February 13, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown went viral in 2018, Cyntoia Brown was the most popular inmate in the world. She's here to share her story.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And our favorite stories to tell are just ordinary American
redemption story, second chances, even third chances that this country
allows people to have and to pursue.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's a beautiful part of our nature.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Saintoya Brown served fifteen years of a life sentence for
killing a forty three year old real estate agent when
she was sixteen years old after being forced into prostitution
by a man called Cutthroat. The now married Brown long
has never denied her crime, but alleges she acted out
of self defense. Here's Centoya to share her story.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
So. I was born for Campbell, Kentucky, which is a
military base right on the line Kentucky, Tennessee. And I
was raised dar in Clarksville by my adopted parents.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
My father was military and my mother she was a teacher.
I was really my dad's psyechic. When I was younger,
I considered it psydechic. I guess he would consider it
apprentice because anytime he would build something, I always had
to go fetching the tools. I guess it was pretty
convenient form. But those were one of my favorite past
(01:29):
times with my dad is helping him build stuff, helping
him fix stuff around the house, and my mother. It
was the same. Whenever my father retired from the military,
he actually started driving Chuck, so he would be gone
for long periods of time, so it would just be
my mom and me. And she was really into gardening.
I wasn't, but I did enjoy kind of just hanging
(01:52):
outside with her watching her plant. So up until the
point that I turned sixteen, I thought school was the
worst possible thing to have ever happened to me in
my life. I should have been really great in school.
I was smart, I was always getting good grades, but
for some reason, I was always founding myself in the
(02:12):
principal's office. Whether that was because I didn't want the
teacher to help me with work, I just wanted to
figure it out for myself, whether I had a smart
remark for the teacher, just any little thing would get
me sent to the principal's office and found myself getting suspended.
I believe I was eleven when I was first expelled
(02:34):
from school. I had brought a bottle of Nodos to class,
which is caffeine pills. I had found him in my
sister's husband's truck shed. He had left the truck there
whenever he was deployed, and they went to Hawaii, and
I was just playing around one day and found these
caffeine pills. Took him to school for show and tell,
and next thing I know, I was expelled for zero
(02:57):
tolerance drug policies. I didn't consider them to be a drug,
didn't know they were a drug, but that didn't matter.
I was kicked out of school and couldn't return to
public school. It seemed like they were just really looking
for an excuse, so part of me wasn't necessarily surprised,
and it really just added to that feeling that, you know,
(03:19):
I just wasn't wanted there and it wasn't a place
for me. I never really fit. I was kind of
an outcast, Like I said, When I was growing up,
my dad would always tell me all the stories about him,
you know, in war, and what he did when Charlie
was coming at three o'clock and and how they did.
And so I thought, Okay, well, this is a game
(03:40):
that I wanna play with my friends, and so my neighbor,
my friend from down the street, and some other kids
in the neighborhood. We were all together playing random games,
you know, bubble Gum, bubble gum in a dish and
any Mini Miney Moe, and I said, well, how about
this new game, let's play war And they were like,
well what is that? I said, well, we're all gonna
get some wrong. You stand on that side of the street,
(04:02):
We're gonna stand on this side of the street, and
we're just gonna throw them at each other and see
what happens. And that's what we did. And I ended
up picking up the biggest rock that I could that
I found. Why, I don't know, but I threw it
and it hit my neighbors square in the forehead and
that was the moment that I knew I'm about to
(04:23):
get in trouble, like this has going horribly wrong. And
she just started bleeding and screaming. And then everybody was
like this is all your fault, and I was like,
wait a minute, and you all wanted to play. I
thought we were having fun. So after that, nobody's parents
really wanted their kids playing with me, and of course
I got in trouble. My dad he kind of understood,
(04:45):
but it was just I think that was that was
like one of the turning points when I kind of
lost a lot of friends. So going to alternative school
was a completely different experience. These kids had had been
involved in the justice system already. Most of them were
on probation of some kind. Many of them had already
(05:07):
been to facilities, and they returned back from the facilities
to go to this school. They smoked freely, some of
them did drugs freely. I had never been around that
because I was raised in a military community. A lot
of the kids that I was around were kids of
military families. They just you just don't do that. And
(05:31):
what was different from me being in this alternary school
around these kids is these kids didn't judge me. They
didn't make me feel like an outcast. They didn't make
me feel like I wasn't wanted or I had to
be this or be that to fit in with them.
And so I really found that, oh, this is kind
of where I fit, like, this is a place for me.
(05:53):
So we all decided to skip school. And sometimes when
we skipped school, we would just ride the city bus
around town, walk around downtown, and just see whatever we
could get into. But this day, Samantha says, you know,
my mom she's not home. We can go to my
house and we could just hang out and we're like, okay, cool.
(06:15):
And when we get there, she's like, oh, man, I
forgot my key. And she's like, no worries, no worries.
My bedroom window was open, so she opens the window
and I'm the smallest one there, so they pushed me
through the window and I unlocked the door. It is
her house, but when her mother come home, she didn't
feel that we were supposed to be in the house.
(06:36):
She was very upset some things she claimed were missing
from the house that were stolen. And I mean, I
don't know if anybody stold it or not. I can't
be accountable for the other people that was with me,
but we all ended up being charged not only for
breaking and entering, but for a theft of property.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And you're listening to Sentoya Brown, and she's the author
of Free Centoia, My Search for Redemption.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
In the American prison System.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story here
on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Folks, if you.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
of the our American Stories family. If you agree that
America is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
(07:52):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and with Centoya Brown's story. Let's pick
(08:14):
up where we last left off with Centoya being charged
with breaking and entering and theft of property after skipping
school with friends and then going to one of her
girlfriend's homes where her mother would end up filing charges.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Here's Centoya.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
So after I was charged with my other three code defendants.
That's bad when you say codefendance when you're talking about
a twelve year old. But I actually had to go
to juvenile court, and this was my first time ever
in a courtroom. My father he had to pay for
an attorney to represent me. So I spent some time
(08:52):
in juvenile detention and the attorney ended up getting a
deal where I got out and I was on probation.
So whenever I went to the court. One of the
first things they do is they send you for a
mental evaluation, and so they're in this facility, which I
definitely didn't feel like I fit in because this was
like a real deal mental facility. You had people who
(09:16):
were struggling with autism, you had people who had down syndrome,
you had people with schizophrenia. It was kind of scary
to be in there, and again, couldn't be around my parents,
couldn't contact my parents. And what I found comforted me.
