MUSKOGEE –William Clayton Brown, 42, of Eufaula, entered a guilty plea last week to a one-count Felony Information of Murder in Indian Country—Second Degree, punishable by up to life in prison and a $250,000.00 fine, according to The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.
The Information alleged that on Sept. 15, 2017, Brown killed Damion Martin, 21.
The crime occurred in McIntosh County, within the boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Reservation, in the Eastern District of Oklahoma.
The charge arose from investigations by the Eufaula Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Honorable David C. Joseph, U.S. District Judge in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, sitting by assignment, accepted the plea and ordered the completion of a presentence investigation report.
A U.S. District Court Judge will determine the sentence to be imposed after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Brown will remain in the custody of the United States Marshals Service pending sentencing.
Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Cameron McEwen represented the United States.
The suspect was arrested on Oct. 14, 2017, in Checotah on a charge of public intoxication and booked into the city jail.
According to the Checotah police department, the following day officers investigating Damion Martin’s murder interviewed Brown in Checotah and after questioning he was taken to the county jail in Eufaula and booked on the first-degree murder charge.
Martin, 21, was last seen alive on Sept. 15, 2017.
His body was found around noon on Wednesday, Sept. 27, in a field north of Comanche Road in the River Oaks community, which is about five miles southwest of Eufaula and a short distance south of the lake in the area of the Sherwood Forest development.
The suspect’s address is near the field where the body was found.
According to investigators Martin was stabbed twice, once in the right shoulder area of his back and once in his head behind his right ear.
The probable cause affidavit filed in the case said the knife’s blade was broken off in the skull.
In October, 2018, Clayton pled guilty to first degree manslaughter.
While incarcerated at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester he allegedly killed his cellmate, Mark Lawhead, in October 2019.
Brown then invoked the McGirt decision, resulting in charges being dropped by the state and refiled in federal court.
