J.Tom Morgan is a nationally recognized trial attorney, former prosecutor, professor, and advocate for children whose career has spanned more than four decades in public service and the law. He served as the elected District Attorney of DeKalb County, Georgia, from 1992 to 2004, leading one of the state’s largest prosecutorial offices and overseeing thousands of felony cases each year. Morgan was the lead prosecutor in the landmark corruption and murder case against former DeKalb County sheriff Sidney Dorsey for the assassination of sheriff-elect Derwin Brown. Following that conviction, Morgan became the first prosecutor from the United States to receive the Special Achievement Award from the International Association of Prosecutors. Before serving as District Attorney, Morgan was the first prosecutor in Georgia—and among the first in the nation—to specialize in prosecuting crimes against children. A nationally recognized expert on criminal justice and child advocacy, he has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, 48 Hours, CNN, and Court TV, and has lectured to prosecutors and law enforcement officials across the United States and Europe. Morgan is the author of the bestselling Ignorance Is No Defense series and currently teaches criminal justice and ethics at Western Carolina University. At the Decatur Book Festival, he is launching A Rainy Night in Georgia, a Southern true crime memoir about justice, corruption, and the human cost of public service.
A Rainy Night in Georgia
In December 2000, Derwin Brown, the newly elected sheriff of DeKalb County, Georgia, was ambushed and murdered in his own driveway just days before taking office. He had run on reform—promising to clean up corruption and restore integrity to the sheriff’s department—defeating the powerful incumbent in a bitter runoff.
The case fell to J.Tom Morgan, then the county’s elected District Attorney. Working alongside local, state, and federal law enforcement, Morgan pursued the case through months of dead ends, mounting pressure, and intense public scrutiny. It became a national media sensation, combining political intrigue with revelations of government corruption, murder-for-hire plots, and a never-before-tried legal strategy in the Georgia criminal justice system. Then the case became personal: Morgan learned that his own name was next on the killer's hit list.
In A Rainy Night in Georgia, Morgan gives readers something almost no one else can—a first-person account of power, danger, and integrity from inside the justice system. What began as a baffling, unsolved murder evolved into one of the most extraordinary political assassination cases in modern American history after a shocking discovery.
Part true-crime thriller, part memoir of public service under fire, this gripping book reveals what it truly costs to hold powerful people accountable.