EDITOR’S NOTE: In late December 2021, Devonia Inman was exonerated of the conviction that sent him to prison. He was freed after wrongly being imprisoned for 23 years.

ADEL — A new true-crime documentary series hitting TV screens next week starts off with a look at a 20-year-old Adel murder case.

“True Crime Story: It Couldn’t Happen Here” debuts 10 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, on the SundanceTV channel.

The first episode deals with the death of Donna Brown, the manager of a Taco Bell in Adel who was killed in September 1998, said Chad Campbell, a spokesman for AMC Networks, which operates SundanceTV.

The description of the episode given on SundanceTV’s website reads “A man is charged with a brutal murder; DNA evidence may point to another man as the real killer.”

In 2001, Devonia Tyrone Inman was convicted of killing Brown and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Inman is an inmate at Hays State Prison, located in Chattooga County.

In June of this year, Katrina Cook Graham, chief judge of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, issued an “order drawing adverse inference” named another state inmate as the killer. 

The other inmate was an employee at the Taco Bell; however, the trial court would not allow the jury to hear that and would not allow Inman to argue that the other man was the guilty party, the order showed.

The testimony of three would-be witnesses Inman’s lawyer wanted to call was also denied by the trial court, according to appeals court documents.

A decade later, DNA evidence taken from a makeshift ski mask found in Donna Brown’s car matched the other inmate, the judge’s order said.

A key portion of Judge Graham’s order involves testimony by the other inmate that never occurred. The other inmate was sentenced to life in prison for an unrelated double murder in Adel on Nov. 10, 2000, and remains in Ware State Prison, state prison records show.

On July 22, 2019, the Chattooga County Superior Court ordered the other inmate to give testimony via video conferencing in Donna Brown’s death, the order said. “At the noticed date and time, (he) failed and refused to appear,” according to Graham’s order.

“(His) willingness to face contempt and disciplinary action father than provide testimony — or even invoke his Fifth Amendment rights — further justifies this Court drawing an adverse inference here,” Graham said in the order.

An “adverse inference” is a legal inference adverse to the concerned party made from that party’s silence or the absence of requested evidence, according to uslegal.com.

“The Court … draws an adverse inference as the finder of fact in this proceeding that (he) committed the murder of Donna Brown,” the order concludes.

The “True Crime Story” Adel episode will be repeated at 3 a.m. and 12 p.m. Friday, Sept. 10, 1 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 12, and 12 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16, SundanceTV schedules show.

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.