case represented this perfect storm of everything that could possibly go wrong in a case.
Jessica says that right after Donna Brown's murder, the police and GBI canvassed the town and started asking questions. They eventually wound up talking to what Jessica calls a quote frequent flyer.
Meaning authorities know her very well well. She's probably served as a confidential informant on different individuals. At a certain point, and she tells them, you know, you need to talk to Devanna Inman.
This woman's name was Marquetta Thomas, the sister of Davanna's girlfriend, Christy. Marquetta told police that Davgna came to her home with an unusually large amount of cash the night of the homicide.
So that right there sort of seals Devanna's faith.
Police also interviewed employees at the Taco Bell where Donna worked, including a woman named Larsia Chapman. Larsia left work early that night and claimed not to have seen anything, but a month later her story changed. Larissa now told police that she had seen someone hiding in the bushes outside of the restaurant and that she recognized that person as Devonna.
So now you know, you've got Marquetta Thomas, who puts Devanna, you know, having the money from the robbery and you know, essentially confessing to to the crime to her at least intimating that he did the Taco Bell thing. And then you have Luritia Chapman, who puts him at the scene of the crime. So Devanna is swiftly arrested.
After his arrest, months passed without any indictment, but then two other key witnesses came forward.
One is a woman named Virginia Tatum, and she is a newspaper delivery person. She gives a statement to the police, later testifying to the same in court that on the night of the crime, she saw somebody driving Donna Brown's car across that inner state from the Taco Bell to the Pizza Hut, and it whips around the corner at high speed at like two in the morning. But she can state with absolute, absolute certainty that the driver of
the car is Devanna Emmon. She could see down to the detail of the earring in his ear, a necklace around his neck.
Jessica leaves Virginia was motivated to come forward by a newspaper ad offering a five thousand dollars reward for information leading to the arrest. Her story places Davonna in the victim's car, transporting it from Taco Bell to Pizza Hut. Last, but not Lease, someone who had been incarcerated alongside Davonna comes forward.
Ben says that Devonna confessed to him. So now we've got a jailhouse snitch.
That man's name was Kwame Spalding.
So you've got Marquetta Thomas Laritia Chapman. The jailhouse snitch and You've got Virginia Tatum all linking Davona to the crime.
On January eleventh, nineteen ninety nine, almost exactly four months after Donna Brown was killed, Devonia Inman is indicted for armed robbery, theft, illegal possession of a firearm, and capital murder. This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. On June eleventh, two thousand and one, over two years since he was arrested, Davanna's trial began. The prosecutor was da bob Ellis, who sought the death penalty against Davonna.
Interestingly enough, this sounds like an AIRTI case for the prosecution. The problem is that once the case actually starts to get going, it falls into pieces like it's in shambles.
On the stand. Two of the prosecution's witnesses recanted their stories. Marquetta Thomas, the sister of Davanna's girlfriend, who said she'd seen Davanna with a lot of cash the night of the murder, and Lursia Chapman, who said she saw Devanna in the bushes at Taco Bell. Marquetta admits that she made up her story because she disapproved of the relationship Divonna had with her sister, and Laricia says officers pressured her, actually threatening to take her child away if she did
not implicate Devonna in the crime. So, with no physical evidence against Divanya, the prosecution now had just the statement of Virginia Tatum.
And apparently has you know, superheroes style eyesight to be able to describe the level of detail of a car going around a corner at like thirty five miles an.
Hour, and the testimony of Kwame Spaulding, the jailhouse informant who said Davonnya had can Fest to him. Kwalme was given a deal to testify a lighter sentence, and this was not disclosed to the defense or the jury. Davagna's attorney, Melinda Ryles, presented Davgna's alibi that he was with his grandmother and girlfriend at the time of the murder, but it wasn't enough. Davigna was swiftly convicted, but the jury did not give him the death penalty.
They decide for life without opportunity for parole, which I've spoken to a few of the jurors on the original case and asked the exact question, which is, why didn't you give him the death penalty, to which both of them replied, well, we thought he might not be guilty, so we didn't want to sentence him to death just in case.
Which shows they had reasonable doubt. If the jury has doubt, they are instructed not to convict. Yet despite that, and despite Davangna pleading his innocence, they did.
Nobody would believe me. Whatcept close family, my mom, my dad, my auntie, and that's about it. Everybody else either knew the truth and was afraid to do something about it or just didn't care.
How does that feel?
Depressing? Sad in a way because you could have stopped something, you know, a long.
Time ago before you were arrested. Have you ever thought about wrongful convictions?
Oh? Is you never think something like that would happen.
Davonna was twenty three years old when he was sentenced to prison. He was the oldest of his siblings, but still his mother's baby boy.
I felt like my life was destroyed. You know, you took my child away from me, and I felt there was nothing I could do, didn't know who to turn to. I mean, the whole family was in disbelief. We couldn't believe it.
