Hilarie Burton Morgan Is Seeking Your Help In Bringing Justice To Devonia Inman And His Family

As the Hosting Advocate and Executive Producer of True Crime Story: It Couldn’t Happen Here, Hilarie Burton Morgan has seen her fair share of real-life cases that deserve another look from law enforcement and the judicial system. However, there is one specific case right now that Hilarie is adamant about seeing justice prevail, knowing that the clock is ticking for Devonia Inman.

Devonia’s case in Adel, Georgia was the first episode in Hilarie’s It Couldn’t Happen Here documentary storytelling series, which premiered this past September on SundanceTV and AMC+ . The small, friendly town in south central Georgia was shaken to its core in September 1998 when a woman by the name of Donna Brown was murdered in the Taco Bell parking lot where she worked as the night manager. Donna was carrying a bank bag full of cash when she was confronted by a thief, ultimately getting shot in the head as the perpetrator ran off with the money and Donna’s car.

Being a small town that had never experienced such a horrific event before, the local authorities quickly called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to help them handle the homicide case and track down a suspect. At the time, Devonia was already rather known by local authorities. Only 20 years old then, Devonia was known by Adel law enforcement having a minor in possession, he was known to have made threats to his girlfriend before, and he allegedly once pulled a gun on a man.

When the GBI had learned of Devonia’s previous run-ins with the law, they began to center their case around Devonia as a possible suspect. Even though Devonia and his girlfriend gave authorities similar statements of him being at her place the entire night of the murder and all the way through the following morning, witnesses began coming forward, including a Taco Bell employee saying they heard Devonia’s voice outside at the scene of the crime, as well as a newspaper carrier saying they saw Devonia later that evening driving Donna’s car.

When Donna’s car was found abandoned two blocks away from the Taco Bell, a makeshift ski mask was left in the car, made simply out of sweatpants with two holes cut out for eyes. DNA on the mask was not initially tested, leaving merely the statements of some self-proclaimed witnesses as the strongest case against Devonia.

In December 1998, only two months after Donna’s murder, Devonia was sent to state prison, where fellow inmate Kwame Spaulding would soon tell authorities that Devonia had confessed to him to the murder of Donna Brown while they were behind bars together.

Even though several of the witnesses from the night of the September 1998 murder would eventually recant their witness accounts of either seeing or hearing Devonia that night, without DNA testing occurring at the crime scene or within Donna’s car, Devonia was found guilty of murder, convicted, and sentenced in June 2021 to life in prison.

While Devonia has been serving his sentence, Kwame has also since come forward, saying Devonia’s homicidal confession to him never actually happened, revealing that he was coerced by authorities into making the false statement, a damaging claim that indisputably hurt Devonia’s chances of being found innocent during his initial trial.

Within the prison walls, Devonia decided to write a letter to The Innocence Project, pleading for their assistance in helping him clear his name for a crime he says he did not commit. The Innocence Project decided to take on Devonia’s case, requesting and then receiving approval to test the DNA on the makeshift ski mask left behind in Donna’s car. GBI even agreed to run the DNA results through their database and the results came back not with DNA from Devonia but from a local convicted murderer by the name of Hercules Brown.

Just over two years after Donna’s death, Hercules plead guilty to the brutal murders of two other Adel residents, Caroll Bennet and Rebecca Browning. Hercules had also once worked with Donna at the Taco Bell and as mentioned in Hilarie’s True Crime Story episode, Devonia’s cousin Tekeisha Pickett-Johnson, who was also a former Taco Bell employee, recalls Hercules trying to ineffectively persuade her to help him rob the Taco Bell, prior to the murderous evening.

“Hercules Brown was asked to be interviewed by the court and he plead the fifth,” Hilarie says of recent updates in Devonia’s case. “The judge, this new judge, she referred to that as an adverse inference, meaning that if Hercules Brown was to ever be tried for the death of Donna Brown, that pleading the fifth couldn’t be used against him but in this case, by him staying quiet because Devonia is sitting in prison for it, they view that as an admission of guilt. So, it allowed for an evidentiary hearing, where they went and they looked at all the evidence. They looked at the performance from the defense attorneys during the first trial and the first appeal. This new judge has called for a new trial for Devonia, which is incredible because with that DNA evidence, there’s no way Devonia would be convicted in a court now. 20 years ago, it was withheld.”

Hilarie goes on to tell me that the Attorney General of Georgia Christopher Carr is currently within a 30-day period to appeal the new judge’s ruling of a new trial for Devonia. If Carr does not appeal, Hilarie says it will get kicked back to Adel’s Cook County where they will decide whether or not they are going to prepare for a whole new trial.

“In a perfect world, the state will say You know what, you’re free to go. I think that’s the most appropriate thing to do. My hopes is that as we continue to look at cases, people get more and more comfortable saying We can do better. We can do better in 2021 than we did in 2000. That’s a really healthy way to look at any profession but especially anything pertaining to the judicial system.”

Up to today, Devonia has now spent a total of 23 years behind bars, missing out on his young adult life and his lost time with a family that continues to support him. “This young man needs to come home to his mother Dinah and his dad David and his son who he has never gotten to be with outside of prison, who’s a grown man now,” Hilarie continues. “He’s a grandfather now! He went in [to prison] as a kid and he’s a grandfather now. He absolutely deserves the opportunity to live a life. It will always be marred by what has happened, but he still deserves the chapters that he can still have. It’s so hard to even fathom trying to make up for it, but he deserves to be with his family and if it can happen quickly, all the better.”

When I asked Hilarie why she believes Devonia’s case and story has not received the major media attention like the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse and the trial surrounding the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, she says, “Honestly, I don’t know. I think we’re so close to it being a happy ending that there’s a lot of people holding their breath. We’re so used to tragedy at this point. My hope is that there’s enough positive support from the community that this is a very easy decision for the Attorney General of Georgia.”

As for what the public can do right now to show their support for Devonia, Hilarie mentions that there is a petition people can sign at Change.org that calls for his release from prison. She also encourages the public to send letters to the Attorney General’s office in Georgia, positively encouraging him to make the right decision. She also suggests that the public get involved in their own state’s Innocence Project.

As for Devonia’s family and specifically his parents, Dinah and David Ray, I asked Hilarie what she would want to say to them during this time, when all they can do now is wait for a fair decision to be made and hope for the best. Hilarie pauses to take a deep breath and says, “You’re going to make me cry. I got to spend so much time with his mother, and as a mother, what she has had to deal with is a sentence as harsh as his. I cannot imagine what she has endured. And his father, as well. His father is a dignified, strong man and has been very open about the emotional toll this has taken on their family and I respect those two so much. As much as I want this for Devonia, I want it for them. I want it for all of his family who continue to live in Adel, Georgia. I got to go to his longtime, multi-generational family home and meet all his aunts & uncles and his cousins. They’ve all continued to live in that town because they love it there. They see the beauty in that town and they support it, but a big part of that town betrayed them and I want them to have their home back and I want them to have that community support. I want Devonia to have all the resources he needs to get his life back because he deserves it.”