Mistake Nearly Cost A Life
Dublin Core
Title
Mistake Nearly Cost A Life
Subject
Criminal defense lawyers
Description
Joseph Green Brown alias "Shabaka," a wrongly convicted rapist and murder on death row for 14 years, released in 1987, now struggles to enjoy his freedom while he lives in a society that he believes is a failed justice system that has prejudice towards minorities. Lawyer Michael A. Mello chimes in on the types of struggles Shabaka faces as a free man and praises his advocacy of the repeal of the death penalty throughout the country.
Creator
Tucker, Neely
Source
Florida Today
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Rights
The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source.
Format
2 JPGs
300 DPI
Language
English
Coverage
Washington D.C.
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
[image - Joseph Green Brown]
[image caption - Death row victor: Joseph Green Brown, also known as Shabaka, spent 13 years on Florida's death row for a crime he did not commit.]
He walks the streets of the nation’s capital, white jacket loosely slung across his muscular shoulders, the image of a free man in a free country. Joseph Green Brown – call him by his Swahili name, Shabaka – bypasses the stately townhouses, the men and women in their greatcoats bustling against the winter chill. He doesn’t talk much. He watches a lot. On the street, he’s content to move unnoticed in the crowd. He jogs across the street and ducks into a café-bar for lunch. No one gives him a second glance. That’s fine. People tend to feel nervous when they know Shabaka’s past. For 13 years, thate state of Florida called this soft-spoken, philosophical man a rapist, robber and a killer. Prosecutors wouldn’t have wanted him ordering a hot sandwich and a beer in this nice, upscale luncheonette. Prosecutors wanted him dead. The governor signed his death warrant. Prison guards measured him for a funeral suit. Shabaka had 15 hours to live when an appeal finally netted a stay. Those execution attempts ended just nine months ago when Florida, in a startling announcement, said it had the wrong man. The state’s key witness recanted his testimony and the case against Shabaka collapsed. His conviction was overturned. At first, it was hard for him to step back into the spotlight and speak out against a death penalty system he believes in blatantly racist, immoral and illegal. But in a growing number of public appearances – he’s set to speak at colleges in Alabama, New York, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, and possibly at Harvard – his language is growing stronger, his town more forceful. “In slavery days, I’m what the old field hands would call an ‘indignant nigger,’” he said. “That was a slave they were going to have to beat today, tonight, tomorrow and the next week to keep in line. I’m not going to be quiet. I want to be the person law enforcement agencies call an embarrassment.” Combined with a study in the Stanford Law Review documenting more than 350 oher unjust death sentences this century – 23 resulting in executions – Shabaka hopes to shake up the system that convicted him and dozens of other innocent, impoverished minorities. He was tagged with the July 7, 1973 rape, robbery and murder of a Tampa children’s store owner. Police were still looking for clues in that crime when, miles away and hours
[end page]
[start page]
later, two men broke into a local hotel room. They robbed a couple of jewelry and a few hundred dollars. At gunpoint, the woman was forced to disrobe. One of her assailants started to touch her, suddenly stopped, turned and f;ed/ Joseph “Shabaka” Green Brown, a former Black Panther member, flagged down a police car the next day. He had committed the Holiday Inn robbery, he said. Overcome with guilt, he wanted to turn himself in. It was his first criminal offense. But Brown’s accomplice in the hotel robbery, Ronald Floyd, was not at all pleased with being accused of the crime. Three and a half months later, in a plea bargain deal, he told police Brown was the killer in the earlier robbery. A judge and jury agreed, and they ordered brown electrocuted at the state penitentiary in Starke. From 1974 to March 5, 1987, prosecutors tried. When Floyd finally recanted, Brown was immediately set free. But because he wasn’t in a state facility, he didn’t qualify for rehabilitation programs, the state-granted suit and $100. Instead, he was ushered to the jail-front sidewalk eight minutes after the conviction was overturned. He had a cardboard box of legal papers under his arm and three quarters in his pocket. He was 23 when he flagged down the Tampa police officer. He was now a 37-year-old man. He had sout out Watergate, the “me” generation, disco, Iranian