During his first years in prison, Davagna passed his time by appealing the conviction, but his appeals were unsuccessful.
Because the one thing we know about the criminal justice system is that it is absolutely designed to keep you in prison once you have been found guilty, right that whole presumption of innocence is gone. So trying to overturn a conviction is an incredibly high, if not impossible bar.
Davanna says he was prepared to die in prison. Even watching TV, one of the only luxuries incarcerated people have, reminded him of his bleak reality.
When you have your life took in away, it's like you can't do those things no more. So, it's like you try to forget about, forget about a life that you could have had versus the life that you have. Focus your mind on what's surrounding you, because four walls can drive you crazy. The only way he can drive you crazy if you're thinking about what the world is doing.
However, Devgna persisted. He continued to reach out to any innocence organizations he could find for assistance. Eventually, nearly ten years after his conviction, Divonna heard back from the Georgia Innocence Project and they wanted to help. Now, innocence projects usually have a fairly high bar for accepting cases. Often that means being a case where DNA is able to prove someone's innocence conclusively and at the same time possibly
find the true perpetrator. But there was no DNA used to convict Davonna, So you might be wondering why did the Georgia Innocence Project take it. Well, actually there was DNA evidence, but it wasn't discovered until years after Devgna's conviction. When Donna Brown's car was found in the Pizza Hut parking lot and returned to her family, they found something inside a makeshift mask made from the leg of a pair of sweatpants with two eye holes cut into it
that police never collected. The Georgia Innocence Project jumped on this new evidence as a potential source of DNA. In twenty ten, Devonnya's attorneys from the Georgia Innocence Project requested DNA testing of the mask, and it was granted.
The DNA came out. I already knew that it was going to be mine. I wanted to see the faces of the people who said it was me and what they would look like. Would they look at me, you know, and look me in the eyes, you know, and you don't really have to say anything. You could just look me in the eyes in it and tell itself of how you feel, you know. I mean, I gotta be a hard thing to live with, you know, sending somebody to prison for something they didn't do.
The DNA actually came back with a match to a man named Hercules Brown. In fact, at trial, Davanna's attorneys fought and were denied the opportunity to present Hercules Brown as an alternate suspect because Brown had already been on the radar of Devanna's team even before trial that he was the true killer of Donna Brown. And that's thanks to to witness testimonies saying he was talking about the murder.
You know, they uncover various statements from witnesses who say that Hercules admitted to killing Donna Brown. And here's the thing. He worked at Taco Bell with Donna Brown and was an employee there. And one of the former employees of Taco Bell wanted to.
Testify in Devanya's trial, and her statement basically was that, you know, before the Taco Bell crime occurred, Hercules approached her with a scheme to rob it, basically.
An inside job, and they would split the money. And she said absolutely not, and she actually quit to avoid dealing with Hercules. Her replacement is Donna Brown.
Now, ten years after Devanna's conviction, the DNA comes back linking Hercules Brown to Donna Brown's murder. Devanya's mom, Dina, remembers getting the news. She was at lunch with David, her husband, and.
We just started screaming and crying, you know, and we just knew he was coming home.
But that didn't happen. Instead, motions had to be filed for a new trial, which could take another few years. In twenty fourteen, Devanna's request was denied, then another motion was filed followed by another denial.
It was like one let down another let down. We were just couldn't believe that he wasn't coming home.
What was that like to wait for so long when we knew at that point for sure you didn't do this by DNA.
I guess it was like sad in a way, but it was more anger because it's like you didn't take long to put me here, but you want to take long to let me free when I prove my innoses. So I feel like it was it was wrong.
Meanwhile, the real killer was still free to commit crimes, including the one that put Hercules Brown as a potential perpetrator in the mind of Devagna's defense.
At the end of two thousand, there is a heinous crime in this town and two beloved members who run this convenience store in adel are brutally murdered and beaten to death with baseball bats. Two people who perpetrate the crime are seen fleeing the scene in broad daylight, and they are quickly identified and arrested, and.
One of those individuals was Hercules Brown.
Had they arrested Hercules originally for the taco bell crime. There are at least two people who would still be alive today, like the most brutal murder that town had ever seen would not have happened if they had originally arrested the right person. And there's a third murder that Hercules has been linked to that still remains unsolved today.
Devgna waited and waited for good news. By twenty eighteen, he had been imprisoned for nearly two decades, and for ten of those years, this new DNA evidence implicating another person for the crime he had been convicted of was being ignored. So Devanna remained trapped in prison because every time his attorney's filed a motion for a new trial based on the DNA evidence, Attorney General Chris Carr would
oppose and defend the conviction. But then, in a surprising move, Presiding Justice David Namius and then Chief Justice Harald Melton both wrote legal opinions urging Attorney General car to stop defending Devannya's conviction. Namias wrote, quote, 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. Finally, in twenty
twenty one, Davannia was granted an evidentiary hearing. A few months later, his conviction was vacated and he was granted a new trial. By this time, by the way, one of the prosecutors in Devanna's case back in two thousand and one, Bob Ellis, had been indicted and disbarred for sleeping with a confidential informant.
