Man avoids murder charge due to double jeopardy

DALLAS — Six days after Sharone Sylvester Brown pleaded guilty to assaulting his girlfriend, authorities learned she had died. They arrested Brown and wanted to try him for murder.

But police ended up letting Brown go due to "double jeopardy."

Police and prosecutors lament the oversight that allowed Brown's case to fall into a legal loophole: Since he had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault after the death of Sherry Whitacre, he couldn't be tried on a more serious charge for the same crime, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Had the 61-year-old Brown pleaded guilty before Whitacre died, her death would have allowed prosecutors to re-charge him for murder, legal experts told the newspaper.

Whitacre told police she was drinking with Brown in the early morning hours of April 10 when he asked him to get something for her. He apparently became angry, punched her in the head and threw her out of their motel room onto the sidewalk.

Paramedics bandaged a lump on her head, but she would not go to the hospital. Six hours later, she called 911 and later died April 17.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, were working Brown's case as a misdemeanor assault. When they tried to contact Whitacre and got no response, they assumed she might be an uncooperative witness, said Debbie Denmon, spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney. They reached a deal with Brown, who pleaded guilty on April 24 and got 60 days in jail — of which he served 20.

Whitacre's death was reported to police as a homicide on April 30, as the injuries she suffered during the assault aggravated her already weak health from cancer and other medical problems.

Brown was arrested May 1 and had bail set at $500,000. But prosecutors soon found out they couldn't charge him again.

"We had no idea that she was dead," Denmon said. "Once he plead out, the law protects him. Sadly, he just got away with it."

Police say there's now a procedure to report deaths like Whitacre's in pending misdemeanor assault cases.

"I wish somebody would have picked up the phone, and then we would have avoided this," Dallas Police Maj. Jeff Cotner. "We're going to make sure that we do that in the future."

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