Ex-Georgia Sheriff Charged in Plot to Kill His Successor

A former Georgia sheriff was arrested Friday and charged with killing the man who ousted him from office.

Nearly one year ago, Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown, an anti-corruption crusader, was gunned down in his driveway, three days before he was to pin the silver star of suburban DeKalb County to his chest.

Authorities immediately suspected the professional-style hit was connected to Brown’s victory in a bitterly contested election. But after months of intense investigation, police had no solid evidence and the trail was growing cold.

That changed suddenly this week. In exchange for a lighter sentence in an unrelated case, an ex-jail guard implicated his boss, former DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey, saying Dorsey ordered the hit.

On Friday, Dorsey was brought into the courtroom by heavily armed men who used to work for him.

“Praise the Lord!” Brown’s widow, Phyllis, shouted as Dorsey left the courtroom.

“Innocent! Innocent!” Dorsey yelled back as he was escorted away.

Troubled Department

Two other men, including a former sheriff’s deputy, were also charged with premeditated murder, and authorities say the trio had a “hit list.” DeKalb County Dist. Atty. J. Tom Morgan was allegedly the next target.

The arrests cap decades of troubles at a department seemingly out of control. Until this year, every single DeKalb County sheriff since 1964 has been investigated, indicted or imprisoned.

Dorsey, 61, has been at the center of the Brown murder case from its earliest hours. He has been under investigation before, including for killing a man at a gas station. But no charges were ever filed, and his lawyers now say he’s being made a scapegoat. “This was one of the most gruesome crimes DeKalb has ever seen, and there was such huge pressure to get somebody,” said Brian Steel, one of Dorsey’s attorneys. “What they’ve got, however, is an innocent man.”

Steel said the only evidence against the ex-sheriff is the word of a former deputy who struck a deal Wednesday to avoid more prison time. Patrick Cuffy was charged with murdering a drug dealer but was allowed to plead guilty to aggravated assault and lying to police in exchange for his cooperation in the Brown case.

“Cuffy is a Judas,” said Dwight Thomas, another of Dorsey’s lawyers. “He is an admitted con man, a liar, a man nobody should trust.”

Cuffy’s lawyers could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for the district attorney said there is evidence against Dorsey besides Cuffy’s accusations.

The other two men charged with murder are David Ramsey, 29, an Atlanta security guard; and Melvin Walker, 37, a former sheriff’s deputy under Dorsey. The men said they were not involved in Brown’s slaying, their lawyers said Friday.

The case has many shadowy players, and its roots reach to the spring of 2000, when Brown and Dorsey were locked in a nasty contest for sheriff of DeKalb County, a middle-class suburban area east of downtown Atlanta. The candidates were remarkably similar in many ways: charming, iron-willed African Americans who had come to Atlanta from other parts of the country and worked their way up the law enforcement ladder.

Election Revelations

Brown was a captain in the DeKalb County Police Department. Dorsey, a former Atlanta homicide detective, was elected in 1996, becoming DeKalb County’s first black sheriff.

In DeKalb, population 665,000, the police department is in charge of street-level law enforcement, while the sheriff’s office is in charge of the county jail.

By election time in August, news was out that Dorsey was being investigated by a county grand jury on allegations of brutality at the jail and using inmates to do work for his wife, a former Atlanta city councilwoman. Local media also revealed that Dorsey had killed one man in the line of duty in 1965 and another during a fistfight at a gas station in 1970. Both times he was cleared of wrongdoing.

Brown, 46, won the election by a margin of almost 2 to 1. He set to work immediately, sending termination letters to 38 sheriff’s employees (including Cuffy and Walker) even before he took office.

But on Dec. 15, three nights before he was to be sworn in, someone popped out of the bushes in front of Brown’s house and shot him 11 times with a Tech-9 assault pistol as he was walking up his driveway. Police called it an assassination. With no witnesses and few clues, detectives were left with little to go on save a handful of spent 9-millimeter shells.

Over the next several months, Morgan, the county district attorney, along with FBI agents and state law enforcement officials, pursued many tips but came up empty.

Police were watching Dorsey closely. He was asked to provide an alibi, and detectives regularly cruised past his house. During an interview in his living room earlier this year, he acknowledged he was under suspicion.

“I know people are talking about me. And that worries me,” he said. “You know how bad they want to solve this? I had nothing to do with it, but they may grant somebody immunity to pin this on me.”

In a TV interview days after the killing, Dorsey said those responsible “should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And I mean capital punishment.”

A preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 18. All three suspects remain in jail, though their lawyers said they will appeal for bond.

The only professional courtesy offered to the former sheriff was that Dorsey, whose picture used to hang on the walls of the very building that now confines him, was allowed to appear in court Friday not in an orange jumpsuit but in his own clothes--black jeans and a black jean jacket.

Questions, No Doubts

Brown has no doubts about the case.

“The first thing I thought when I saw my baby lying on the ground that night was ‘Sid did this, Sid did this,’ ” she said. “And now that he’s been arrested, all that’s left is the question: Why? Why’d he take my baby after he lost the election? Why’d he want to ruin my life?”