There was there was this woman who was teaching some
(09:36):
of the girls there how to crochet, and I started
learning and that was something that would call me. So
I just brought my crochet stuff to class and I
would sit there and crochet whenever I finished with my work. Well,
one day I went to lunch and I remember that
I forgot my purse, and so I went back into
the classroom to get my purse, and I saw that
(09:59):
the teacher had been in my purse and she was
actually going through it and she was pulling out the yarn,
saying you're not supposed to be doing this, and I said, well,
you're not supposed to be in my stuff. And I said,
give me that and I took it out of her hand,
and all of a sudden, she started screaming and hollering,
calling for the sro. Next thing I know, he's coming
(10:20):
in and she's saying I've assaulted her, and I said
I didn't assault her. I took my stuff out of
her hand. They said, well, did you snatch it. I said, well, yes,
it's mine. They said, well, that's as salt, and so
I ended up getting charged with assault. I had my
probation violated, and I was returned back to the facility,
(10:40):
but this time I was putting state custody. So two
months after I had turned thirteen, and in state custody
you can have an indeterminate sentence or a determined incidence.
I was indeterminate, meaning whenever they felt like they wanted
to let me go back home to my parents' is
when I would go. So I he ended up spending
(11:01):
a year and a half in state custody, And to
be honest with you, the only reason I got out
is because my mother had got fed up and she
had threatened to actually follow a suit against the state
whenever they had allowed for my news my picture to
be placed in a newspaper. So I was fifteen when
(11:22):
I finally got a state custody and it was on
the ride home back from Nashville to Clarksville that my
mom tells me that they had been divorced. And the
whole time she had been telling me, you know, he's
gone to the store, he's at his friend's house, he's
in the backyard working on the pool. It was all
a lie, like he had been gone that whole entire time.
(11:46):
But she didn't want it to affect my progress in
the program. She didn't want it to overwhelm me or
distract me from doing what I needed to do to
come home. So that was that was a pretty big
bomb that was dropped on me. First thing. Then all
of a sudden, here's this man that I know absolutely
(12:06):
nothing about, who apparently they had been friends from when
she used to live in New York, and now they
were talking on the phone for hours and hours and hours,
and he came to visit there at the house. And
when he came to visit, it's not like he was
being a visitor. He was telling me what I needed
to do and trying to order me around, and I
(12:27):
was just like, hold up, wait a minute, Wait a minute.
And so I said, well, you know what, that fine,
I'll just go back and hang out with my friends
that I met when I was on the run from
state custody. And that's when I ran away. So I
caught up some friends that I had met while I
was on the run in Nashville. And when I say friends,
(12:48):
these are older women. These women are in their mid
twenties and I was just fifteen years old. And they
came and they got me, they welcomed me back, and
there I was back living the life that I had
lived on the run before. And that meant, you know,
having sex with adult men and that being normalized, that
(13:12):
being permitted and even encouraged by the adults that I
was around, which is something completely completely different from what
I had been raised with. But I mean it had
become the norm for me. That also meant that I
was getting high every day. I was smoking weed every
single day. And that was the time that I had
(13:37):
actually met my trafficker. Is during that time when I
was sixteen years old. So I met Kut at a
gas station here in Nashville, and I actually met him.
I was riding with friends who were looking for another
man who had just raped me and they were gonna
(13:58):
you know, take out some on him and confront him
about what he'd done. And we stopped at the gas
station and I wanted some some newports, and so we
walked up. I walked up to this guy and was like,
do you have a Newport and he was like no,
And he offered to give me five dollars to get
a pack if I would give him my number, so
(14:21):
I did. After that, you know, we started talking on
the phone. He started coming to pick me up and
hang out with me, and I just pretty much just
fell head over hills within a matter of days for
this stranger, this older guy who did not have good
intentions for me at all. But all that I saw
(14:45):
when I was with him was that he listened to me.
You know, my mind at that time, it was like, wow,
like he's really interested in me. No one really pays
me this level of attention. No one really cares about,
you know, my life story, my thought, my feelings, what
I'm into. But here he's just like completely absorbed into it.
(15:07):
Now I understand that he was looking, you know, for
things that he could manipulate. He was looking for things
that he could exploit. He was listening because he needed
to find out how he could really get into my
head and play me. So when you're on the run,
you know you can't necessarily just go get a job.
(15:29):
I didn't have an idea or a license or anything
like that, didn't have my birth certificate, couldn't really make
money by any kind of legal means. But one of
the women that I was staying with, her boyfriend was
actually a drug dealer, And so there I was selling
drugs in this project in North Nashville the age of sixteen.
(15:54):
But really just dove headfirst into it. So whenever I
would go out and cut with send me out to
go get money, he'd always sent me with his gun.
I had never shot a gun, didn't really anticipate ever
having to use it. It was just something where you
know I had it. I knew I had it. It
(16:16):
was just a safety measure, but he always had it.
The safety was off, there was a bullet in the chamber.
He said, if something ever happens, just squeeze the trigger.
So that time, this guy had picked me up in
this little white truck. He had got me something to eat.
While we were sitting there waiting on the food to
(16:36):
come that's when he had asked me, you know, was
I up for any action? So I ended up going
back to his house with him. And while we was there,
you know, I kept trying to like stall because he
started acting weird, like he started showing me guns. On
the drive there, he was telling me how he used
to be a sharp shooter in the military. And it's like,
(16:57):
why is why does he feel the.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Need to tell me all of these And you're listening
to Sintoya Brown's story and one bad choice after another,
and just some really bad choices by the system too,
and by authorities, and bad rulemaking and enforcement that almost
makes no sense. And you combine all that with a
girl who finds out dad's gone, and then she's gone,
(17:22):
and then income the predators and one name cut short
for cutthroat. And she loved that he listened to her.
But of course he was listening for a reason. He
was getting into her mind. He was looking for things
he could manipulate, things he could exploit. That's why he listened,
said Centoya. When we come back, more of this story,
(17:44):
a remarkable redemption story, Cintoya Brown's story here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(18:10):
Centoya Brown's story. Let's pick up when we last left
off with sixteen year old Centoya at the home of
a man who had picked her up for as he
called it, action. She said he was acting weird and
showing her his guns and talking about how he was
a sharpshooter.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Here's Centoya, why does.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
He feel the need to tell me all of these things?
He tried to tell me that he wrote the song
by Lee Greenwood Proud to Be an American, which obviously
I knew it was a lie. Like it was really strange,
was really uncomfortable, and like with him talking about this gun.
Then when we got to the house, you know, showing
me this gun, It's like I felt that, I felt
(18:53):
that he was trying to intimidate me, and at that point,
I just wanted to leave, so I kept trying to stall.
So I said, well, you know what, I'm just gonna
go up and I'm just gonna pretend like I'm sleep.
I'm gonna ask him if I can have a nap
real quick. And so that's what I did. And while
I was laying there pretending like I was sleep, he
(19:15):
kept getting up and going into the next room, then
coming back just like staring at me, like looking over
at me, going into the bathroom, going to the next room,
and like this whole time, like I'm just freaking out.
I'm like, what is he doing? Like what's really going on?
