Brown appeal: Juror wrongfully removed
Corrine Brown’s attempt to get out of federal prison hinges on an ex-juror who said that the Holy Spirit told him Brown was not guilty of charges related to a charity scam.
Brown, a former 12-term Democratic congresswoman from Jacksonville whose district once reached into Orlando, was convicted in May on 18 felony counts related to her role in using contributions to a charity called One Door for Education for personal expenses and events.
The attorney for Brown, 71, filed a brief Monday in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing his client’s conviction should be tossed out because the juror was improperly dismissed from the case because of his religious statements.
“The record in this case supports only one conclusion: that this juror was basing his verdict on his view of the sufficiency of the evidence, after prayerful consideration and as he saw it, in his mind, guidance from the Holy Spirit,” Brown’s attorney, William Mallory Kent, wrote in the brief.
“Whether he should or should not have depended on any guidance from the Holy Spirit does not resolve the matter in favor of his dismissal, because the well established law in this and other circuits is that so long as there is any reasonable possibility that the juror is basing his view on the sufficiency of the evidence, he may not be dismissed.’’
But in a December court document, U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan, who sentenced Brown to five years in prison, rejected arguments that he improperly dismissed the juror.
“In essence, the court [ judge] dismissed a juror who it found was unable to follow the law,” Corrigan wrote Dec. 20.
“The court applied the governing legal standard to the facts, finding beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no substantial possibility that the juror was able to base his decision only on the evidence and the law as the court had instructed.”
In sentencing Brown on Dec. 4, the judge wrote that One Door for Education, which was originally established to help children, was “operated as a criminal enterprise” by Brown, her longtime chief of staff, Ronnie Simmons, and the charity’s founder, Carla Wiley.
In January, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Brown’s request to stay out of prison while conviction.
She is serving the sentence at the Coleman federal correctional institution in Sumter County, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons website.
The brief filed Monday said that the issue about the dismissed juror’s religious statements began after the jury had started deliberating.
Another juror informed the court that she had concerns about the man, identified in the brief as “juror number 13.”
Corrigan questioned the juror before deciding to replace him with an alternate juror.
The jury subsequently found Brown guilty of the charges. she appeals the