Green Crosley
Crosley Green was convicted of murder 34 years ago in Florida and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
Green, who is black, claimed he was innocent of the murder of the white victim and refused to plead guilty.
Five years ago, a federal judge granted Green’s habeas corpus petition and overturned his conviction because the prosecutor, in violation of his constitution and ethical duties, failed to disclose to the defense that police officers who initially investigated the case believed that someone else, not Green, was the killer.
Green spent 31 years in prison before being released in 2021, mostly on death row. (His death sentence was changed to life imprisonment due to errors at the capital punishment stage). The prosecutor appealed the federal judge’s decision, saying that since the officers’ opinions were not material, they had no obligation to disclose them and that Green would have been convicted anyway.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the prosecutor and reversed the federal judge’s decision. So, after spending two years free with his family, going to church, going to work as a mechanic and enjoying barbecues, Green was sent back to prison the next week to resume his life sentence.
From a fundamental justice perspective, Crosley Green’s story is deeply troubling. Is his case an aberration or does it teach us something important about American criminal justice? Is he a minor figure in a huge, complex legal system in which mistakes are inevitably made, and only when those mistakes are serious enough are they worth correcting? Does the fact that masses of people are incarcerated every year, including Green, reveal loopholes in the criminal law?
The circumstances of the murder are bizarre and suggest that the original police theory that Green was not the killer makes perfect sense. Two youngsters, Chip Flynn and Kim Hallock, sat overnight in a pickup truck in a remote Brevard County parking lot.
Hallock was jealous that Flynn was seeing other women and they discussed their relationship. Hallock claimed that a black man suddenly approached them with a gun, got into the truck and ordered them to drive to a secluded orange grove where Hallock claimed that Flynn, who had a gun fire, shot the man and the man returned fire, killing Flynn. Hallock escaped.
The police found no physical evidence. The only witness to the murder was Hallock. She described the attacker as having features that did not match Green except for the color of his skin. She told police the killer was “black.” His selection of Green’s photo from a painting was suspicious: Police told him the killer was in one of the photos; Green has been selectively placed to stand out; his skin seemed to have been darkened; and Hallock made her identification after repeatedly stating she was unsure.
Three people who testified that Green told them he was the killer later recanted, saying the police coerced them. Two police officers who conducted the initial investigation told the prosecutor they believed Hallock shot Flynn with a gun she kept in the truck’s glove compartment.
But since this theory was inconsistent with the prosecutor’s theory that Green was the killer, the prosecutor disregarded it, believing that these officers had been mistaken and therefore had no obligation to reveal any information to the defense. which he considered unreliable.
However, the prosecutor misunderstood or ignored his constitutional and ethical obligation to disclose this information to the defense. This experienced prosecutor was certainly aware of the landmark Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland (1963), which requires prosecutors to disclose to an accused evidence materially favorable to his defence.
It is not up to the prosecutor to decide whether the evidence is important or not. If that were the rule, it would be tantamount to the prosecutor-fox guarding the chicken coop. But that’s not the rule. As the federal judge stated when granting Green’s habeas corpus motion, the prosecutor was required to disclose the information because it would be “difficult to conceive of more material information for the defense and for the development of defense strategy.
The Court of Appeal weighed on the side of the prosecutor. The court did not consider the information material enough. The court held that the defense would not have been able to use the police opinion that Hallock was the killer because it was hearsay and therefore inadmissible.
And, at trial, the defense tried to point the finger at Hallock as the killer. But learning that several police investigators also shared this belief would have strongly bolstered their theory and provided the impetus for lawyers to explore the basis of the officers’ opinion and then uncover admissible evidence pointing to Hallock as the killer.
The prosecutor unquestionably violated his legal and ethical obligations by not disclosing the opinion of the police as to the identity of the killer. But the decision of the court of first instance is less clear-cut. Since this court had the advantage of the entire trial record, he could speculate that even if the defense had the information withheld by the prosecutor, it would not have mattered; the jury would still have come to the same conclusion about Green’s guilt.
Regardless of the legal issues of whether the prosecutor breached his duty to disclose, whether the federal judge who granted Green his freedom made the correct decision, and whether the circuit court should have upheld that decision, the overarching question remains: is it the common sense of justice that a man convicted of a crime he claims he did not commit, who spent 31 years in prison, mostly on death row, who was released and legally in freedom for two years enjoying the life of freedom enjoyed by all free people, or suddenly sent back to that prison to spend the rest of his life in a prison cell?
What kind of message does this tragic story reveal about American justice? Rules of law are of course important. But one wonders if other fundamental precepts could also be important, such as mercy, compassion and humanity.
Crosley Green faces a bleak future. Clemency and forgiveness are his only options. The governor of Florida is unlikely to pardon him, and the pardon board is filled with hardliners.
So the story ends here, tragically and probably forgotten.
Professor Bennett Gershman is a professor of law at Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law, a former attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and a special assistant attorney general at the New York State Anti-Corruption Bureau.
This is an opinion piece. The opinions expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.
This is an opinion piece. The opinions expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.
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