Investigators spent the last two days digging up the back
yard of the Hollywood home where Tim Brown's family once lived,
saying they were looking for any evidence related to the 1990 murder
of Broward Sheriff's Deputy Patrick Behan.
The move comes as
Broward County prosecutors are deciding whether to attempt to put
Brown, 26, on trial again. Legal experts say such an effort would be
doomed because there is no evidence against him, and there is
another suspect who is on tape claiming that he killed
Behan.
"They just won't stop,"
said Tim Day, one of Brown's attorneys. "When will they recognize
that they are dealing with an innocent person?"
A federal
judge has overturned Brown's conviction for the murder and ruled his
confession, which Brown says was false, cannot be used against him.
Brown, who is retarded and was 15 at the time, did not understand
his rights when he spoke to detectives, the judge ruled.
The
months of hearings in the federal case were almost like a retrial as
prosecutors tried to sustain Brown's conviction, and Brown's federal
public defenders attacked it. The judge ruled a jury would likely
acquit Brown in light of all the evidence now available against the
other man and the lack of evidence against Brown.
A
spokeswoman for the team of nine investigators from the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement and the Broward Sheriff's Office would
not say exactly what they were looking for or whether they found
anything.
"This is part of an ongoing reinvestigation of the
murder," Paige Patterson-Hughes said. "We're looking for any
information or items that may be related to this
crime."
Experts said it seems most likely the team was
looking for either the weapon used to kill Behan or ammunition
similar to the bullets used. The gun used in his murder has never
been found.
The team used a small bulldozer, a metal
detector, picks and shovels to excavate the back yard in the 6600
block of Perry Street. Large concrete pieces from the foundation of
a shed, as well as other dirt and debris, were loaded into a
Hollywood Public Works Department dump truck.
A large plastic
garbage bag that appeared heavy and a small paper bag were placed in
an FDLE crime scene truck at the scene.
Patterson-Hughes said
the family living in the house consented to the search and was not
part of the investigation in any way. Because the current residents
agreed to the search, investigators did not need to get a search
warrant approved by a judge.
Brown's attorneys, Day and
Brenda Bryn, said they were upset that law enforcement was devoting
so many resources to looking for evidence against Brown. An
undercover county and federal investigation caught another man,
Andrew Johnson of Margate, on audio and videotape saying he
committed the murder. Johnson later denied he was
involved.
"It appears that state authorities will stop at
nothing," Day said. "They won't stop when a federal judge says Tim
Brown is innocent, they won't stop when a judge rules his statement
is illegal, they won't stop when a third party admits to the murder,
which is corroborated by eyewitness testimony."
A spokeswoman
for Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne said the search was part of the
continuing investigation recommended in February by FDLE
Commissioner Tim Moore and approved by Gov. Jeb Bush.
In his
letter to the governor, Moore said, questions remained "regarding
some of BSO's investigative activities and its pursuit of
investigative leads during the original homicide
investigation."
Since then, a homicide review team made up of
Sheriff's Office and FDLE detectives has been conducting a complete
re-examination of Behan's murder.
"This is part of that
investigation," said Cheryl Stopnick, the Sheriff's Office
spokeswoman.
Sheriff's detectives never searched Brown's yard
during the initial investigation, said former Detective James Carr.
At the time, they thought he and co-defendant Keith King threw the
gun in a quarry off 40th Avenue in Hollywood. Carr said he hoped
investigators would find something to implicate Brown.
During
the undercover investigation of Johnson, another team of sheriff's
deputies searched a field in Miami-Dade County where Johnson and his
estranged wife said they dumped the gun Johnson used. They found
nothing there.
Othalean Brown, who raised Tim Brown and whom
he calls "Mom," said she lived at the Perry Street house between
August 1990 and October 1993.
"He lived there off and on, he
was in and out, but they are not going to find anything because
there is nothing to find," she said. "They have no evidence, they
have no witnesses, and now they have no confession. Justice has
prevailed and it will continue to prevail, and I will have my son
home soon."
Broward State Attorney Mike Satz would not
comment on the case. He has already said he won't appeal the federal
judge's ruling overturning Brown's conviction but said he had not
yet decided whether he would prosecute Brown again in the
murder.
Several local legal experts have said they think
there is no way Brown could be retried for the murder.
Steven
J. Hammer, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who once represented a witness
in the Brown case, said prosecutors have no evidence against Brown.
They are probably just satisfying themselves they have investigated
every lead, he said.
"Politically that's probably the right
move, but I can't imagine the case would go forward," Hammer
said.
He pointed out that the law requires prosecutors to act
in good faith, which means they must think there is a "likelihood of
conviction" in a case before taking it to trial.
Raag
Singhal, another Fort Lauderdale attorney who is on the board of the
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he too thinks
prosecuting Brown again would be impossible and wrong.
"It's
very difficult when there's a civil case on the horizon. I think
it's very difficult for detectives and the State Attorney's Office
to acknowledge they got the wrong person. That's the way prosecutors
think.
"If they were going to come out now and say we're not
going to prosecute Tim Brown, and we don't think we can prosecute
Andrew Johnson, then it's almost like an acknowledgement they got
the wrong person."
But Singhal, a former prosecutor in Satz's
office, said he thinks Satz will do the right thing.
"I have
some confidence in Mike Satz to evaluate the case and if there's
nothing to go on, close it. I also know he's always felt a great
duty to police officers and to police officers' families. If Mike
looks at it and says `we don't have the right guy,' the Mike I know
is not going to keep that case going."
Paula McMahon can be
reached pmcmahon@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4533. |
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