DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Twenty-five years after a murder that shocked a community and exposed deep corruption, a new book is giving a fresh perspective on the case.
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When Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown was assassinated, then-DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan helped lead the investigation.
Brown was shot 12 times outside his home on Dec. 15, 2000, before he could even make it inside.
For Morgan, the case became personal almost immediately.
“I was at the hospital after Derwin’s body had been taken there,” Morgan explained.
Morgan would go on to lead the prosecution as part of an 18-month investigation that led to the conviction of former Sheriff Sidney Dorsey.
WATCH: The Hit: The Assassination of Derwin Brown
Morgan says Channel 2’s own Dale Cardwell had already helped expose corruption inside the Sheriff’s Office before the election.
“Dale Cardwell with WSB had discovered a lot of corruption and put it out for the citizens of DeKalb, and is why Mr. Dorsey lost,” Morgan said.
Years later, Morgan says other authors kept telling him the story was his to write.
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When COVID-19 hit, he finally started putting down the memories he had packed away.
“Attorneys compartmentalize... and I certainly had done that... put all those memories back somewhere. In writing this book, I had to flush them out,” he said.
The result is A Rainy Night in Georgia. Morgan says the book is about more than one murder case.
RELATED: Sidney Dorsey, ex-DeKalb sheriff who had Derwin Brown killed, dies in prison
He says it is also about the role of a free press and what can happen when too much power goes unchecked.
Morgan will talk about the book at the Decatur Book Festival.
And after all these years, he says the bigger lesson is still the same.
“I tried to show in this book how one individual with so much power, and without checks and balances, can really corrupt a system,” Morgan said.
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