There was a moment like when he had got into
(19:35):
the bed and he had reached over and grabbed me,
and I was like ah, and I was, you know,
it was a little bit more emphatic than just like
you know, somebody who was really sleeping that may just
kind of shrug away. And I'm like, oh, he knows
I'm pretending now now he's he's gonna be pissed off.
And he rolls over and I'm thinking he's reaching for something,
(19:58):
and all this is happening, like all these thoughts are
happening like within the space of like two seconds, and
that's just just a small fraction of the thoughts. Like
I can't even explain like how my mom was just
racing at that time, and just panic was just really
setting in. And he goes and I see his body
(20:18):
turn and that's when I had grabbed the gun out
of the night stand, out of uh, the purse that
was on the nightstand, and I shot him. It was
like this pop and then it was like quiet. So
I went back to the hotel room and Cut was
there of the room and I came in and I
(20:39):
was like, I think I just killed somebody, and he
was like what, like he thought I was playing. I
was like, I'm I'm so serious. I just shot someone,
and like he didn't believe me, but he just told
me to go wipe down the car, wipe down the truck,
and park it in the wal Mart parking lot. And
so that's what I did. So we were laying down
(21:03):
and the cops knock on the door and so they
come in with these shotguns and like these big old
guns pointed at me, like cocking these guns. So I
was tried there on the juvenile court. They had a
transfer hearing about November. So I actually sat there and
you know, told the judge everything that had happened, you know,
(21:24):
in the hopes that she would see, Okay, well, this
isn't like, this wasn't a malicious situation, this isn't something
that she should be prosecuted for murder for. I'll just
keep her in the juvenile system and treat her. But
then you have the district attorney who was saying, no,
like she's encourageable, There's there's nothing else that that you
can do for her. She needs to be tried as
(21:47):
an adult. And as a matter of fact, I believe
all of this was premeditated. Two weeks after the hearing,
I was called down to the visitation area and I
was told by my public defender that I was tried
as an adult, that I was gonna be transferred. And
I felt like the world just like fell from beneath me,
(22:10):
cause now I went from Okay, maybe I'll spend three
years in a treatment facility here going through DCS again,
to know I may end up spending the rest of
my life in prison. So I was taken to the
adult jail to CCA. I had to be housed in segregation,
(22:30):
just basically stuck in a box until my trial, and
my child didn't happen until two years after I first
went to the The adult jail very difficult because you
can't like talk to people on a regular basis, you
can't have visitation with your family, phone calls, anything like that.
(22:54):
So the child lasted several days and I think it
was like six hours hours they took to deliberate and
then came back in. I started looking like looking at
them each and everyone as they came in, cause I'm like,
I need any kind of sign. I need to know
what are they about to tell me, and like none
(23:14):
of them will look at me. And this one guy
that the only black guy who was on the jury,
like he just like kind of just shook his head
and hung his head. And that's when I knew. I
was like, yep, yep, it's not good. And they convicted
me a first degree murder and sentenced me to life
(23:35):
in prison on the spot, automatic life sentence. I didn't cry,
I didn't hold my head down or anything. And then
when I got into my cell, I just broke down.
It was night time by that time, and I just
remember crying and praying, and I said, God, if you
get me out of here, I'll tell the world about you, like,
you know, just letting him know. I'll do anything if
(23:57):
you just get me out of here. Please don't let
me spend the rest of my life in prison. And
so there was about two weeks between the time that
I was convicted and sentenced until I was actually transported
to the prison. And during that time, some of the
women who had already been to prison and who were
back in the county. They were trying to coach me
and tell me, well, this is how you need to
(24:17):
carry yourself, and you need to walk around like this
when you walk on the compound and make sure your
head's held high, and let me show you how to
throw a punch. And so they were going through all
this and I'm thinking, oh, man, like it's gonna be rough.
Like I'm thinking visions of you know, the show OZ
and every prison movie that I've ever watched. It's like, man,
like this this is no joke. And you know, I
(24:39):
start stuffing my face with pop tarts and prettel pieces,
thinking I got to buff up because you know, I'm
headed to the to the big house. And I get
there and it's like a college campus, like you know,
and I'm like, well, this is not what I expected.
I mean, it was more psychological or and psychological oppression,
(25:02):
more psychological attacks than there was like the physical attacks.
But I actually found that like that was worse. So
you know, my attorney had told me before I had
ever got to the prison. He was like, you know,
you can go in there, you can start acting all crazy.
And I mean you can do that life sentence, or
(25:23):
you can go in there. You can take every program
that they accept you into. You can act like you
have some sense, and you can have a chance at
getting out of prison someday. And by the grace of God,
I ended up getting into the college course came out
of prison with not one but two degrees. So missus
Seabrooks was the principal there at the prison. But what
(25:45):
I will always appreciate most about miss Sebrooks is that
she was the person, the first person that told me
God's not gonna let you out of here until you
keme to him. You will not be free until you
can to Christ. And at that time I had just
like fallen into this state where I didn't even believe anymore.
(26:08):
At least I said I didn't believe. Really, I was
just angry because I felt that, you know, I did
what I was told in Sunday School and God he
didn't hold up his end of the bargain, and so
I just can't be true. But really I was just upset,
and at the time I just brushed it off. I
was like, Nah, miss Sebrooks, that's not how the law works.
(26:29):
I'll get it out with my attorneys argue before the
appellate court, and the appellate court overturns my sentence. And
she said, all right, I'm telling you what I know.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And you're listening to Sentoya Brown talking about her sentence,
the mindset that she had to adopt, and some people
who started to care about her. He talked about the
psychological attacks, which, as she put it, were worse than
any potential physical attacks. And this one lady, miss Seabrooks,
who kept telling her that God had the answers for her.
(27:02):
She was putting her faith in law and lawyers. When
we return more of Centoya Brown's remarkable life story, a
great redemption story here on our American stories, and we
(27:37):
continue here with our American stories and with Centoya Brown's story.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It's two thousand and six and Centoya Brown has just
been convicted of aggravated robbery and first degree murder for
killing forty three year old real estate agent Johnny Allen.
While in prison, she began going to college. We had
just heard her principle once told Cinoya that she needed
to know Christ if she ever expected to leave, But
(28:05):
Centoya put her faith in the law in the process.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Here's Centoya with the rest of the story.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
So, when I was first arrested, all over the news,
I was painted as this horrible person, like the news
just vilified me. I was this dangerous individual. The streets
are safer without me. But my attorney had actually met
a documentary filmmaker through one of her other cases and
had invited him to come in and start filming my
(28:35):
process to the court system and interviewing me. And he
took all those interviews and he created a documentary, and
you know a lot of people like started writing me
from that and just like being really supportive. And I
started noticing, like even within the media, like kind of
like that tide was changing. There was some support for me.
