Appeals court asked to find convict innocent in SEAL murder case

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Virginia heard a plea this morning to free a former Navy SEAL trainee convicted of a high-profile, 1995 murder in Virginia Beach.

Dustin Allen Turner, 34, and fellow SEAL trainee Billy Joe Brown, 36, were sentenced to 82 and 72 years, respectively, for the June 19, 1995, slaying of Jennifer Evans in a parked automobile outside a Virginia Beach nightclub.

Turner and Evans, a 21-year-old pre-med student at Emory University in Atlanta, left the bar early that morning. Brown, who had been drinking at the same club, joined them in the car, sitting in the back seat.

Under questioning nine days after the slaying, Turner led authorities to where they left the body in dense woods just off Interstate 64 in Newport News.Turner said Brown killed Evans; Brown said Turner did.

After entering prison and finding religion, Brown changed his story and said that he alone killed Evans by reaching over the front passenger seat and choking her to death.

A lower court judge found his new story credible and the matter was sent back to the appeals court, which now must decide whether to grant what is called a writ of actual innocence. Lawyers on both sides said it was not known when the court might rule.

Now that Brown’s account has been found credible, it would be impossible for any rational judge or jury to convict Turner, said David B. Hargett, Turner’s lawyer.

But Robert H. Anderson III, an assistant Virginia attorney general, said the lower court judge who found Brown’s account to be credible misunderstood key elements in the case.

Following the hearing, Linda Summitt, Turner’s mother, said, “I think it went well. I think it went very well .¤.¤. I think innocence is innocence and it’s time to let Dusty go,“ she said.

Evans’ parents, Delores and Al Evans of Atlanta, who were also in the courtroom this morning, disagreed. Delores Evans said, “it’s hard to sit there and just listen and not be able to say anything.“

“Jennifer is the real victim here,“ she said. They attended to be a voice for her, she said. “It’s been almost 14 years, in June, since I last heard her voice,“ she added.