During a Grundy County, Tennessee, man’s exoneration hearing before the state Board of Parole that ended with a unanimous recommendation to Gov. Bill Lee for exoneration, the petitioner’s line-up of witnesses included a sheriff and judge who were harshly critical of the original investigation and of the legal defense presented at trial.
Adam Clyde Braseel, 37, was freed last year on a plea to aggravated assault – a best-interest plea also known as an Alford plea in which he maintains his innocence – in return for the dismissal of his 2007 conviction on a murder charge that had put him behind bars for 12 years.
In 2006, Braseel was charged with first-degree murder, robbery and aggravated assault in the beating death that year of 60-year-old Tracy City resident Malcolm Burrows and the savage attack on his sister, Becky Hill, and her son, Kirk Braden. Hill and Braden have since died.
Braseel walked away a free man in August 2019 but with a felony on his record that he contends was unjust, an opinion now shared by the panel that heard his application for exoneration on Wednesday.
After Wednesday’s hearing, Braseel said he first thanked a higher power.