(28:57):
All of a sudden, I get this letter from a
man in Texas. So I read the letter. I opened
it up, and immediately the thing that stood out was
that the edges of the letter was burnt. And okay,
that was the second thing I know. This is the
first thing I noticed is that he was really fine,
cause he had sent these two pictures of himself, And
(29:19):
so I ended up writing him cause something was like
i'm'a write him back. I need to write him back.
And from that one letter, we started writing several letters.
We started talking on the phone. He started telling me
about Christ, which you have to know that everyone else
who would try to tell me about Jesus. I brushed
(29:41):
it off. I dismissed it. I didn't wanna hear it.
But there was something about when Jamie was talking to
me about him, So we continued writing. Not long after that,
I won him over HM and we just decided that
(30:01):
no matter what happened, no matter what the court said,
God said, I was gonna get out and we were
gonna walk in that faith, and we were gonna trust
in that. And we weren't gonna focus on the appeals
because my very last appeal had been denied. We weren't
gonna focus on what the lawyer said. We were just
gonna focus on the Lord. We were gonna focus on
building a relationship with him. And when we kept our
focus there, all of a sudden, things started picking up
(30:25):
on the outside. Things started picking up with the appeal,
the appeal that was closed in the federal court. It
all of a sudden opened back up. Six months after
he first wrote me and told me what he said,
I look on the news and it's a trending topic.
I look on the news and people all over the
world from all walks of life are now talking about
(30:47):
free Centoia. And Jamie said, are you surprised? And I'm like,
well yeah, and he said, what did I tell you
about my God? I was like, well, I know what
you said, and I believe it, but it's like it's happening.
He said, I told you what he said, like he
doesn't lie, and it's like it just it just gave
(31:11):
me goosebumps. And that was just that was just one thing.
Months after that, Jamie and our pastor, Minister Tim McGee,
he said that I was gonna get a date in March.
He said he didn't know what kind of date it was.
He didn't know if it was an outdate or what date,
but it was something that was gonna lead to me
(31:33):
getting out, something that was necessary to me getting out.
And we said, okay, so March comes by first week,
goes by second week, till March goes by. Nothing, no word,
no anything. And then in that third week of March,
Jamie had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and I
(31:55):
remember calling him and he just said, you're coming home,
and he said, star of crying. And my husband like
he doesn't cry, like he's a man's man, like you know,
jiu jitsu champion, Like he he's not sitting here crying
on the phone with no one. But he just broke down.
He said, God is bringing my wife home. And I
was like, oh, okay, did the lawyer call you? He's
(32:17):
like no. I said, oh, did you see something on news?
He said no. I said, well, okay, yeah, baby, I'm
coming home. He says, no, You're coming home. God told me.
I heard it clear as day. The next week comes,
it's the last week of March, getting down to the wire,
(32:38):
and all of a sudden, March thirtieth, my attorneys called
Jamie and say we got a date for a hearing.
And the hearing that they're talking about is one that
less than one percent of people get for clemency petitions.
It's it's next to impossible to get a hearing with
the pro board, and I got one, and we got
that date March thirtieth. At the conclusion of the hearing,
(33:02):
I ended up getting four votes for me to be
granted clemency and then two votes for me not to
be granted. Clemency. So at this time, the governor of
Tennessee was Bill Haslm and so it was up to
him to make the decision. And you know, I thank
God that I had Jamie. There was like, you need
(33:25):
to remember that he is not the one making the decision.
God has made the decision, and he's already said what's
gonna happen, and you need to make sure that your
faith is in Him, not in the process, in not
in what anybody else down here on this earth is doing.
They're saying, you need to trust what God has said,
(33:45):
and I said, you're right. And when I tell you
like that is so much easier said than done. So
it was a struggle. It was a struggle for Jamie
as well. It was a true test of faith. At
one point, you know, Jamie was like, there has to
be something, like something more, you know that we need
to be doing, you know, with our faith. There's something
(34:07):
more with our relationship, you know, with Christ that we're
not doing because like, why is it There's nothing? Why
is it? W We're going through this wilderness period. And
so Jamie decided I've got to step out on faith.
He sold everything that he owned in Texas and when
(34:27):
I tell you everything, I mean everything. All in the
space of one day. He had gotten rid of his Mercedes,
he had gotten rid of his Bentley, which was his
dream car. He had gotten rid of every stitch of
furniture in his condo. And I remember just boohoo and crime.
(34:49):
I said, you don't have a bed to sleep on,
But are you gonna sleep on? He said, you don't
get it, He said, you don't understand. He said, I
am going to get my I'm going to move to
Tennessee and get my wife because God says you're coming out,
and I believe him, so I'm gonna act accordingly. So
he sold everything and he moved up to Tennessee. And
(35:12):
a couple weeks after that is when my attorneys got
the call from the Governor's office from the Lieutenant governor
that the governor wanted to meet with him, and he
met with them. He let them know that he was
gonna grant me clemency. So one of the things that
I learned, you know, even from me sitting in prison,
(35:33):
seeing people come back and forth, back and forth in
and out of those doors, is the thing that made
the people who stayed out different from the people who
came back and forth in is was these are the
people who understood, like what really went in to that action,
what really went into that night that ended up with
(35:54):
me getting charged? What are the real impacts of what
I've done? And you know, by going through that thought process,
you really understand, like how your actions affect other people.
And until you understand that your actions do affect other people,
until you understand, you know, we live in community with
(36:15):
one another. We have to be accountable, not just for
our own actions, but we have to be accountable to
each other. Like you're not going to learn how to
live in the free world. You're not going to learn
how to be successful as a citizen. You're not going
to be successful as a person. Like, how can you
have any healthy relationships? How can you have any kind
(36:36):
of healthy dealings, whether it be personal, business or otherwise
if you don't get that basic concept. So we actually
got married while I was still incarcerated. Unbeknownst to me,
he had already picked out a ring with my mom.
My mom had went to Texas. He flew out to
(36:58):
Texas for a Cowboys Texans game. They you know, him
and her, like they had already had this planned out
where Tim was going to pick me up in the
van with Jamie and then Tim was going to do
the ceremony right there on the spot, all this, that
and the other. But when you know, they came with
(37:19):
the news to say that I was getting out of prison.
That's when he told me all about that, and I
was like, oh, how sweet. We don't have to wait.
So he was like, what do you mean we don't
have to wait? I said, oh, we don't have to wait.
