<p>The family of a slain DeKalb County sheriff-elect lost another round on Monday in a battle to collect for his death.</p><p>A state advisory board declined to recommend that the state Legislature pay Derwin Brown's family some $3.6 million.</p><p>Brown was gunned down in December 2000, just days before taking office. Then-Sheriff Sidney Dorsey was later convicted of plotting his rival's killing and was sentenced to life in prison.</p><p>Brown's daughter, Brandy Brown Rhodes, told the state Claims Advisory Board that her family has struggled financially and emotionally since her father's slaying.</p><p>"That night my family was torn apart," Rhodes told the panel. "My father was the rock of our family and he was taken from us."</p><p>Brown's widow, Phyllis Brown, suffered a stroke in 2003 and died last year on Christmas Eve.</p><p>After Brown's December 2000 murder, his widow received $75,000 from a state fund, but she argued her family would have received more had the killing taken place after he took office. Brown had resigned from his post as a sheriff's deputy after his election victory, so he wasn't treated as if he'd been killed in the line of duty.</p><p>The family's lawyer, Steve Leibel, acknowledged on Monday that legal options in the case had been exhausted and the rulings had gone against the family.</p><p>"We've already been to every court in the land and every court has said the same thing," Leibel said.</p><p>Leibel argued the claims board was in a unique position "to do the right thing."</p><p>He likened a payment to the Brown family to the victims compensation fund Congress set up in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.</p><p>But Secretary of State Karen Handel, in her role as chairwoman of the claims board, questioned the precedent such a payout would set.</p><p>"This was an extraordinary tragedy. There is no way to get around that," Handel said.</p><p>"At this point I don't see how the state is liable for this."</p><p>Three members voted against compensating the family. The fourth, Marion Cornett of the state Department of Human Resources, abstained, saying he believed the issue belonged in the hands of the Legislature. The panel spent only a few minutes discussing the case, and one onlooker shouted "shame" at the board as he filed out of the hearing room after the decision.</p><p>State Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, said he planned to push the measure in the General Assembly. But he said it would be an uphill battle after the board's decision.</p><p>"Justice screams out that we do something," Mitchell said.</p><p>After the hearing, Leibel said that Handel should "be ashamed of herself."</p><p>"There is blood on the hands of the people of Georgia today" he said.</p><p>Rhodes said she was not surprised.</p><p>She warned the decision would dissuade people of integrity from seeking public office.</p><p>"I've lost faith in the system," she said.</p><p>Before she died, Phyllis Brown filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dorsey, the others involved in the murder and DeKalb County. The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in November 2005 that the county could not be held liable because the sheriff is a state officer. The U.S. Supreme Court in November refused to consider the case.</p>
