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In July 2002, former DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey was convicted of ordering his successor Derwin Brown’s assassination.
The latter, 46, was the Sheriff-elect and was gunned down in his driveway three days before he was scheduled to start office in December 2000. Dorsey was charged with the killing after one of the co-conspirators served as an informant in exchange for a plea deal.
Sidney Dorsey was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his successor and to 23 years for corruption. It was alleged that he feared that Brown's campaign to eradicate corruption in the office would reveal his decades-long misconduct. Dorsey is currently serving time at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in unincorporated Butts County.
ID's The Real Murders of Atlanta is slated to revisit the much-talked-about case of Derwin Brown’s assassination in an episode titled Deadly Election, which will air on Friday, March 24, at 9:00 pm ET Here's the synopsis for the upcoming episode:
"The newly elected Dekalb County sheriff is murdered just days before taking office; when the task force digs into who would kill such a decorated public figure, they uncover a chilling conspiracy that shakes Atlanta law enforcement to its core."
Former DeKalb County Sidney Dorsey was found guilty of murder and racketeering on 11 other charges
Sidney Dorsey, a former sheriff, was found guilty on July 11, 2002, of orchestrating the murder of his successor Derwin Brown, who was tragically shot in his driveway after winning the election on a pledge to reform the department and eradicate corruption within the offices.
Brown, who had successfully beaten Dorsey a few months earlier in a contentious runoff election for sheriff of DeKalb County, was killed on December 15, 2000. The jury deliberated for more than two days before reaching a guilty verdict.
According to reports, Dorsey, 62, was found guilty of murder and racketeering on 11 other charges, including presiding over widespread corruption in the suburban Atlanta Sheriff's Department. He was, however, acquitted of two counts of bribery and one charge of forcing employees to campaign for him in county time.
The prosecution alleged that Sidney Dorsey hired the men who shot 46-year-old Brown 12 times, promising them promotion and employment, and wanted his rival dead so that he could win the sheriff's position back in a special election, but later decided not to participate in those elections.
Prosecutors mainly depended on the testimony of Patrick Cuffy and Paul Skyers, who claimed to have committed the crime and testified under immunity deals. Melvin Walker and David Ramsey were acquitted of murder charges in a separate trial by a jury that deliberated for just four hours.
Using an approach that was effective in the trials of Walker and Ramsey, the defense declined to make a case on behalf of Mr. Dorsey, claiming that the prosecution had failed to establish that he had planned the murder.
Dorsey was also charged with accepting bribes, demanding s*x from a female bonding agent, ordering deputies to work for his private security company at taxpayer expense, and using deputies to do private errands for his family.
Sidney Dorsey confessed to planning the assassination of his successor Derwin Brown seven years later
In August 2002, Sidney Dorsey, who once earned glory for becoming the first African-American to serve as sheriff of DeKalb County, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his successor and to 23 years for corruption.
According to The New York Times, after the sentencing, District Attorney J. Tom Morgan reported that:
"Words cannot express the magnitude of this case. An elected official used the power of his position to order the assassination of another elected official."
According to reports from 2007, Dorsey admitted to ordering the strike on Brown in retaliation for his loss in the race for the county sheriff in the area.
He claimed that before the shooting incident occurred, he allegedly tried to stop the assassination plot but failed. He is currently serving time at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in unincorporated Butts County.