We can do this now. He said, how are we
going to do it now? I said, not to worry,
don't worry. I'll take care of it.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
And what a laugh.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And that is Centoya Brown telling her story, and what
a love story, folks. Yet, just you can't imagine someone
doing that kind of thing for you. Free Centoya is
the book My Search for Redemption in the American prison System.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
I urge you to get it.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
And if you have anybody in your family struggling with
the law, struggling with drugs, struggling with life self, this
is a book worth reading. Saoia Brown's story here on
our American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And our favorite stories to tell are just ordinary American
redemption story, second chances, even third chances that this country
allows people to have and to pursue.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's a beautiful part of our nature.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Saintoya Brown served fifteen years of a life sentence for
killing a forty three year old real estate agent when
she was sixteen years old after being forced into prostitution
by a man called Cutthroat. The now married Brown long
has never denied her crime, but alleges she acted out
of self defense. Here's Centoya to share her story.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
So. I was born for Campbell, Kentucky, which is a
military base right on the line Kentucky, Tennessee. And I
was raised dar in Clarksville by my adopted parents.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
My father was military and my mother she was a teacher.
I was really my dad's psyechic. When I was younger,
I considered it psydechic. I guess he would consider it
apprentice because anytime he would build something, I always had
to go fetching the tools. I guess it was pretty
convenient form. But those were one of my favorite past
(01:29):
times with my dad is helping him build stuff, helping
him fix stuff around the house, and my mother. It
was the same. Whenever my father retired from the military,
he actually started driving Chuck, so he would be gone
for long periods of time, so it would just be
my mom and me. And she was really into gardening.
I wasn't, but I did enjoy kind of just hanging
(01:52):
outside with her watching her plant. So up until the
point that I turned sixteen, I thought school was the
worst possible thing to have ever happened to me in
my life. I should have been really great in school.
I was smart, I was always getting good grades, but
for some reason, I was always founding myself in the
(02:12):
principal's office. Whether that was because I didn't want the
teacher to help me with work, I just wanted to
figure it out for myself, whether I had a smart
remark for the teacher, just any little thing would get
me sent to the principal's office and found myself getting suspended.
I believe I was eleven when I was first expelled
(02:34):
from school. I had brought a bottle of Nodos to class,
which is caffeine pills. I had found him in my
sister's husband's truck shed. He had left the truck there
whenever he was deployed, and they went to Hawaii, and
I was just playing around one day and found these
caffeine pills. Took him to school for show and tell,
and next thing I know, I was expelled for zero
(02:57):
tolerance drug policies. I didn't consider them to be a drug,
didn't know they were a drug, but that didn't matter.
I was kicked out of school and couldn't return to
public school. It seemed like they were just really looking
for an excuse, so part of me wasn't necessarily surprised,
and it really just added to that feeling that, you know,
(03:19):
I just wasn't wanted there and it wasn't a place
for me. I never really fit. I was kind of
an outcast, Like I said, When I was growing up,
my dad would always tell me all the stories about him,
you know, in war, and what he did when Charlie
was coming at three o'clock and and how they did.
And so I thought, Okay, well, this is a game
(03:40):
that I wanna play with my friends, and so my neighbor,
my friend from down the street, and some other kids
in the neighborhood. We were all together playing random games,
you know, bubble Gum, bubble gum in a dish and
any Mini Miney Moe, and I said, well, how about
this new game, let's play war And they were like,
well what is that? I said, well, we're all gonna
get some wrong. You stand on that side of the street,
(04:02):
We're gonna stand on this side of the street, and
we're just gonna throw them at each other and see
what happens. And that's what we did. And I ended
up picking up the biggest rock that I could that
I found. Why, I don't know, but I threw it
and it hit my neighbors square in the forehead and
that was the moment that I knew I'm about to
(04:23):
get in trouble, like this has going horribly wrong. And
she just started bleeding and screaming. And then everybody was
like this is all your fault, and I was like,
wait a minute, and you all wanted to play. I
thought we were having fun. So after that, nobody's parents
really wanted their kids playing with me, and of course
I got in trouble. My dad he kind of understood,
(04:45):
but it was just I think that was that was
like one of the turning points when I kind of
lost a lot of friends. So going to alternative school
was a completely different experience. These kids had had been
involved in the justice system already. Most of them were
on probation of some kind. Many of them had already
(05:07):
been to facilities, and they returned back from the facilities
to go to this school. They smoked freely, some of
them did drugs freely. I had never been around that
because I was raised in a military community. A lot
of the kids that I was around were kids of
military families. They just you just don't do that. And
(05:31):
what was different from me being in this alternary school
around these kids is these kids didn't judge me. They
didn't make me feel like an outcast. They didn't make
me feel like I wasn't wanted or I had to
be this or be that to fit in with them.
And so I really found that, oh, this is kind
of where I fit, like, this is a place for me.
(05:53):
So we all decided to skip school. And sometimes when
we skipped school, we would just ride the city bus
around town, walk around downtown, and just see whatever we
could get into. But this day, Samantha says, you know,
my mom she's not home. We can go to my
house and we could just hang out and we're like, okay, cool.
(06:15):
And when we get there, she's like, oh, man, I
forgot my key. And she's like, no worries, no worries.
My bedroom window was open, so she opens the window
and I'm the smallest one there, so they pushed me
through the window and I unlocked the door. It is
her house, but when her mother come home, she didn't
feel that we were supposed to be in the house.
(06:36):
She was very upset some things she claimed were missing
from the house that were stolen. And I mean, I
don't know if anybody stold it or not. I can't
be accountable for the other people that was with me,
but we all ended up being charged not only for
breaking and entering, but for a theft of property.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And you're listening to Sentoya Brown, and she's the author
of Free Centoia, My Search for Redemption.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
In the American prison System.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story here
on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Folks, if you.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
of the our American Stories family. If you agree that
America is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
(07:52):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and with Centoya Brown's story. Let's pick
(08:14):
up where we last left off with Centoya being charged
with breaking and entering and theft of property after skipping
school with friends and then going to one of her
girlfriend's homes where her mother would end up filing charges.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Here's Centoya.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
So after I was charged with my other three code defendants.
That's bad when you say codefendance when you're talking about
a twelve year old. But I actually had to go
to juvenile court, and this was my first time ever
in a courtroom. My father he had to pay for
an attorney to represent me. So I spent some time
(08:52):
in juvenile detention and the attorney ended up getting a
deal where I got out and I was on probation.
So whenever I went to the court. One of the
first things they do is they send you for a
mental evaluation, and so they're in this facility, which I
definitely didn't feel like I fit in because this was
like a real deal mental facility. You had people who
(09:16):
were struggling with autism, you had people who had down syndrome,
you had people with schizophrenia. It was kind of scary
to be in there, and again, couldn't be around my parents,
couldn't contact my parents. And what I found comforted me.