The other prosecutor is indicted on federal drug charges eventually and ends up moving to Alabama. And then one of the jurors had some sort of relationship where if one of the witnesses, like he had hired her for exotic dancing, and you know, still gets to stay on the jury. Like you just can't. You can't write this in a fiction book because it's unbelievable.
And a third witness, the jail house informant, Kwame Spalding, had also recanted. The case against Avanya had completely fallen apart. Attorney General Carr finally stopped upholding the conviction, and eventually Devanna's charges were dismissed. On December twentieth, twenty twenty one, Davanna walked out of prison a free man. So when he did come home and you got that news, did you think it was going to be like this?
No?
I didn't.
I thought, I don't know.
I was asking Davanya's mom about his sadness and depression. You can hear it in his voice. The happy, fun center of attention kid is parents described is no more. He's withdrawn, soft spoken, and looked like he had tears in his eyes the whole time we spoke.
I mean, I often wonder when he comes home, will his memories be of all the fun things we did as a family, or would they be of his prison life. But I thought he would get home and it, you know, we'd all get back to this big, happy family that couldn't be, that's always together.
But Dinah's dreams of everything going back to normal wouldn't come true. Divagna came home a broken man.
It's just everybody feels I'm just supposed to be happy because you're out of prison. Well that isn't a real scenario or real you know, feeling, Yeah, you're happy to be out, but you're not. But the things that you're going through is even more saddered.
What has that done to you?
Sleepless I have to be really tired to go to sleep, So I might be up for two three days and then go to sleep, because it's just like you'll remember certain things that happen, or when somebody got stabbed, or you have like flashbacks of it seeing it and it wakes you up, or you know, are you talking your sleep or whatever, and.
You're still doing that outside of prison.
It's slow down now, But yeah, I just feel like being in there for so long, it's like you're accustomed to one way. So when you come out here, people just misunderstand because they don't know what you've been through or what you know, what I mean, So it kind of seems like they seem weird to you, and you seem weird to them.
Jessica Casino believes that the years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit has taken a toll on Devanna's mental health.
You know, you've spent twenty three years in a prison system where every piece of your life is scripted. You can't do anything without the permission of the guards. You know, you have to navigate other prisoners. I mean, it was a traumatic experience. He had a very difficult time in the prison system. He's coming out into a world that he doesn't know and to a family you know that will then support him to pieces, but at the same time, it's a family that has grown without him.
At the moment, Devanya's focused more on picking up the pieces of his life. He works at FedEx now, but he says it's the interpersonal relationships that are the hardest to navigate. Given how people he knew, like his then girlfriend's sister Marquetta, had lied about him, it is understandable that he would struggle with trusting others, and Devagna has had a lot of relationships to navigate, especially the one with his son Trevensky.
So what's that like to now have this new responsibility of being a dad to a twenty something year old What are some of the what are some of the hardships you guys.
Have me being occupied, you know, like with the daily stuff that I be wanting to do and having to you know, talk to him or whatever, because he'd be wanting to talk and stuff like that. But I'll be busy a lot. I go to work and you know, you can't really you really just don't want to get on the phone, Like who wants to just be on the phone all day.
Davanna got his driver's license right after getting out of prison and says driving is his favorite thing to do right now, the freedom to just get out and explore wherever he wants without permission.
I think the most goodest feeling is walking outside in the middle of the night and get in the car and just going somewhere.
Davanna says he's been all over in just a few months, including to Richmond, San Francisco, and Reno. He says he'd like to get his someday, but is having difficulties signing up without proper documentation after twenty three years in prison. He'd also like to mend the relationship with his son once he settles down more now that he has his freedom. Davanna wants people to be aware of the shortcomings of our criminal justice system and of the needed reform to help individuals with their reentry.
It's a lot more to it and just being free. It's a lot more to it than just helping someone get out prison for something that they didn't do. You can't just stop and Okay, now our job is done, because it's even bigger task than the prison. Thing. You know, is becoming you know, accepted back into a society on
both parties. You know the world and you and people should pay more attention to that than the past or what you had to overcome, because the prison part it was hard, but it's not harder than being thrown back into a big old ocean and you don't know what's in it or what's there no more.
If you want to help Davanna, please go to mightycause dot com and search Davonna Inman. Davanna is seeking funds to help get back on his feet next time. On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Faye Jacobs.
They arrested me and charge me with capital felay murder and set my bun at one million dollars. Okay, I'm sixteen, and I'm like, I had never been to jail before in my life, and so I'm scared. I'm very scared.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
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