Framed in the Smokies

The Wrongful Conviction of Gary Wayne Sutton

De: Heather Cohen, Tracey Ellis

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Two people were brutally murdered.
The wrong man was sentenced to die.
And the evidence proving it has been buried for over thirty years.

In the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains, a double homicide shattered two families and ignited one of the most disturbing miscarriages of justice in Tennessee history.

In 1992, Tommy Griffin disappeared - later his remains were discovered on a riverbank.
Four days later, his sister Connie Branham was found burned alive inside her vehicle.
Not long after, Gary Wayne Sutton — a working-class country boy with no forensic evidence tying him to the crime — was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death.

What followed was not justice.

It was a prosecution built on forged statements, manipulated witnesses, withheld evidence, and the testimony of a medical examiner later stripped of his license for professional misconduct.
It was a trial where the district attorney admitted in open court that there was no evidence tying Sutton to the crime — yet still pursued his execution.

For more than three decades, Gary Sutton has maintained his innocence from death row.

This book exposes everything that went wrong - from the investigation - to the trial - to the appeals.

Framed in the Smokies is not a theory.
It is a documented unraveling of a conviction.

It is a forensic dissection of how fear, corruption, and institutional protection replaced truth — and how an innocent man was left to die because of it.

This is the story Tennessee does not want you to read.

And it is the case that may still save a life.