There was there was this woman who was teaching some
(09:36):
of the girls there how to crochet, and I started
learning and that was something that would call me. So
I just brought my crochet stuff to class and I
would sit there and crochet whenever I finished with my work. Well,
one day I went to lunch and I remember that
I forgot my purse, and so I went back into
the classroom to get my purse, and I saw that
(09:59):
the teacher had been in my purse and she was
actually going through it and she was pulling out the yarn,
saying you're not supposed to be doing this, and I said, well,
you're not supposed to be in my stuff. And I said,
give me that and I took it out of her hand,
and all of a sudden, she started screaming and hollering,
calling for the sro. Next thing I know, he's coming
(10:20):
in and she's saying I've assaulted her, and I said
I didn't assault her. I took my stuff out of
her hand. They said, well, did you snatch it. I said, well, yes,
it's mine. They said, well, that's as salt, and so
I ended up getting charged with assault. I had my
probation violated, and I was returned back to the facility,
(10:40):
but this time I was putting state custody. So two
months after I had turned thirteen, and in state custody
you can have an indeterminate sentence or a determined incidence.
I was indeterminate, meaning whenever they felt like they wanted
to let me go back home to my parents' is
when I would go. So I he ended up spending
(11:01):
a year and a half in state custody, And to
be honest with you, the only reason I got out
is because my mother had got fed up and she
had threatened to actually follow a suit against the state
whenever they had allowed for my news my picture to
be placed in a newspaper. So I was fifteen when
(11:22):
I finally got a state custody and it was on
the ride home back from Nashville to Clarksville that my
mom tells me that they had been divorced. And the
whole time she had been telling me, you know, he's
gone to the store, he's at his friend's house, he's
in the backyard working on the pool. It was all
a lie, like he had been gone that whole entire time.
(11:46):
But she didn't want it to affect my progress in
the program. She didn't want it to overwhelm me or
distract me from doing what I needed to do to
come home. So that was that was a pretty big
bomb that was dropped on me. First thing. Then all
of a sudden, here's this man that I know absolutely
(12:06):
nothing about, who apparently they had been friends from when
she used to live in New York, and now they
were talking on the phone for hours and hours and hours,
and he came to visit there at the house. And
when he came to visit, it's not like he was
being a visitor. He was telling me what I needed
to do and trying to order me around, and I
(12:27):
was just like, hold up, wait a minute, Wait a minute.
And so I said, well, you know what, that fine,
I'll just go back and hang out with my friends
that I met when I was on the run from
state custody. And that's when I ran away. So I
caught up some friends that I had met while I
was on the run in Nashville. And when I say friends,
(12:48):
these are older women. These women are in their mid
twenties and I was just fifteen years old. And they
came and they got me, they welcomed me back, and
there I was back living the life that I had
lived on the run before. And that meant, you know,
having sex with adult men and that being normalized, that
(13:12):
being permitted and even encouraged by the adults that I
was around, which is something completely completely different from what
I had been raised with. But I mean it had
become the norm for me. That also meant that I
was getting high every day. I was smoking weed every
single day. And that was the time that I had
(13:37):
actually met my trafficker. Is during that time when I
was sixteen years old. So I met Kut at a
gas station here in Nashville, and I actually met him.
I was riding with friends who were looking for another
man who had just raped me and they were gonna
(13:58):
you know, take out some on him and confront him
about what he'd done. And we stopped at the gas
station and I wanted some some newports, and so we
walked up. I walked up to this guy and was like,
do you have a Newport and he was like no,
And he offered to give me five dollars to get
a pack if I would give him my number, so
(14:21):
I did. After that, you know, we started talking on
the phone. He started coming to pick me up and
hang out with me, and I just pretty much just
fell head over hills within a matter of days for
this stranger, this older guy who did not have good
intentions for me at all. But all that I saw
(14:45):
when I was with him was that he listened to me.
You know, my mind at that time, it was like, wow,
like he's really interested in me. No one really pays
me this level of attention. No one really cares about,
you know, my life story, my thought, my feelings, what
I'm into. But here he's just like completely absorbed into it.
(15:07):
Now I understand that he was looking, you know, for
things that he could manipulate. He was looking for things
that he could exploit. He was listening because he needed
to find out how he could really get into my
head and play me. So when you're on the run,
you know you can't necessarily just go get a job.
(15:29):
I didn't have an idea or a license or anything
like that, didn't have my birth certificate, couldn't really make
money by any kind of legal means. But one of
the women that I was staying with, her boyfriend was
actually a drug dealer, And so there I was selling
drugs in this project in North Nashville the age of sixteen.
(15:54):
But really just dove headfirst into it. So whenever I
would go out and cut with send me out to
go get money, he'd always sent me with his gun.
I had never shot a gun, didn't really anticipate ever
having to use it. It was just something where you
know I had it. I knew I had it. It
(16:16):
was just a safety measure, but he always had it.
The safety was off, there was a bullet in the chamber.
He said, if something ever happens, just squeeze the trigger.
So that time, this guy had picked me up in
this little white truck. He had got me something to eat.
While we were sitting there waiting on the food to
(16:36):
come that's when he had asked me, you know, was
I up for any action? So I ended up going
back to his house with him. And while we was there,
you know, I kept trying to like stall because he
started acting weird, like he started showing me guns. On
the drive there, he was telling me how he used
to be a sharp shooter in the military. And it's like,
(16:57):
why is why does he feel the.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Need to tell me all of these And you're listening
to Sintoya Brown's story and one bad choice after another,
and just some really bad choices by the system too,
and by authorities, and bad rulemaking and enforcement that almost
makes no sense. And you combine all that with a
girl who finds out dad's gone, and then she's gone,
(17:22):
and then income the predators and one name cut short
for cutthroat. And she loved that he listened to her.
But of course he was listening for a reason. He
was getting into her mind. He was looking for things
he could manipulate, things he could exploit. That's why he listened,
said Centoya. When we come back, more of this story,
(17:44):
a remarkable redemption story, Cintoya Brown's story here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(18:10):
Centoya Brown's story. Let's pick up when we last left
off with sixteen year old Centoya at the home of
a man who had picked her up for as he
called it, action. She said he was acting weird and
showing her his guns and talking about how he was
a sharpshooter.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Here's Centoya, why does.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
He feel the need to tell me all of these things?
He tried to tell me that he wrote the song
by Lee Greenwood Proud to Be an American, which obviously
I knew it was a lie. Like it was really strange,
was really uncomfortable, and like with him talking about this gun.
Then when we got to the house, you know, showing
me this gun, It's like I felt that, I felt
(18:53):
that he was trying to intimidate me, and at that point,
I just wanted to leave, so I kept trying to stall.
So I said, well, you know what, I'm just gonna
go up and I'm just gonna pretend like I'm sleep.
I'm gonna ask him if I can have a nap
real quick. And so that's what I did. And while
I was laying there pretending like I was sleep, he
(19:15):
kept getting up and going into the next room, then
coming back just like staring at me, like looking over
at me, going into the bathroom, going to the next room,
and like this whole time, like I'm just freaking out.
I'm like, what is he doing? Like what's really going on?
