Convicting an Innocent Man - The Wrongful Conviction of Gary Wayne Sutton

Heather Michele Cohen
Jul 29
5 min read

Updated: Jul 30

On February 24, 1992, Tommy Griffin was found shot to death on the riverbanks of Blount County, Tennessee. His sister, Connie Branam, was found burned alive in her vehicle just four days later in the next county over (Sevier).

Witnesses for the state testified that they had seen Griffin at Howie's Hideaway, a local bar, with Gary Sutton and James Dellinger, Sutton's uncle, on the night that Griffin was murdered. Sutton and Griffin were close friends and the three men could often be found frolicking around town, as many men their age would do. On this particular evening, after an altercation at the bar with two men known only as "Chief" and "Cowboy," Griffin went his own way and was later found on the side of Alcoa Highway and arrested for public intoxication.

Upon his arrest, the officer noted that Griffin seemed "scared" but, when asked, he would not say why or of whom he was afraid of. The officer made a note in the report that Griffin was with "two older gentlemen driving a dark colored truck." The men were never identified.

While Griffin was in the "drunk tank" his trailer was set on fire. One of Griffin's family members noticed the fire and ran down to Dellinger's trailer, which was close by, to ask him and Sutton whether Griffin was inside. The men told her that Griffin had left the bar with a woman he'd met earlier that night. Sutton and Dellinger then learned that Griffin was in jail and went to bail him out. Both men have maintained that, after bailing Griffin out of jail, he left with the same woman that he had been with earlier that night, who was driving a dark-colored Ford Falcon. The following Monday, Griffin's body was found on the riverbanks with a shotgun blast to the head.

The state did not have any evidence tying Gary Sutton to the crime, other than the gross speculation that Dellinger committed the crime and Sutton was with him when it occured. However, Sutton's girlfriend, Carolyn Weaver, testified that he was with her at the time that the murder was said to have occurred. Nonetheless, the state had its sights set on proving that Dellinger and Sutton had executed their friend and then killed his sister when she tried to find him.

The state refused to separate Dellinger and Sutton's trials, stating in open court that if they did they would "have to let Sutton walk because they had nothing on him." The men were convicted and sentenced to death in 1992.

FRUIT OF A POISONOUS TREE & PLANTED EVIDENCE

Transcripts from the Sevier County trial show that Detective Widner lied about having eye-witnesses in order to obtain arrest warrants on the men. When the presiding judge, Judge Ogle, confronted him on the stand, Widner admitted to having lied as a means to an end.

TBI Agent Davenport told the same lie for the arrest warrant in Blount County. Davenport was not called to testify in the Blount County trial, due to being impeached on the stand in the Sevier County trial when he was outed for forging Investigator Mark Turner's signature on a three-page statement that Davenport claimed to have obtained from Sutton (Sutton denies providing the statement).

Sevier County transcripts also reveal that Detective Widner lied to Judge Sexton in order to obtain a search warrant of James Dellinger's trailer. It was during that search that the detective claimed to have found a shot gun and shells that matched spent shells found when they returned to the crime scene three days after searching Dellinger's home. The newly discovered shells were found laying perfectly parrallel to one another (which is virtually impossible).

THE STATES KEY WITNESS: DISGRACED MEDICAL EXAMINER CHARLES HARLAN

The state shopped for a medical examiner that would provide the testimony they needed to secure a conviction, and they found Dr. Charles Harlan, who was under investigation by the TBI at the time of the trial. Harlan testified that Griffin was murdered on February 21, 1992, which is scientifically impossible since his body being in full rigor mortis when it was discovered on February 24, 1992. Harlan was later stripped of his medical license for falsifying reports and giving false testimony. Many cases that he had testified in were overturned and bodies were exhumed to provide families with credible information.

ALTERNATE SUSPECT: LESTER "FESTUS" JOHNSON

Lester "Festus" Johnson (deceased) had both means and motive to commit the murder. Not long before the murders, Johnson's cousin was brutally attacked at a party. The attack left him bound to a wheel chair. It was that attack that led Johnson to seek revenge on anyone and everyone who was involved in what had happened to his cousin on that fateful evening. As part of his vigilante pursuit, Johnson assaulted a woman at a motorcycle convention in Cherokee, North Carolina. Both murder victims, Tommy Griffin and Connie Branam, were said to have been summonsed by the court to testify in that hearing.

Johnson's son, who is also deceased at this time, provided a statement to Dellinger's defense. The statement claimed that his father used him to issue death threats, to the witnesses, from jail.

On the day of trial, none of the witnesses showed to testify. Charges were dropped and Johnson was released. His girlfriend at the time also provided a statement to Dellinger's post-conviction team, stating that she picked Johnson up on that day, February 21, 1992, and dropped him off in Blount County before sundown.

ISSUES WITH WITNESSES TESTIMONIES

Key Witness Barbara Gordon's testimony pertained to Connie's murder and was that she'd seen a white Dodge truck flee the area where her body was later found. Detective Widner showed Gordon several white trucks and asserted that the truck she saw on that day belonged to James Dellinger. However, when P.I. Cohen interviewed Gordon, three decades later, she expressed deep regret and guilt over the idea that her testimony had played a part in Gary's conviction. Gordon claimed that she was "never certain" that it was Dellinger's truck she saw fleeing the scene that day, and when Cohen showed her a picture of the model of the white truck that belonged to alternate suspect, Lester Johnson, Gordon could not say which truck she saw.

Left: Model belonging to Lester Johnson Right: Model belonging to James Dellinger

Key witness Jason McDonald's testimony pertianed to Tommy Griffin's murder and was used to establish an aproximate time and date that the crime occured. When P.I. Cohen interviewed McDonald, he expressed frustration that an important piece of information was deliberately ommitted from his testimony. That crucial piece of evidence, if shared with the jury, would have validated Sutton and Dellinger's statement that Griffin had left the jail with a woman in a black Ford Falcon. Through witness interviews, Cohen was able to identify a female associate of Lester Johnson's, who was reportedly driving a black Ford Fairlane. When Cohen showed a photo of a black Ford Fairlane to McDonald, he conceded that the vehicle he saw flee the crime scene, early that morning, looked very much like the one in the picture below: