Whenever
the Abolitionists mention about innocent people who had been freed from death
row, they never want to mention anything about repeat offenders. There is one man who was
released from death row and has been able to go free and kill again. Not at all
a good propaganda tool for Abolitionists who want to use the term, ‘innocent on
death row’ to fool the public into preserving killers. The next time, if any
abolitionists want to mention innocent on death row, tell them about Joseph
Green Brown.
September
18, 2012 8:33 PM By Cora Van Olson
 |
| Joseph Green Brown |
Joseph
Green Brown, 62, spent 13 years of his life fighting a 1973 conviction for the
rape and murder of Earlene Treva Barksdale, a crime for which Florida
sentenced him to death. In 1973 Brown was only 23 and a drifter. He had come to
the attention of investigators for confessing to to sexually abusing a woman
during the commission of a robbery at the Tampa airport the same day as the
murder. When Barksdake’s husband passed a lie-detector test, suspicion shifted
to Brown. On appeal Brown’s conviction was overturned in 1986 based on
evidence that prosecutors had allowed a co-defendant to perjure himself.
Prosecutors could have retried Brown, but in 1987 opted instead to release him.
A free
man, Brown found God, changed his name to Shabaka, and, as a motivational
speaker, spoke out against the death penalty, retelling many times the story of
how his execution was stayed just 15 hours before it was scheduled. The Daily Mail quoted an interview in which Brown said,
“I’m against killing, period, whether the violence is by individuals, the
state, or armies in warfare. All life is sacred.”
In a turn
of events that has shocked his friends and family, however, Brown was placed
under arrest in North Carolina on September 14, 2012, for the first-degree
murder of his wife of 20 years, Mamie Caldwell Brown, 71, whose body was
discovered in their home on September 13, after police were called to check on
her. Marcus Williams, a cousin of Mamie Brown, told reporters
that the couple seemed happy and that her family didn’t worry about Brown’s
past, adding, “He didn’t seem like a threat. He was upfront about everything.
He was always smiling and trying to help people. He was a motivational speaker.
He liked to warn people what could happen in the legal system.” Joyce Robbins,
another relative of Mamie’s, said that she stared at Brown in the courtroom and
that “He had a blank look. I don’t know that person. I’ve never seen him
before.”
Brown will
be held without bond until a preliminary hearing on September 26, 2012. It is
hoped that prosecutors in North Carolina will handle Mamie Brown’s case more
competently than Florida officials handled that of Barksdale thirty-nine years
ago.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/freed-from-death-row-he-faces-a-new-murder-charge/1253380
Freed from death row, he faces a new murder charge
Tuesday,
September 25, 2012 7:13pm
 |
| Joseph Green Brown was released from prison in 1987. Since then he has worked as a truck driver and a homeless shelter cook. He now stands accused of killing his wife in South Carolina. |
A black
man named Joseph Green Brown was accused of raping and killing a white woman in
1973 in a Tampa clothing store called the Just Kids Shoppe. He was found guilty
and sentenced to death. Fitted for a burial suit. Granted a stay some 15 hours
before his scheduled electrocution in 1983. He was set free in 1987.
In the
years since then, Brown worked as a truck driver, a homeless shelter cook, a
convenience store clerk. He got married. He moved from Washington, D.C., to
Charlotte, N.C. He talked to church groups about staying out of trouble.
Last week
he was picked up by police in his hometown of Charleston, S.C., after his wife
was found dead in their apartment in Charlotte.
He's 62.
He has a court hearing today. He's facing a first-degree murder charge.
• • •
In July
1973, Earlene Treva Barksdale was found in her shop dead on the floor, naked
with a bullet hole in her head.
Later the
same afternoon, Brown, who was 23 at the time and had no criminal record,
flagged down a Tampa police car. He wanted to confess to a robbery. He told
officers he and another man broke into a Holiday Inn by the airport and robbed
a woman and that he had started to molest her before stopping. The other man's
name, he said, was Ronald Floyd.
A
detective thought there might be a link between the two crimes. He asked Brown
and Floyd if they knew anything about the Barksdale murder. Brown said no.
Floyd, eventually, said yes — that he only drove, that Brown fired the shot.
The
murder trial was "the biggest thing going on," attorney J. Michael
Shea said this week. He was Brown's court-appointed attorney. "All the
news. All the television stations."
The
prosecutor, Robert Bonanno, had Floyd's testimony, but that was about it. No
fingerprints. No matching blood. The bullet that killed Barksdale couldn't have
come from the gun Brown had used in the hotel robbery, but Bonanno told the
jury it was the murder weapon.
Shea
asked Floyd at the trial if he was getting a deal from prosecutors for his
testimony against Brown. Floyd said no.