There was a moment like when he had got into
(19:35):
the bed and he had reached over and grabbed me,
and I was like ah, and I was, you know,
it was a little bit more emphatic than just like
you know, somebody who was really sleeping that may just
kind of shrug away. And I'm like, oh, he knows
I'm pretending now now he's he's gonna be pissed off.
And he rolls over and I'm thinking he's reaching for something,
(19:58):
and all this is happening, like all these thoughts are
happening like within the space of like two seconds, and
that's just just a small fraction of the thoughts. Like
I can't even explain like how my mom was just
racing at that time, and just panic was just really
setting in. And he goes and I see his body
(20:18):
turn and that's when I had grabbed the gun out
of the night stand, out of uh, the purse that
was on the nightstand, and I shot him. It was
like this pop and then it was like quiet. So
I went back to the hotel room and Cut was
there of the room and I came in and I
(20:39):
was like, I think I just killed somebody, and he
was like what, like he thought I was playing. I
was like, I'm I'm so serious. I just shot someone,
and like he didn't believe me, but he just told
me to go wipe down the car, wipe down the truck,
and park it in the wal Mart parking lot. And
so that's what I did. So we were laying down
(21:03):
and the cops knock on the door and so they
come in with these shotguns and like these big old
guns pointed at me, like cocking these guns. So I
was tried there on the juvenile court. They had a
transfer hearing about November. So I actually sat there and
you know, told the judge everything that had happened, you know,
(21:24):
in the hopes that she would see, Okay, well, this
isn't like, this wasn't a malicious situation, this isn't something
that she should be prosecuted for murder for. I'll just
keep her in the juvenile system and treat her. But
then you have the district attorney who was saying, no,
like she's encourageable, There's there's nothing else that that you
can do for her. She needs to be tried as
(21:47):
an adult. And as a matter of fact, I believe
all of this was premeditated. Two weeks after the hearing,
I was called down to the visitation area and I
was told by my public defender that I was tried
as an adult, that I was gonna be transferred. And
I felt like the world just like fell from beneath me,
(22:10):
cause now I went from Okay, maybe I'll spend three
years in a treatment facility here going through DCS again,
to know I may end up spending the rest of
my life in prison. So I was taken to the
adult jail to CCA. I had to be housed in segregation,
(22:30):
just basically stuck in a box until my trial, and
my child didn't happen until two years after I first
went to the The adult jail very difficult because you
can't like talk to people on a regular basis, you
can't have visitation with your family, phone calls, anything like that.
(22:54):
So the child lasted several days and I think it
was like six hours hours they took to deliberate and
then came back in. I started looking like looking at
them each and everyone as they came in, cause I'm like,
I need any kind of sign. I need to know
what are they about to tell me, and like none
(23:14):
of them will look at me. And this one guy
that the only black guy who was on the jury,
like he just like kind of just shook his head
and hung his head. And that's when I knew. I
was like, yep, yep, it's not good. And they convicted
me a first degree murder and sentenced me to life
(23:35):
in prison on the spot, automatic life sentence. I didn't cry,
I didn't hold my head down or anything. And then
when I got into my cell, I just broke down.
It was night time by that time, and I just
remember crying and praying, and I said, God, if you
get me out of here, I'll tell the world about you, like,
you know, just letting him know. I'll do anything if
(23:57):
you just get me out of here. Please don't let
me spend the rest of my life in prison. And
so there was about two weeks between the time that
I was convicted and sentenced until I was actually transported
to the prison. And during that time, some of the
women who had already been to prison and who were
back in the county. They were trying to coach me
and tell me, well, this is how you need to
(24:17):
carry yourself, and you need to walk around like this
when you walk on the compound and make sure your
head's held high, and let me show you how to
throw a punch. And so they were going through all
this and I'm thinking, oh, man, like it's gonna be rough.
Like I'm thinking visions of you know, the show OZ
and every prison movie that I've ever watched. It's like, man,
like this this is no joke. And you know, I
(24:39):
start stuffing my face with pop tarts and prettel pieces,
thinking I got to buff up because you know, I'm
headed to the to the big house. And I get
there and it's like a college campus, like you know,
and I'm like, well, this is not what I expected.
I mean, it was more psychological or and psychological oppression,
(25:02):
more psychological attacks than there was like the physical attacks.
But I actually found that like that was worse. So
you know, my attorney had told me before I had
ever got to the prison. He was like, you know,
you can go in there, you can start acting all crazy.
And I mean you can do that life sentence, or
(25:23):
you can go in there. You can take every program
that they accept you into. You can act like you
have some sense, and you can have a chance at
getting out of prison someday. And by the grace of God,
I ended up getting into the college course came out
of prison with not one but two degrees. So missus
Seabrooks was the principal there at the prison. But what
(25:45):
I will always appreciate most about miss Sebrooks is that
she was the person, the first person that told me
God's not gonna let you out of here until you
keme to him. You will not be free until you
can to Christ. And at that time I had just
like fallen into this state where I didn't even believe anymore.
(26:08):
At least I said I didn't believe. Really, I was
just angry because I felt that, you know, I did
what I was told in Sunday School and God he
didn't hold up his end of the bargain, and so
I just can't be true. But really I was just upset,
and at the time I just brushed it off. I
was like, Nah, miss Sebrooks, that's not how the law works.
(26:29):
I'll get it out with my attorneys argue before the
appellate court, and the appellate court overturns my sentence. And
she said, all right, I'm telling you what I know.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And you're listening to Sentoya Brown talking about her sentence,
the mindset that she had to adopt, and some people
who started to care about her. He talked about the
psychological attacks, which, as she put it, were worse than
any potential physical attacks. And this one lady, miss Seabrooks,
who kept telling her that God had the answers for her.
(27:02):
She was putting her faith in law and lawyers. When
we return more of Centoya Brown's remarkable life story, a
great redemption story here on our American stories, and we
(27:37):
continue here with our American stories and with Centoya Brown's story.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It's two thousand and six and Centoya Brown has just
been convicted of aggravated robbery and first degree murder for
killing forty three year old real estate agent Johnny Allen.
While in prison, she began going to college. We had
just heard her principle once told Cinoya that she needed
to know Christ if she ever expected to leave, But
(28:05):
Centoya put her faith in the law in the process.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Here's Centoya with the rest of the story.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
So, when I was first arrested, all over the news,
I was painted as this horrible person, like the news
just vilified me. I was this dangerous individual. The streets
are safer without me. But my attorney had actually met
a documentary filmmaker through one of her other cases and
had invited him to come in and start filming my
(28:35):
process to the court system and interviewing me. And he
took all those interviews and he created a documentary, and
you know a lot of people like started writing me
from that and just like being really supportive. And I
started noticing, like even within the media, like kind of
like that tide was changing. There was some support for me.
