Georgia author explores injustice in the justice system

Credit: WJXT TV

Credit: WJXT TV

As a college dropout from Waycross whose aspiration was to be a professional musician, Sharpe is still coming to terms with his life’s unexpected trajectory.

“I was so certain I was going to be a musician,” he said, speaking by phone from Detroit. “That is what I was supposed to do.”

Pedal steel guitar is Sharpe’s instrument of choice, although he also plays guitar and banjo — he writes song lyrics, too. In his 20s, after losing a job selling phones in a kiosk at the mall, he made a go at being a full-time musician. It didn’t take long to grow discouraged by audiences more interested in covers than his original songs.

From lyrics he moved on to writing short stories, which he said was easier because they didn’t have to rhyme. “And then I realized that if you write true stories maybe you can do it for the newspaper,” he said. “Once somebody paid me for talking to people and writing it down, I was not going to stop that.”

Sharpe started freelancing for the Florida Times-Union, covering southeast Georgia, then moved to Atlanta and worked for the Cherokee Tribune and Gwinnett Daily Post before joining the AJC in 2016.

Dennis Perry’s conviction for the murder of the Swains, a Black couple in their 60s who were pillars of their community near Brunswick, was brought to Sharpe’s attention by the Georgia Innocence Project in 2019.

Sharpe had a special interest in wrongful conviction cases. His great-uncle died in prison serving time for a murder he said he didn’t commit. Although Sharpe never knew Uncle Huey, his grandmother, a natural born storyteller who helped raise Sharpe, often talked about her brother.

“That experience helped me understand or have a better opportunity to empathize with people whose families have gone through those things,” he said. “Innocent or not, he was in prison, and that hurt the family a lot. It made a big impression on me.”

Sharpe credits his career in journalism to his grandmother, to whom he dedicated the book.

“She was the one who really introduced me to the power of stories, without knowing she was doing it, of course,” he said.

Being a native of South Georgia served Sharpe well as he interviewed sources for the story. He felt an ease connecting with people “because we’re all from this place and we know what it’s like, and we know how we talk to each other.”

He said it was also daunting, because “being from there, there was more pressure to get it right.”

Sharpe was able to get up to speed on the case lightning fast thanks to the podcast “Undisclosed,” which had produced a 22-episode investigation into the case in 2018. Within two weeks, he discovered the alibi provided by Erik Sparre, another suspect in the case who had been previously cleared, was full of holes.

Back in 1986, someone had called GBI Agent Joe Gregory claiming to be a manager at the Winn-Dixie. He corroborated Sparre’s claim that Sparre was at work when the murders occurred. But according to Sharpe’s reporting 33 years later, that person provided incorrect identifying information, including his first name, birth date and Social Security number. When Sharpe tracked down the actual manager, he claimed to have never talked to the authorities about the case.

Sharpe was standing in a stranger’s driveway, talking on a cellphone at the time he made the discovery.

“I was sweating. My mind was racing. I was like, what in the world is going on? Is this really unfolding this way?” he recalled.

He later checked out the information online to confirm his suspicions.

“I was holding my breath until I had everything in order and felt like I had really checked out everything to make sure there wasn’t some big misunderstanding. … The whole (alibi) fell apart, and it led to more questions.”

Credit: Courtesy photo

Credit: Courtesy photo

The Swains’ murders and Perry’s conviction received plenty of media coverage over the years. It was even featured in an episode of the “Unsolved Mysteries” TV series hosted by Robert Stack in 1988. And although the media’s investigations ultimately led to Perry’s release, media outlets also spent years before that proclaiming Perry was guilty.

“As typical, the first stories after someone was arrested, they’re presented with no questioning of that person’s guilt or innocence,” Sharpe said. “There’s an unfortunate ignorance in the way we cover things, and that is to cover them unquestionably. If somebody is convicted, that means we can just say they did it.”

Having covered more than a dozen wrongful convictions at this point in his career, Sharpe said he’s learned to question everything.

“I know as an investigative journalist that the worst time to find out what happened is right after it’s happened. And the police suffer from that, too,” he said. “If the police have just made an arrest, they probably don’t have much information. And what the media ought to do, especially in cases of high interest or cases that appear to be amiss, is to just keep asking those questions.”

One thing that makes Perry’s case unusual is the media have followed up and corrected what was incorrectly reported prior to his exoneration, Sharpe said.

“Most people don’t get that. Most people get that first story and then there’s no follow-up. I, as a reporter, have written that first story and then never followed up in the past,” he said. “And I have no problem admitting that because we all screw up. We just need to do better.”

Nevertheless, Sharpe said, “the case ended up being a great example of how things can go with the right amount of attention. And I know that we could be looking at a very different situation if the media had not pressed.”

Credit: Joshua Sharpe

Credit: Joshua Sharpe

Sharpe was present when Perry was released from prison into the arms of his joyful wife, Brenda, in 2020.

“He was really graceful, I thought, in what he said,” Sharpe recalled. “When he came out, there were reporters there, and he was just very thankful. … That was really powerful to me that he could have that gratitude at the moment when it would have been perfectly justifiable to come out of there cussing and screaming.”

Sharpe and Perry have remained in touch over the years.

“He’s living a very, very different life than he used to, and I’m very glad for that, of course, because he didn’t deserve that. And obviously I think people who read the book will see that. It’s a riding off into the sunset kind of deal. He got some compensation, and he got some land (in Camden County); they got a place they like, more privacy now and more freedom in many ways.”

Sharpe, who left the AJC in 2022, is currently working on a six-part podcast with Campside Media that revolves around wrongful conviction. And although that subject matter has occupied his profession in recent years, he considers his focus to a bit wider in scope. “Injustice in the justice system” is how he describes his area of interest.

He’s come a long way from those days spent pining for a music career in Waycross.

“I still sometimes think I’m going to end up back in the garden center at Lowes. And that would be OK. I loved it out there, … but I sure am glad to be here now,” Sharpe said.

“I feel really good about the place I’m in now because even if I do just focus on wrongful convictions, it’s ungodly the number of people sitting in prison on bogus convictions,” he said. “If it’s all I did for the rest of my career, I would never come close to ever running out.”