Murder of Kyle Dinkheller

On January 12, 1998, Deputy Kyle Wayne Dinkheller of the Laurens County, Georgia, Sheriff's Office stopped a speeding pickup truck near Dudley, Georgia, clocking the vehicle at approximately 98 miles per hour. The driver, 49-year-old Vietnam War veteran Andrew Brannan, initially exchanged normal greetings with Dinkheller but became belligerent after being told to remove his hands from his pockets. Brannan shouted for Dinkheller to shoot him, danced and waved his arms in the road, and declared that he was a "goddamned Vietnam combat veteran." Dinkheller radioed for backup and used his baton to keep Brannan at a distance.

Brannan returned to his truck and retrieved an Iver Johnson M1 Carbine rifle, then opened fire on Dinkheller after the deputy issued commands for roughly forty seconds. A prolonged gunfight followed, during which Dinkheller was struck nine times, including in his arms and legs, while managing to wound Brannan in the stomach with return fire. Despite his injury, Brannan continued to advance and shoot, reloading his rifle before firing a final shot into Dinkheller's right eye, killing him. Brannan then fled the scene in his truck. The entire encounter was recorded by Dinkheller's patrol car dashboard camera.

Brannan was arrested the following morning without incident, found hiding in a sleeping bag under a camouflage tarp still within Laurens County. He reportedly told investigating authorities, "they can hang me." At trial, Brannan pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his military service in Vietnam, where he had served as a forward observer and artillery officer and had witnessed combat deaths. A defense psychologist suggested the encounter may have triggered a combat-related flashback. Brannan had previously been declared 100% disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1994 for depression and bipolar disorder.

The jury, citing the dashcam footage, found that Dinkheller had been murdered in a premeditated, torturous, and cruel manner. Brannan was convicted on January 28, 2000, and sentenced to death two days later. His appeals for clemency, including arguments regarding his mental state, were rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, and the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. He was executed by lethal injection on January 13, 2015, at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, becoming the first person executed in the United States that year. In his final statement, Brannan extended condolences to Dinkheller's family, including his parents, wife, and two children.

Dinkheller, born June 18, 1975, in San Diego, California, had joined the Laurens County Sheriff's Office as a jailer in March 1995 and became a certified Georgia police officer in 1996. He was posthumously named the 1998 Deputy Sheriff of the Year by the Georgia Sheriffs' Association. The dashcam recording of his killing, known as the "Dinkheller video," has since been widely used in U.S. police academy training on the use of deadly force.