hostages, yuppies and Ronald Reagan. He had no friends, no family in the state, no idea of where the nearest phone booth was or the foggiest idea of how he was going to eat that night. Freedom has not proven to be an easy walk. As he braces himself for his first winter outside prison, he sits at the restaurant, saying he feels more like an exile in a strange and hostile land rather than the free man he embodies when he walks the streets about which he once only dreamed. “I feel lost a lot, kind of disconnected,” he said softly. “One day I was lying in bed, and it really hit me. I thought about them all on the row. … The closest friend I have is still on death row in Florida. And here I am, able to walk around outside and hear the birds, feel the warmth of the sun, watch people walking by on the street, hold a woman or pick up a little baby. I just can’t forget the guys I left behind. Nobody owns Shabaka. But I can’t feel free as long as they’re killing people.” But when he’s not making speeches, life is still a troubling thing for Shabaka. The talks, sporadic and spread out, are the only form of income he can muster. Though he said he’s applied at more than 50 positions – from rolling pizza dough to construction – no offers have been made. It’s barely enough to pay the rent for his corner room in another family’s house. His conscience stalks him. He remembers the woman in the motel room, the terror in her eye. The talks are personal therapy, but he hopes to work with poor teen-agers, giving them a reason to believe. “We’re always drilling it into kids to get and education, to get ahead,” he said. “But nobody tells that to the poor little child down on the wrong side of the block. Let’s say that kid grows up, commits a robbery, rape or worst of all, murder. And people sit back so pious and ask ‘Why? Why such a senseless, stupid act?’ My response is ‘Why not?’ Why should that child value your life or property, when no one ever treated them with any respect, or taught them they were an individual with a life worth living?” Michael Mello, a Washington lawyer who has helped with Shabaka’s readjustment, doesn’t think he’ll ever be the free man who fits into the crowd. “I’m not sure he’ll ever feel comfortable living his own life,” Mello said. “He knows he was just loucky to get out. He has a very strong sense of mission to help those guys back on death row. When hhe tells you he’s not going to let people forget them, he’s not kidding. You’re going to hear a lot from him. He’s like that line in a Joan Baez song, ‘Saviors are a nuisance to live with at home.’ I think that’s going to be America’s feeling for Shabaka.”
[image caption - Death row victor: Joseph Green Brown, also known as Shabaka, spent 13 years on Florida's death row for a crime he did not commit.]
He walks the streets of the nation’s capital, white jacket loosely slung across his muscular shoulders, the image of a free man in a free country. Joseph Green Brown – call him by his Swahili name, Shabaka – bypasses the stately townhouses, the men and women in their greatcoats bustling against the winter chill. He doesn’t talk much. He watches a lot. On the street, he’s content to move unnoticed in the crowd. He jogs across the street and ducks into a café-bar for lunch. No one gives him a second glance. That’s fine. People tend to feel nervous when they know Shabaka’s past. For 13 years, thate state of Florida called this soft-spoken, philosophical man a rapist, robber and a killer. Prosecutors wouldn’t have wanted him ordering a hot sandwich and a beer in this nice, upscale luncheonette. Prosecutors wanted him dead. The governor signed his death warrant. Prison guards measured him for a funeral suit. Shabaka had 15 hours to live when an appeal finally netted a stay. Those execution attempts ended just nine months ago when Florida, in a startling announcement, said it had the wrong man. The state’s key witness recanted his testimony and the case against Shabaka collapsed. His conviction was overturned. At first, it was hard for him to step back into the spotlight and speak out against a death penalty system he believes in blatantly racist, immoral and illegal. But in a growing number of public appearances – he’s set to speak at colleges in Alabama, New York, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, and possibly at Harvard – his language is growing stronger, his town more forceful. “In slavery days, I’m what the old field hands would call an ‘indignant nigger,’” he said. “That was a slave they were going to have to beat today, tonight, tomorrow and the next week to keep in line. I’m not going to be quiet. I want to be the person law enforcement agencies call an embarrassment.” Combined with a study in the Stanford Law Review documenting more than 350 oher unjust death sentences this century – 23 resulting in executions – Shabaka hopes to shake up the system that convicted him and dozens of other innocent, impoverished minorities. He was tagged with the July 7, 1973 rape, robbery and murder of a Tampa children’s store owner. Police were still looking for clues in that crime when, miles away and hours
