The Truth Shall Set Us Free Donyell Dewayne Holland My Story, On the Record
Write to Donyell: GettingOut · TDOC #248453 · Morgan County Correctional Complex | Questions? TTI (904) 362-0842
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Preface

What This Is and How to Read It

Before you turn the page: this is not a rumor, a post or an opinion. It is the court record in my case, laid out in order, so you can read the State’s own papers and decide for yourself.

Donyell Dewayne Holland

What this is

This site is the public court record in State of Tennessee v. Donyell Dewayne Holland, Hamilton County cases 311081 and 317210, now on appeal as No. E2024-01809-CCA-R3-CD in the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals.

Donyell, TDOC #248453, was convicted in May 2024 and is serving life plus fifty years. Since his first recorded interview on June 9, 2020, he has said he did not kill Randall Leslie. He asked for his story to be told like a book, in his own words, with the papers right beside it. Tennessee Transparency Institute put it together for him.

How the book is built

1The Book14 chapters, in date order, in Donyell’s words2The RecordThe police reports, lab reports, warrants, orders and dockets behind every chapter3The DiscrepanciesEvery place the State’s own papers disagree, side by side

How to find your way

  • Page numbers. Every page has a number at the top and bottom, so you can tell someone “look at page 18” and they land in the same place.
  • Contents is the next page: every chapter and every record page, with its page number.
  • Index A to Z is at the back: every name, place, gun and court term, with the pages it appears on.
  • Search. The box at the top searches every page.

How to read the labels

↔Direct conflict: two records say things that cannot both be true.∅Missing or untested: a record the State’s papers point to is not in the materials available to us, or an item was collected and not tested.?Question the records raise: both records can be true, but the facts need explaining.⏱Timeline question: the dates and times need explaining.Being checked by ear the quote comes from a recording or machine transcript and is still being checked word for word against the original.Yellow words are quoted exactly from the record named underneath.

What we post, and what we don’t

  • Court papers are posted as they are. Social Security numbers and dates of birth are blacked out. Nothing else is changed.
  • Faces of family members in police video are blurred.
  • Records we have not been given are listed on Missing Records. Not found is not the same as never existed.
  • This is a record, not legal advice.

Turn the page: Contents → Go straight to Chapter 1 →

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