The
all-white jury quickly found Brown guilty. Brown got 20 years for the robbery
on top of his death sentence. Floyd got probation.
Shea
still thinks Brown was innocent.
"As
far as I'm concerned, he was always guilty," said Bonanno, who became a
judge and was the subject of a series of ethics investigations before resigning
in 2001 to stop another.
• • •
Floyd got
in trouble shortly after the trial and went to prison. He told Shea in 1975 in
a sworn statement that his testimony was false and that he had lied in exchange
for "favorable consideration" from the prosecution.
The NAACP
Legal Defense and Education Fund took over Brown's appeal in 1981. Florida Gov.
Bob Graham rejected Brown's plea for clemency in 1982. He signed his death
warrant in 1983.
Brown
kicked and screamed when they came to measure him for that suit. He was asked
what he wanted for his last meal. He said he wanted nothing.
The stay
came the night before he was to be killed.
The
federal appeal court overturned his conviction because Bonanno had
"knowingly used false testimony" — a reference to Floyd's lie about
his deal with prosecutors.
Hillsborough
County prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to retry Brown.
Brown was mopping the floor at the county jail when he got a call saying he was
free. He was released with the 75 cents from his personal prison account.
"I
can't tell you he was wrongly imprisoned," said Henry Lavandera, the
prosecutor who dropped the case. "All I can tell you is that I couldn't
prove that he was guilty."
In 1999,
Brown, who started going by Shabaka WaQlimi, Swahili for
"uncompromising," told a Times reporter he was still bitter.
"You've
got to realize, you put a man in a cage and treat him like a dog, talk to him
like a dog, feed him like a dog … there's gonna come a time he wants to bite
like a dog."
Ten years
after that, in a talk with a group of students, one of them asked if he was
"healed."
"I'm
healed enough to control those emotions, but I still possess those
emotions," he said.
"When
I talk to audiences … I ask them to pray for me. And the reason why I ask them
to pray for me is that I know that one day all these emotions is gonna swell
up. And I ask people to pray for Shabaka that when that day come I be by
myself."
• • •
Charlotte
police received calls almost two weeks ago from people who were worried about
Mamie Caldwell Brown. They went to check on her.
Police
say she suffered unspecified trauma.
The
retired secretary was 71.
At a
hearing last week, Joseph Green Brown had on handcuffs and an orange jail
jumpsuit. He took a quick look at his wife's family and then turned away.
• • •
Shea kept
in touch with Brown. He wrote a book about Brown. He exchanged Christmas cards
with Brown. He knew his wife. He talked with them on the phone, at least a
couple times a year. He said they'd been having a tough time financially.
"I
think it's sad," Shea said, "if Joe actually killed his wife. That's
very sad. He should pay the consequences if he did it.
"I
don't know the circumstances," he added. "Probably only two people
do. And one of them is dead."
News
researchers Carolyn Edds, Caryn Baird and Natalie Watson contributed to this
report, which used information from the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte
Observer and the Associated Press. Michael Kruse can be reached at
mkruse@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8751.
Freed
from death row, he faces a new murder charge 09/25/12 [Last modified: Tuesday,
September 25, 2012 10:01pm]
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/dpic.htm
24. Joseph Green Brown--Brown
v. State, 381 So.2d 690 (Fla. 1980); Brown v. State, 439 So.2d 872
(Fla. 1983); Brown v. Wainwright, 785 F.2d 1457 (11th Cir.
1986). Brown was convicted and sentenced to death based primarily on the
testimony of potential accomplice Ronald Floyd, a witness who subsequently went
through a series of recantations and retractions of his recantations. Associate
Justice Brennan actually relied on Brown’s case to note: “Recantation
testimony is properly viewed with great suspicion.” Dobbert v.
Wainwright, 468 U.S. 1231 (1984) (Brennan, J. dis.) (citing Brown v.
State, 381 So.2d 690). Brown was not granted a retrial because Floyd’s
testimony implicating Brown was false, but because Floyd and the prosecution
did not disclose that Floyd was testifying in return for an agreement that he
would not be prosecuted in the case. Floyd initially flunked a polygraph test
about his general involvement in the murder, but then passed the test three
times in terms of whether or not he was an actual perpetrator in the crime.
However, Floyd also recanted his testimony implicating Brown, then recanted
that recantation during an evidentiary hearing. Subsequently, Floyd again
repudiated his initial trial testimony and the prosecution was unable to retry
Brown. Given the inherent unreliability of the sequence of Floyd’s multiple
recantations (which are “properly viewed with great suspicion”), Brown cannot
be deemed actually innocent.
CHECK THIS VIDEO TO SEE ONE OF
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