The fourth season of the AJC’s award-winning “Breakdown” podcast launched early Monday. “Murder Below the Gnat Line” chronicles a case in which a South Georgia man has been imprisoned 20 years for a murder that he may not have committed.
In the early morning darkness in little Adel, night manager Donna Brown locked up the Taco Bell and carried the evening’s receipts — $1,732 — out to her car. But she never made it. A person with a.44-caliber pistol shot her through the right eye, stole the money bag and took Brown’s black Monte Carlo. The killer dumped the car not far away at an old Pizza Hut.
The police had little in the way of physical evidence: no gun, no fingerprints, no DNA. But the witnesses who came forward during the next several weeks sealed Devonia Inman’s fate. One said she had heard Inman’s voice outside the Taco Bell not long before the shooting; another said Inman had talked about pulling off an armed robbery, and she saw him, pockets stuffed with cash, the day after the murder; still another positively identified Inman as the man who drove up to the abandoned Pizza Hut in Donna Brown’s car.
Twenty years later, much of the case has turned upside down.
And now, a Georgia State University law professor has become convinced that Inman was wrongly convicted. Jessie Cino is determined, against very long odds, to get Inman out of prison, to give him the rest of his life.
The first episode of “Breakdown” was uploaded at 4 a.m. Monday. You can listen to it below or download it free of charge directly from iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast player.
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