(28:57):
All of a sudden, I get this letter from a
man in Texas. So I read the letter. I opened
it up, and immediately the thing that stood out was
that the edges of the letter was burnt. And okay,
that was the second thing I know. This is the
first thing I noticed is that he was really fine,
cause he had sent these two pictures of himself, And
(29:19):
so I ended up writing him cause something was like
i'm'a write him back. I need to write him back.
And from that one letter, we started writing several letters.
We started talking on the phone. He started telling me
about Christ, which you have to know that everyone else
who would try to tell me about Jesus. I brushed
(29:41):
it off. I dismissed it. I didn't wanna hear it.
But there was something about when Jamie was talking to
me about him, So we continued writing. Not long after that,
I won him over HM and we just decided that
(30:01):
no matter what happened, no matter what the court said,
God said, I was gonna get out and we were
gonna walk in that faith, and we were gonna trust
in that. And we weren't gonna focus on the appeals
because my very last appeal had been denied. We weren't
gonna focus on what the lawyer said. We were just
gonna focus on the Lord. We were gonna focus on
building a relationship with him. And when we kept our
focus there, all of a sudden, things started picking up
(30:25):
on the outside. Things started picking up with the appeal,
the appeal that was closed in the federal court. It
all of a sudden opened back up. Six months after
he first wrote me and told me what he said,
I look on the news and it's a trending topic.
I look on the news and people all over the
world from all walks of life are now talking about
(30:47):
free Centoia. And Jamie said, are you surprised? And I'm like,
well yeah, and he said, what did I tell you
about my God? I was like, well, I know what
you said, and I believe it, but it's like it's happening.
He said, I told you what he said, like he
doesn't lie, and it's like it just it just gave
(31:11):
me goosebumps. And that was just that was just one thing.
Months after that, Jamie and our pastor, Minister Tim McGee,
he said that I was gonna get a date in March.
He said he didn't know what kind of date it was.
He didn't know if it was an outdate or what date,
but it was something that was gonna lead to me
(31:33):
getting out, something that was necessary to me getting out.
And we said, okay, so March comes by first week,
goes by second week, till March goes by. Nothing, no word,
no anything. And then in that third week of March,
Jamie had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and I
(31:55):
remember calling him and he just said, you're coming home,
and he said, star of crying. And my husband like
he doesn't cry, like he's a man's man, like you know,
jiu jitsu champion, Like he he's not sitting here crying
on the phone with no one. But he just broke down.
He said, God is bringing my wife home. And I
was like, oh, okay, did the lawyer call you? He's
(32:17):
like no. I said, oh, did you see something on news?
He said no. I said, well, okay, yeah, baby, I'm
coming home. He says, no, You're coming home. God told me.
I heard it clear as day. The next week comes,
it's the last week of March, getting down to the wire,
(32:38):
and all of a sudden, March thirtieth, my attorneys called
Jamie and say we got a date for a hearing.
And the hearing that they're talking about is one that
less than one percent of people get for clemency petitions.
It's it's next to impossible to get a hearing with
the pro board, and I got one, and we got
that date March thirtieth. At the conclusion of the hearing,
(33:02):
I ended up getting four votes for me to be
granted clemency and then two votes for me not to
be granted. Clemency. So at this time, the governor of
Tennessee was Bill Haslm and so it was up to
him to make the decision. And you know, I thank
God that I had Jamie. There was like, you need
(33:25):
to remember that he is not the one making the decision.
God has made the decision, and he's already said what's
gonna happen, and you need to make sure that your
faith is in Him, not in the process, in not
in what anybody else down here on this earth is doing.
They're saying, you need to trust what God has said,
(33:45):
and I said, you're right. And when I tell you
like that is so much easier said than done. So
it was a struggle. It was a struggle for Jamie
as well. It was a true test of faith. At
one point, you know, Jamie was like, there has to
be something, like something more, you know that we need
to be doing, you know, with our faith. There's something
(34:07):
more with our relationship, you know, with Christ that we're
not doing because like, why is it There's nothing? Why
is it? W We're going through this wilderness period. And
so Jamie decided I've got to step out on faith.
He sold everything that he owned in Texas and when
(34:27):
I tell you everything, I mean everything. All in the
space of one day. He had gotten rid of his Mercedes,
he had gotten rid of his Bentley, which was his
dream car. He had gotten rid of every stitch of
furniture in his condo. And I remember just boohoo and crime.
(34:49):
I said, you don't have a bed to sleep on,
But are you gonna sleep on? He said, you don't
get it, He said, you don't understand. He said, I
am going to get my I'm going to move to
Tennessee and get my wife because God says you're coming out,
and I believe him, so I'm gonna act accordingly. So
he sold everything and he moved up to Tennessee. And
(35:12):
a couple weeks after that is when my attorneys got
the call from the Governor's office from the Lieutenant governor
that the governor wanted to meet with him, and he
met with them. He let them know that he was
gonna grant me clemency. So one of the things that
I learned, you know, even from me sitting in prison,
(35:33):
seeing people come back and forth, back and forth in
and out of those doors, is the thing that made
the people who stayed out different from the people who
came back and forth in is was these are the
people who understood, like what really went in to that action,
what really went into that night that ended up with
(35:54):
me getting charged? What are the real impacts of what
I've done? And you know, by going through that thought process,
you really understand, like how your actions affect other people.
And until you understand that your actions do affect other people,
until you understand, you know, we live in community with
(36:15):
one another. We have to be accountable, not just for
our own actions, but we have to be accountable to
each other. Like you're not going to learn how to
live in the free world. You're not going to learn
how to be successful as a citizen. You're not going
to be successful as a person. Like, how can you
have any healthy relationships? How can you have any kind
(36:36):
of healthy dealings, whether it be personal, business or otherwise
if you don't get that basic concept. So we actually
got married while I was still incarcerated. Unbeknownst to me,
he had already picked out a ring with my mom.
My mom had went to Texas. He flew out to
(36:58):
Texas for a Cowboys Texans game. They you know, him
and her, like they had already had this planned out
where Tim was going to pick me up in the
van with Jamie and then Tim was going to do
the ceremony right there on the spot, all this, that
and the other. But when you know, they came with
(37:19):
the news to say that I was getting out of prison.
That's when he told me all about that, and I
was like, oh, how sweet. We don't have to wait.
So he was like, what do you mean we don't
have to wait? I said, oh, we don't have to wait.
We can do this now. He said, how are we
going to do it now? I said, not to worry,
don't worry. I'll take care of it.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
And what a laugh.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And that is Centoya Brown telling her story, and what
a love story, folks. Yet, just you can't imagine someone
doing that kind of thing for you. Free Centoya is
the book My Search for Redemption in the American prison System.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
I urge you to get it.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
And if you have anybody in your family struggling with
the law, struggling with drugs, struggling with life self, this
is a book worth reading. Saoia Brown's story here on
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.