The people who were supposed to protect 12-year-old Derrick Camp tortured him to death instead, the prosecutor said to the jury Friday afternoon.
One of those people, Derrick’s mother, Jasmine Camp, took responsibility for her part in Derrick’s death and pleaded guilty. On Friday, Oct. 21, a Richmond County Superior Court jury found Clarence Brown also responsible for the brutal end to Derrick’s life.
The jury convicted Brown, 39, guilty of all counts of murder for Derrick’s death and cruelty to children for exposing four other children to murder. Chief Judge Daniel J. Craig imposed a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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On June 6, 2020, the 66-pound child committed the offense of eating a packet of jelly without asking Brown’s permission. His punishment, according to witnesses this week, was a punch to the gut so hard Derrick lost control of his bladder, being beaten with cords and belts and a stick, forced to do stress exercise that depleted the child’s body so much his muscle tissue was breaking down, then more beating, and then, the final insult to injury, the shaving of what Derrick was most proud of, his hair.
No single injury caused Derrick’s death June 7, 2020; it was the combination of abuse inflicted on the child by his mother and Brown, Assistant District Attorney Ryne Cox told the jury Friday in his closing statement.
Brown and Camp moved five children, five to 10 dogs and their possessions from Arkansas to Augusta about three months before Derrick died. The children rode in the back the U Haul. The dogs up front. Camp told a jury this week that her sister had wanted to keep her daughter and Derrick, but Brown wasn’t having it.
Brown wanted the children in Augusta because through them he controlled Camp, the prosecutor said. He controlled them all through violence and he controlled every morsel of food, what little there was.
But defense attorney Zachary Goolsby argued to the jury in closing that the children and Camp all told Richmond County Sheriff investigators that Brown didn’t have anything to do with Derrick’s abuse. Camp was the monster, Goolsby said.
Brown wasn’t on trial for child neglect or for being poor, Goolsby said. It was Camp who admitted to hitting Derrick with a stick and cord and it was those items that the crime scene officer found blood on. If Brown had thrown Derrick into a wall repeatedly as Camp suggested in her testimony this week, then why was there no damage to the wall?, Goolsby asked.
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But Sgt. Shawn Newsome testified that banging a 66-pound child against a wall wouldn’t necessarily damage it, the prosecutor said. It was Brown who returned to the family’s apartment to try to erase the evidence after Derrick was taken to a hospital, and it was Brown who hid out in an abandoned house afterward, Cox said.
Camp and the children didn’t tell sheriff investigators about Brown’s violence because they were victims of domestic violence, Cox said. An expert child abuse witness and emergency pediatric physician told the jury such behavior is well-documented trauma bonding. It wasn’t until they were separated from Brown that Derrick’s mother and sister were able to speak the truth.
Camp, 34, pleaded guilty to murder last month. She was sentenced to life in prison.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.Â
