FOURTEEN YEARS OLD

Five official records. Five different sentences. Thirty missing exhibits.

Donyell Dewayne Holland is serving twenty additional years on a firearm charge based on a conviction dated April 11, 1995—when he was fourteen years old.

Five official documents give different answers about the sentence he is serving. One judgment form leaves the sentence blank. The trial clerk certified that 68 exhibits were transmitted, while the appellate court reported receiving only 38.

He prepared his own appeal by hand from prison before he was provided the appellate record. The court then described his first brief as “woefully inadequate.”

This website presents the court records, timelines, filings, and documented inconsistencies in:

State of Tennessee v. Donyell Dewayne Holland
Court of Criminal Appeals No. E2024-01809-CCA-R3-CD

[READ THE FULL REPORT] SEE BELOW

[VIEW THE OFFICIAL APPELLATE CASE] SEE BELOW

[REVIEW THE CASE MASTER TIMELINE] SEE BELOW

This project does not ask the public to decide guilt or innocence. It asks whether the records authorizing the State to imprison a person for life are complete, accurate, and legally consistent.

This website organizes and examines the public court record in the case of Donyell Dewayne Holland.

I am reviewing the indictments, judgments, transcripts, exhibits, docket entries, sentencing records, appellate filings, and court orders to identify:

• missing or incomplete records;

• conflicting dates and exhibit totals;

• discrepancies between the verdict, judgments, and sentence;

• unexplained changes or irregular entries;

• unresolved constitutional and procedural issues;

• matters that may affect the fairness and reliability of the conviction and appeal.

Every major statement on this site will be connected to the underlying court document so readers can review the evidence for themselves.

This is not rumor or speculation. It is a documented examination of what the official record says, what it does not say, and where the official documents contradict one another.

Compiled and maintained by Anna Marie Domino.

THE FIRST TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS

Key Events in the Randall Leslie Homicide Investigation

On May 27, 2020, Randall Leslie was last documented alive with Kiara Carson at 5015 Jarrett Road in Chattanooga.

Later that day, Leslie’s vehicle was found running at 4088 Teakwood Drive. Randall was not with it.

According to the case records, Kiara Carson was taken that night to Marion County by a man identified only as “Justin.” She was returned to Chattanooga the following day and interviewed by police late on the evening of May 28.

But before that interview took place, another major event had already occurred.

On May 28, Coffee County authorities located Randall Leslie’s silver Mitsubishi. Derik Brown was driving it.

Brown was arrested on narcotics charges while in possession of the missing man’s vehicle. At that point, Randall’s body had not been found and his death had not been officially confirmed.

Brown would later become a prosecution witness against Donyell Holland.

On June 9, Chattanooga police interviewed Holland.

Holland denied killing Randall Leslie. He identified Derik Brown as the shooter and maintained that Randall was still alive after the reported shooting.

Three days later, on June 12, Brittney Lanham was found unconscious at a Mapco gas station in another vehicle associated with Randall Leslie.

The timeline states that methamphetamine, Xanax, and drug paraphernalia were discovered. Lanham later became a witness for the State.

The circumstances surrounding her possession of Randall’s vehicle were not explained in the timeline.

On June 16 or 17, Michael Price contacted police after reportedly being released from a psychiatric facility.

The timeline describes his statements as confused and states that he referred to a person named “Putney” or “Pony.”

By that point, police had received information from several people, but Randall Leslie still had not been located.

On June 21, 2020, nearly four weeks after he was last seen, Randall’s body was discovered in a decomposed condition near Highway 41 in Marion County, Tennessee.

His death was officially confirmed on June 24.

The first twenty-eight days of the investigation therefore included:

• Randall Leslie’s disappearance;

• his vehicle being found without him;

• Derik Brown being arrested while driving that vehicle;

• Holland identifying Brown as the shooter;

• Brittney Lanham being discovered in another vehicle connected to Randall;

• conflicting or uncertain witness information; and

• the eventual discovery of Randall’s body in a different county.

These events form the foundation of the case.

They also establish the questions that appear throughout the later court record: who possessed Randall’s vehicles, what each witness actually knew, what information police documented, and what information was ultimately presented to the jury.