State of Mississippi v. Sherwood Dywane Brown

Hernando, Mississippi Defendant Shermaond Brown, a 24-year-old African American, was accused of Verline Boyd, age 48, on January 7, 1993.



According to the Mississippi Supreme Court:



"Early Thursday morning, January 7, 1993, five year old Yoichi Boyd went down the road to her grandmother's house to wait for the school bus. Upon entering the house, she discovered the bodies of her aunt and grandmother, Verline and Betty Boyd. When the school bus arrived, she told the bus driver what she had found. The bus driver went back to the house with the child and saw the body of Verline Boyd in the doorway.



The DeSoto County Sheriff's Department received a dispatch at 7:50 a.m. that morning advising them of a murder on Boyd Road in the Eudora Community. Captain Janet Taylor and Lieutenant Tim Roberts arrived at the scene at 8:08 a.m. The front door was open when they arrived, and the house was "totally ransacked." Verline Boyd was lying on the floor in the doorway leading from the porch to the dining room. Upon discovering Betty Boyd's body in the living room, Taylor determined that additional assistance was needed and radioed for backup support. Sheriff James Riley and Captain Johnie Combes soon arrived and they completed their search of the house. It was then that they found the nude body of Evangela Boyd in the laundry room.



Eighty-two year old Betty Boyd died from "multiple chop wounds to the head." Dr. Steven Hayne, the forensic pathologist who performed postmortem examinations on all three victims, testified that the largest of these extended "from the forehead to the chin coursing through the nose and mouth area" and measured nineteen centimeters or approximately seven and one half to eight inches long, and was roughly four inches deep. She also suffered a horizontally-oriented chop wound to the back of the skull, measuring some eight centimeters or nearly four inches wide. Dr. Hayne described some twelve "traumatic findings" or chop wounds to her face, skull and brain, as well as bruises to her head, eyes, chin and hand, and a fractured jaw. He opined that a considerable amount of force was required to produce the injuries she sustained.



Verline Boyd, who was found face-down by the front door, died from multiple chop wounds to the forehead and right posterior aspect of her head, which caused lacerations to her brain. The largest of the head wounds was some five and one half inches long. She suffered injuries to her hands which Dr. Hayne described as "supportive of the concept of a defensive posturing injury; that is, a person who is trying to ward off a blow, in this case a chop wound, by raising one's hand, forearm as well as digits, either right or left or both, usually trying to protect the face as well as the neck and the upper part of the chest."



Thirteen year old Evangela Boyd, like her mother and grandmother, died from multiple chop wounds to her head. The primary wound, to the back of her head, was approximately seven inches long. In addition to the fatal head injuries, Dr. Hayne identified chop wounds as long as four inches on her left shoulder; chop and stab wounds as well as large scrapes on her back; scrapes and abrasions on the right hip; multiple abrasions and lacerations near the right knee; multiple chop wounds to the right forearm and fracture in the ulna and radius of that arm; chop wounds on her right hand, one of which nearly severed her thumb; and lacerations to the fingers on her right had which had nearly cut the fingers in two. Although the girl's nude body was discovered with her bra pulled behind her head, Dr. Hayne found no evidence of sexual assault.



There was a ten to twelve inch long gash in the ceiling of the laundry room where Evangela Boyd was killed. Further, Dr. Hayne testified that the wounds sustained by all three victims could have been caused by "a machete, a hatchet, an ax, a kizer blade or similar type weapons, weapons that would have a relatively sharp edge, would have some significant weight and would provide a broad cutting surface."



Verline Boyd had left her shift as a salad maker at the Piccadilly Cafeteria in the Southland Mall in Whitehaven, Tennessee, at some time between 8:45 and 8:50 p.m. on the night of January 6, 1993. The drive from Whitehaven to Boyd Road was approximately twenty-two-and-one-half miles and took about twenty-five minutes. She was found by the front door, with her keys still in her hand and wearing a jacket.



At the crime scene, investigators focused on bloody shoeprints found on the porch and front door threshold. Mississippi State Highway Patrol Criminal Investigator, Lieutenant Bill Ellis and Scotty Wood, Chief Investigator for the DeSoto County Sheriff's Department, made a periphery examination of the Boyd property. They identified shoeprints consistent with those found on the porch and threshold near Verline Boyd's car and traveling to and from the Boyd residence along a dirt field road leading to Barbee Road, about a quarter of a mile away. Officer Wood testified that they found a print about twenty yards from the Boyd residence, near the road, as well as additional prints going both directions along the dirt path. The shoeprints ultimately led authorities to the home of twenty-four year old Sherwood Brown, where he had been staying with his parents. It was raining at the time and, as Wood testified, it was a race against time to take photographs and make plaster casts of several prints before the heavy rains began.