[end page]
[start page]
later, two men broke into a local hotel room. They robbed a couple of jewelry and a few hundred dollars. At gunpoint, the woman was forced to disrobe. One of her assailants started to touch her, suddenly stopped, turned and f;ed/ Joseph “Shabaka” Green Brown, a former Black Panther member, flagged down a police car the next day. He had committed the Holiday Inn robbery, he said. Overcome with guilt, he wanted to turn himself in. It was his first criminal offense. But Brown’s accomplice in the hotel robbery, Ronald Floyd, was not at all pleased with being accused of the crime. Three and a half months later, in a plea bargain deal, he told police Brown was the killer in the earlier robbery. A judge and jury agreed, and they ordered brown electrocuted at the state penitentiary in Starke. From 1974 to March 5, 1987, prosecutors tried. When Floyd finally recanted, Brown was immediately set free. But because he wasn’t in a state facility, he didn’t qualify for rehabilitation programs, the state-granted suit and $100. Instead, he was ushered to the jail-front sidewalk eight minutes after the conviction was overturned. He had a cardboard box of legal papers under his arm and three quarters in his pocket. He was 23 when he flagged down the Tampa police officer. He was now a 37-year-old man. He had sout out Watergate, the “me” generation, disco, Iranian hostages, yuppies and Ronald Reagan. He had no friends, no family in the state, no idea of where the nearest phone booth was or the foggiest idea of how he was going to eat that night. Freedom has not proven to be an easy walk. As he braces himself for his first winter outside prison, he sits at the restaurant, saying he feels more like an exile in a strange and hostile land rather than the free man he embodies when he walks the streets about which he once only dreamed. “I feel lost a lot, kind of disconnected,” he said softly. “One day I was lying in bed, and it really hit me. I thought about them all on the row. … The closest friend I have is still on death row in Florida. And here I am, able to walk around outside and hear the birds, feel the warmth of the sun, watch people walking by on the street, hold a woman or pick up a little baby. I just can’t forget the guys I left behind. Nobody owns Shabaka. But I can’t feel free as long as they’re killing people.” But when he’s not making speeches, life is still a troubling thing for Shabaka. The talks, sporadic and spread out, are the only form of income he can muster. Though he said he’s applied at more than 50 positions – from rolling pizza dough to construction – no offers have been made. It’s barely enough to pay the rent for his corner room in another family’s house. His conscience stalks him. He remembers the woman in the motel room, the terror in her eye. The talks are personal therapy, but he hopes to work with poor teen-agers, giving them a reason to believe. “We’re always drilling it into kids to get and education, to get ahead,” he said. “But nobody tells that to the poor little child down on the wrong side of the block. Let’s say that kid grows up, commits a robbery, rape or worst of all, murder. And people sit back so pious and ask ‘Why? Why such a senseless, stupid act?’ My response is ‘Why not?’ Why should that child value your life or property, when no one ever treated them with any respect, or taught them they were an individual with a life worth living?” Michael Mello, a Washington lawyer who has helped with Shabaka’s readjustment, doesn’t think he’ll ever be the free man who fits into the crowd. “I’m not sure he’ll ever feel comfortable living his own life,” Mello said. “He knows he was just loucky to get out. He has a very strong sense of mission to help those guys back on death row. When hhe tells you he’s not going to let people forget them, he’s not kidding. You’re going to hear a lot from him. He’s like that line in a Joan Baez song, ‘Saviors are a nuisance to live with at home.’ I think that’s going to be America’s feeling for Shabaka.”
Original Format
Newspaper
Contributor of the Digital Item
Jah, Ethan
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Dickinson, Terra
Files
Citation
Tucker, Neely, “Mistake Nearly Cost A Life,” HIST299, accessed March 12, 2026, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/114.