Adam Braseel

After Brown and Rector testified, District Attorney Mike Taylor offered Adam a deal to walk out of there if he offered a plea of no contest. A deal he took to be free of the 12th Circuit. In 2020, a hearing in front of the parole board resulted in the unanimous recommendation to the governor that he exonerate Adam Braseel. In December, 2021, Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee granted Adam Braseel a full exoneration on all charges.

Brown did appear at the 2019 Coram Nobis hearings, where he testified that when he found the Body of Malcolm, Burrows, his wallet was in his back pocket. He also testified that he had submitted a report about finding the body and the wallet.

Elizabeth Rector, at the 2019 Corum Nobis hearings, testified that Kermit Bryson told her he was part of Burrows Killing and told her he had been put up to it by a nurse practitioner.

Prosecutor Steve Strain motioned Angel to recuse himself, he refused, he then motioned to bar Brown from testifying which was denied. Only when Brown was set to come testify, Strain revealed that a year and half ago, the state had re-examined a fingerprint found on the passenger side of the car Burrows drove to help the man. The print this time was matched to Kermit Bryson, an alleged killer in the 2018 slaying of Grundy County deputy Shane Tate. Bryson fled, and after a lengthy manhunt was found shot with the gun that killed him, and later died.

The Coram Nobis petition was filed on May 23, 2017. It included Brown’s affidavit that when he found the body, the wallet was in his pocket. The petition also brought out that Sheriff Myers had altered a witness statement made by Jay Douglas. Douglas told Myers he saw a tall, white man with dark hair talking to Burrows. He was with a blonde female, in a gold or tan colored car. In his report, Myers had changed the description, writing “[Douglas] told me that the subject in the car was a white male with red hair.” Adam had red hair. This was Information Sale had put together at the beginning, after finding the original Jay Douglas statement and publishing it on his website for all to see.

At the hearing, new alibi witnesses were brought to testify. Also a man who said he'd heard another man might have been hired to kill Burrows. Judge Angel vacated Braseel's convictions on January 4, 2016, and a new trial was ordered. Angel ruled that single-photo eyewitness identifications were ruled unconstitutional in Tennessee, noting that Braseel's attorneys neither motioned to suppress the identification or made an objection during the trial. Judge Angel said that since the state's case hinged on the witness identifications, “If any other evidence whatsoever existed, then the flaws with the identification of the Petitioner would not be as important and fundamental to ensuring that the Petitioner receive a constitutionally fair trial.”

Braseel was freed on bond, on January 8, 2016. He had nine months of freedom. The prosecution appealed Angel's ruling and on October 7, 2016, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals reversed his ruling and reinstated Braseel's conviction. The court opined that when Braden selected Braseel from a single photo, because it was the first photo on the stack, it was permissible. The appeals court also said that the judge's instructions to the jury were deficient, but harmless and would not have made a difference. Adam Braseel went back to prison on October 11, 2016.

Sale said Brown's report wasn't the only thing that went missing. As when first investigating the case back in late 2014, and looking for information, Sale was told by the new Grundy County sheriff Clint Shrum in emails that all the files from the Braseel case were gone.

When asked by 12th Circuit Prosector Steve Strain if the sheriff's department intentionally lost his report to conceal evidence, Brown answered, “it wouldn't be unusual.” When the packed courtroom erupted in agreement.

Adam's first appeal was handled by his trial attorneys, it was turned down in 2010.

Braseel's two day trial began on November 7, 2007, at the Grundy County Court House in Altamont. Prosecutors presented their case as a calculated brutal attack to steal a wallet.

On the night of January 7, 2006, a 911 call for an assault on a female was placed by Kirk Braden at 9:52 PM. Andrew Martin West, a patrol officer with the Grundy County Sheriff's Department, drove to 60-year-old Malcolm Burrows' home on the outskirts of Tracy City on Mellisa Rock Road. His Sergeant Mike Brown arrived and found Burrows' 59-year-old sister Becky Hill badly beaten. Becky's 33-year-old son Kirk Braden told Brown he had been sleeping when he heard his mother scream. Braden said he woke up and fought off an intruder assaulting his mother. Describing the assailant as a red haired man, of medium build, someone he'd never seen before. Hill said the same man had been at the house 30 minutes earlier and told her brother, Malcolm Burrows, that his car was broken down up the road. She said her brother drove off with the man in her Chrysler Fifth Avenue to go fix it. She said the same man came back alone and beat her. Burrows body was later found in a wooded area near the Chrysler.

Sheriff Brent Myers arrested Braseel on January 18, 2006, after Kirk and Becky had identified Braseel as the intruder from photographs. Braseel was indicted for first degree murder, attempted murder, especially aggravated robbery, attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated burglary, and assault.

Adam Clyde Braseel (born April 5, 1983) is an American former UPS worker who spent 12 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 2006 home invasion and murder in Grundy County Tennessee. In 2022, Braseel was fully exonerated by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.