With prison date near, Brown upbeat

Convicted ex-congresswoman appears at MLK event

Two weeks before she is scheduled to report to prison, former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown spoke positively Monday at a Clay County event commemorating the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“There really is a lot of work left to be done,” the 12-term congresswoman told about 150 people at MLK Day-N-Clay, a yearly breakfast attended by politicians and civic figures honoring the assassinated civil-rights icon.

Brown appeared near the end of the event, when African-Americans who had run for office in the county were recognized and her name was called.

A small crowd of current and former candidates eventually gathered, including three people who had run against Brown, as well as Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels.

Brown, who was convicted of fraud and tax charges in May, is to report to prison Jan. 29 to begin a five-year sentence. She is challenging her conviction and is trying to persuade an appeals court to let her remain free while that plays out.

Brown would not talk to a reporter after the breakfast at Shiloh Church on Blanding Boulevard. The Jacksonville Democrat represented part of Clay County for much of her career, which ended when she lost a reelection bid shortly after being indicted in 2016.

Brown spoke briefly before introducing an attorney, Charles Truncale, who said he was “contemplating” taking some unspecified action involving Brown’s appeal of her case, which includes an effort to overturn her conviction on the grounds that a juror was wrongly removed because of religious statements he made. Truncale said he is not representing Brown.

Truncale said he was troubled by the juror’s removal and had been talking since last week with ministers who objected to U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan’s decision.

That juror said during deliberations that “the Holy Spirit” had told him Brown

was innocent, and the judge in the case ruled that the comments violated court rules against receiving information or direction about a case from sources outside the courtroom.

Truncale said after the breakfast that he was concerned about respecting the juror’s religious-freedom guarantees under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. During the event, he told the audience King had challenged people to do what was right “when it is unsafe, when it’s unpolitic, when it’s unpopular,” and that questioning the judge’s decision is “totally appropriate.”

Brown was convicted on 18 felony counts after the juror was removed.

Brown didn’t mention the conviction during her breakfast remarks, telling people instead that she had been proud to serve in Congress and that she was determined to make the years of her life count. As she often does, Brown led the audience in a statement of gratitude. “All the time,” she said, “God is good.”

After speaking Monday, Brown and Truncale met privately with a group of people who had attended the breakfast.

There was no attempt to enlist support from the breakfast participants as a group. But the event’s main organizer, the Rev. William Randall, told the group he didn’t want to see Brown sent to prison. Instead, he said, she should be sentenced to work to improve the condition of children and poor and disenfranchised people, a key part of Brown’s longtime constituency.

Randall ran as a Republican to unseat Brown in 1998. Two other Republicans who lost to Brown, former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll and activist Glo Smith, also were among the AfricanAmerican candidates recognized with Brown at the breakfast.