The Truth Shall Set Us Free Donyell Dewayne Holland My Story, On the Record
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11

Chapter 11

Chattanooga Police and Detective Corey Stokes

What this means for Donyell

Chattanooga Police wrote down that Donyell named Brown on June 9, 2020, then built the case on Brown’s word. Whole stretches of their own work, from the missing-person phase to Brown’s phone downloads, were never produced.

The missing-person phase, May 28 to June 8, 2020

  • The crime-scene officer wrote that “SVU had the case originally.” No SVU file, and no report from the first investigators contacted that night, has been produced.
  • June 3, 2020: a phone-records fax was sent five days before homicide had the case. The fax and its return were not produced.
  • The patrol officer collected Brown’s Smith & Wesson on May 29 and wrote it was “under the driver seat.” The detective’s report says “under the passenger seat.”

Who he is

Investigator Corey Stokes, #660, Chattanooga Police Violent Crimes Bureau, the case detective. He swore out the Teakwood and Stockton search-warrant affidavits on June 8, 2020.

Teakwood search warrantStockton search warrant

What his own records show

  • June 9, 2020: his report records Donyell saying “Derik Brown shot Randall.”
  • A June 1, 2020 interview of Brown is cited in Brown’s federal plea papers, a week before Stokes was assigned the case. No report or recording of it has been produced.
  • His affidavits swore to a “strong possibility of blood” in the camper. The crime-scene officer had written only “the possibility of blood.” The TBI found none.
  • His affidavit says Randall was shot inside 4088 Teakwood and taken to Stockton. The State’s own witnesses put the shot outside.
  • Brown’s gun: his report says “under the passenger seat”; the patrol officer’s says “under the driver seat”; his affidavit says a relative found it in Manchester; the federal complaint says it was seized from Brown.
  • Where Brown said he got the car moves from “Glencoe Street” to “4062 Glencoe” (vacant land on the 2020 tax record) to “Gloucester Lane.”
  • He received Brown’s three phones June 10 and released them to ATF June 23 “for downloading.” No download, warrant or extraction has been produced.
  • He released Randall’s Mercedes on July 1, 2020 despite a hold, before its swabs and print were accounted for.
  • His initial report was approved February 18, 2021, eight months after it was written and three weeks before the grand jury.
  • He interviewed the Teakwood neighbor, and the report says that interview was “not recorded.”

Quotes from police recordings and trial audio come from machine transcripts that are being checked by ear against the recordings. The recordings themselves are the record.

The ballistics lead nobody filed

  • June 11, 2020: the ATF ballistics database (NIBIN) returned a lead on the Smith & Wesson .40 from this case.
  • September 29, 2022: an assistant DA wrote there were no NIBIN reports “in the case file.” A police sergeant answered with the lead that same day.
  • Donyell’s own discovery motions were filed July 12, 2021 and denied the next day while that lead existed.

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