That afternoon, Sheriff Riley talked by telephone with Brown, who was at work at Enco Materials on Highway 78 in the vicinity of Olive Branch, Mississippi, and told him that authorities wanted to speak with him. When Officers Wood and Ellis arrived at the business a few minutes after 5 p.m., Brown had left. The warehouse manager had given him a ride to the bus station at Shelby Drive and Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis. Wood spotted a shoe print in some dust on the floor of the warehouse where he worked that appeared to match those they had seen at the Boyd house, as well as along the footpath. He later received a phone call from a pawnshop owner that Brown had purchased a gun that day. Lieutenant Ellis testified that they made several fruitless attempts to locate Brown at his wife's house on Shadowline Road in Memphis as well as at his girlfriend's home in Coldwater, Mississippi. He later learned that Brown had gone to the Villa Inn Motel on Highway 61 in South Memphis. Along with Memphis detectives, he went to the motel and "found that a person identified as Sherwood Brown had checked into that motel under the name of Sherwood Jones and gave the Shadowline address." Brown was no longer there.



After Wood and Ellis' unsuccessful efforts to locate Brown, and friends and relatives in the Eudora Community were unable to find him there, DeSoto County authorities contacted the Memphis Police Department, since Brown had more relatives and contacts in Memphis. They met with the city's Homicide Bureau and Tactical Unit on Friday, January 8, 1993, and advised them that Brown was wanted in connection with a triple homicide, that he was armed and had a history of violent behavior, and that because of shoeprints and the large quantity of blood at the scene, his shoes and clothes had possible evidentiary value.



Brown called his friend, James Coleman "Chick" Jones around 6:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon, January 8, 1993. He asked Jones to meet him at the Villa Inn Motel. Jones testified that when he arrived, Brown was not in his room, but hiding around the corner, and explained to him that he had wanted to make sure that Jones wasn't being followed. Jones further stated that Brown told him that he was running from the police. At Brown's request, the two went to pick up Brown's wife, Angela, with Brown hiding in the backseat of the car. After they brought Angela Brown back to her home, Jones and Brown went back to the motel for several hours. He then testified that Brown told him that he had knocked on the door of Mrs. Boyd's house, and when Evangela answered the door, "[t]hey go into another room, start talking and flaunting around and feeling on her or whatever," 1 Betty Boyd was supposed to have been at church, but she was at home and when she saw Brown, they argued and he grabbed "something similar as he described a joe blade" and hit her. Jones recalled that Brown told him:



After that, he continues to flaunt with the little girl. He said he fucked her. She was trying to fight back, so he just beat her some so she was temporarily unconscious, and as she was in the midst of fighting back she was getting cut at the same time.



He then told Jones that he heard a door shut and thought it was one of the Boyd boys. He went to the front door, stood behind it, and when Verline Boyd came in, hit her on the back of the head. After that, he said, Evangela was trying to leave, and he had to stop her, so he just grabbed "whatever he grabbed and just stopped her, cut, her, hatchet or whatever, just he stopped her." He told Jones that he walked home along the path. Jones stated that while they were talking, Brown was very nervous, wild, angry and upset, constantly shaking and smoking cigarettes. At one point, he put a gun to his head. Jones told Brown that if he didn't turn himself in, that he was going to call the sheriff. Jones later called Sheriff Riley and told him that Brown was at the Villa Inn.



Brown was arrested at the Memphis home of his aunt shortly after midnight on January 11, 1993 by officers of the Memphis Tactical Unit. At the time of his arrest, Brown was wearing only his underwear, and because it was a cold, rainy night, pointed out his shoes and overcoat to Officer Thomas Helldorfer. Having been advised of the potential evidentiary value of Brown's shoes and any clothing, his request to wear the items was denied and the shoes and coat, as well as two guns

and an ax found at the house, were taken into custody.



In his statement to Officers Wood and Ellis, made at the Memphis Criminal Justice Center, Brown denied that he had been on Boyd Road the Wednesday night of the murders; rather, he stated that he had arrived at his parents' house at around 8:00 p.m. and had gone straight to bed. He stated that he had smoked some marijuana and drunk some beer. When officers confronted him with corroborated statements from friends he'd been with that night and accused him of lying, he became defensive, admitted that he'd also smoked some crack cocaine and told them that he wasn't admitting anything; they would have to prove it. At the suppression hearing, Brown denied that he had been advised of his rights or that he had signed a waiver of rights, and charged that Woods had started screaming at him, calling him a liar and along with "three or four of them," had whipped him.



Because there was evidence that the victims had struggled with their assailant, Officer Ellis asked Brown to remove his shirt for examination of his upper torso during the interrogation. Wood testified that they observed a cut on his left wrist and one on the little finger of his right hand. Ellis photographed the injuries. In his statement, as well as in his testimony at the suppression hearing, Brown indicated that he had gotten the cut on his wrist at work and the one on his finger while fighting with his girlfriend. At the trial, experts in the area of oral pathology and forensic odontology debated whether the cut on Brown's left wrist could have been a bite mark.



Brown's size twelve Fila running shoes, the threshold of the Boyd home as well as boards taken from the porch, three pieces of broken glass, photographs of shoe prints from the scene and casts made from the impressions in the mud likewise were subjected to expert scrutiny. Geary Kanaskie, an expert in the field of shoeprint comparison for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, focused on the toe design of the left shoe, which corresponded with the bloody prints left on the porch and threshold of the Boyd residence, as well as with the photographs and cast impressions made at the scene. The toe design further corresponded in size with Brown's size twelve Fila running shoes. He indicated that approximately twenty-three of the photographs submitted for his analysis corresponded with Brown's shoes, several showed a different design and others did not reveal a clear design impression. Kanaskie noted that while Fila is one of the top three sellers of running shoes, shoes as large as those submitted for comparison are not big sellers. He further testified that the company has marketed as many as three or four hundred styles of shoes, the design of the sole is unique to each particular line or style.



Joe Errera, a forensic serologist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, tested Brown's Fila running shoes for the presence of blood, as well as the prints left on the metal threshold and wooden porch boards. He explained that he first performed a visual inspection of the item submitted for analysis to determine if there are any stains to be tested. He then performed what he described as "a screening test for the possible presence of blood," followed by a confirmatory test, a chemical test that allows him to absolutely determine that blood is present. He found no evidence of blood on the right shoe. On the left shoe, however, toward the toe and mid-section, he testified that "there were two areas which upon applying the chemical screening test for the possible presence of blood tested positive." Clarifying his efforts at confirmatory testing, he noted that, as distinguished from a stained item that has been left undisturbed, "environmental interactions with an item from temperature and bacteria and actual physical removal of a stain can all come into play to remove blood from an item to the point where my tests cannot specifically detect it."



Brown was indicted by a grand jury of the DeSoto County Circuit Court for the murders July 28, 1994. Counts 1 and 2 of the indictment charged him with killing Betty and Verline Boyd in violation of Miss.Code Ann. § 97-3-19(1)(a), as an habitual offender. Count 3 charged him with the murder of Evangela Boyd, a child under the age of fourteen, while "engaged in the commission of the crime of felonious abuse and/or battery" as defined in § 97-5-39(2), in violation of § 97-3-19(2)(f), also as an habitual offender. He was arraigned on August 19, 1994 in the Circuit Court of DeSoto County.



Brown's motion for change of venue was granted on February 24, 1995, transferring the jury selection proceedings to Lafayette County. The actual trial was held in March of 1995 in DeSoto County. He was found guilty on all three charges. Considering the capital murder charges arising from the death of Evangela Boyd, the jury unanimously found that the aggravating circumstances of:



a) The Capital Murder was committed by a person under sentence of imprisonment.



b) The defendant was previously convicted of another capital offense or a felony involving the use of [sic] threat of violence to the person.



c) The capital offense was committed while the defendant was engaged in the commission of a felonious abuse and/or battery of a child.



d) The capital offense was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest.



e) The capital offense was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.



are sufficient to impose the death penalty and that there are insufficient mitigating circumstances to outweigh to outweigh [sic] the aggravating circumstances; and we unanimously find that the Defendant should suffer death."



See: Brown v. State, 690 So.2nd 276 (Miss. 1996).

Defendant was found guilty and was sentenced to on April 7, 1995.



On Count 1, Brown was ordered to serve a life sentence in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections pursuant to Miss.Code Ann. § 99-19-81, without eligibility for parole or other reduction of sentence, consecutively with revoked time in Causes No. 4966 and 5324 in the Circuit Court of DeSoto County, and, on Count 2, a life sentence, also pursuant to § 99-19-81, to run consecutively with the sentence for Count1.



All counts were affirmed by the Mississippi Supreme Court on December 12, 1996.



The Supreme Court declined to review Brown's case in 1997.



In 2002, it was learned that Dr. West has been suspended by the American Board of Forensic Odontolgy for misrepresenting evidence and testifying outside his field of expertise.



In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Atkins v. Virginia) that executing the intellectually-disabled was unconstitutional, but left the process of determining intellectual disability to the trial courts.



In 2003, an application for post-conviction relief was filled claiming that he as ineligible for the death penalty because he was intellectually disabled.



The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Brown's application for post-conviction relief On June 17, 2004.



In addition, bite mark evidence was slowly discredited by the Court. While it was once used extensively in criminal investigations, numerous studies and reports have raised serious concerns about its reliability and accuracy.



In 2012 the Mississippi Supreme Court granted Defendant's request for DNA testing. The blood on the sneaker sole and the blood on the partial shoeprint were not related and one sample was male and the other female. Brown's DNA was not found on any of the samples from the crime scene. The DNA samples did show that the DNA came from an unidentified male.



In 2013, a circuit court judge ruled that Brown was not intellectually disabled.





Other forensic evidence admitted by the trial court was discredited.



In October 2017, the Mississippi Supreme Court granted Brown's motion for a new trial.



On August 24, 2021, the Prosecutor's office dismissed the charges against Brown.



In July 2016, Brown's lawyer filed a to vacate Brown's conviction.



Brown was released from prison after having served 26 years on death row.



It is unknown if he was compensated in any way for having been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.

Dr. Harrry Mincer, Ken Gill, Geary Kanaskie

Dr. Richard Souviron, Dr. Michael West

Brown as convicted based on false forensic evidence testimony and perjured testimony. This case is proof positive that the criminal justice system in Mississippi is very flawed and in this case convicted a man who was innocent and wrongfully sentenced him to death. The death penalty has never been, is not now, and never will be good public policy.