BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) - A judge has ordered a new trial after overturning the convictions of a man found guilty of killing two people in their South Georgia church in 1985.
Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett handed down the ruling Friday for Dennis Perry, 58, after DNA recovered from the crime scene matched an alternate suspect during reinvestigation of the case.
“We believe that this is an important first step towards ending Dennis Perry and his family’s 20-plus year nightmare, and we will continue to do everything we can to secure our client’s immediate release from prison,” said Phil Holladay, co-counsel at King & Spalding, who worked on the case with the Georgia Innocence Project on Perry’s behalf.
Perry is serving two life sentences for the killings of Harold and Thelma Swain, who were killed inside Rising Daughters Baptist Church in Waverly, Georgia, in Camden County. Perry has been in prison for 20 years on a life sentence.
The state argued at a Monday hearing that Perry can’t seek a new trial because he signed an agreement to forgo appeals as part of an agreement to a life sentence after his conviction, avoiding a possible death penalty.
“He waived all appeal rights,” said Assistant District Attorney John Johnson, who led the prosecution in Perry’s 2003 conviction, according to the Brunswick News.
Scarlett said in Friday’s ruling that Perry waived his rights to an appeal - not a motion for a new trial. It would have been a “miscarriage of justice” to prevent Perry from being heard on the motion. The judge characterized the evidence against Perry as “weak” compared to the new physical evidence against suspect Erik Sparre, 57, of Brantley County.
Sparre allegedly bragged about killing the couple through the years while referring to them with a racial slur. The victims were Black; Sparre is white. Sparre says he’s innocent.
Perry has denied involvement in the deaths since his January 2000 arrest. He was convicted in 2003 largely on the testimony of his ex-girlfriend’s mother, who said Perry had told her he planned to kill Harold Swain. The state didn’t disclose to the defense that the woman was paid $12,000 in reward money for her testimony.
The judge’s order did not grant Perry’s release. With his convictions gone, he now faces the original murder charges while the Brunswick District Attorney’s Office decides whether to retry him.
Perry’s attorneys filed a motion for Perry to be released immediately on bond. The judge hasn’t said when he’ll decide that issue.
Perry’s wife, Brenda, struggled Friday to balance the good news with the disappointment that she doesn’t yet know when her husband can come home, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“I don’t know how to be excited,” she said, starting to cry. She has known Perry most of her life, but they only married in 2009. For their entire relationship, all of their time together has been under watch of prison guards at Coffe County prison where her husband is held.
“We can’t even share (the ruling),” she said. “When he gets that news, he’s got to wait for them bring him a phone to call me.”
District Attorney Jackie Johnson said in a statement that she would wait for the conclusion of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s probe to decide how to proceed in the case. “I am committed to the discovery of the truth,” she said, noting that she wasn’t the DA when Perry was convicted.
She didn’t immediately respond to an email asking if she would appeal the judge’s ruling.
A GBI task force has been reinvestigating the murders since May due to the DNA linking Sparre to hairs found in the hinge of a pair of glasses found next to the victims’ bodies. Perry’s attorneys decided to do the DNA test after learning that reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed that Sparre’s alibi could not be true.
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