February 22, 2024 • 39 mins
A house in Pittsburgh, PA, went up in flames on February 14, 1995, killing three firefighters while they were trying to put out the fire. A week later, a neighbor of 17-year-old Greg Brown came forward and said that he suspected Greg of lighting the fire. Greg and his mother lived at the house that had caught fire, and authorities suspected that the two of them set the fire to claim insurance money. Despite no physical evidence supporting this theory, Greg was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murder, arson, and insurance fraud.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
In the early morning hours of Valentine's Day in nineteen
ninety five, the Pittsburgh Fire Department responded to a blaze
on Briceland Street. Darlene Buckner and her teenage son, Greg
Brown joined their safely evacuated family members as the raging
inferno took the lives of three firefighters. Atf Investigators suspected arson,
and a lab tech reported that two of the thirteen
(00:23):
samples from the home were positive for gasoline. However, a
gas powered mower stored in the basement may have been
the source. Reward money brought forth two alleged witnesses to
confirm what investigators had suspected. That Darlene Buckner and Greg
Brown intentionally set the blaze to collect on the twenty
thousand dollars insurance policy, a dollar amount that must have
(00:46):
been incentive enough to destroy all their possessions and the
lives of three brave firefighters. But this is wrongful conviction.
(01:07):
Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I hate wrongful convictions. I
hate every one of the cases that we've covered, and
for different reasons. But there's a particular thing that keeps
me up at night, which are cases like the one
that we're going to talk about today, where someone was
(01:28):
wrongfully convicted of a crime that never even happened. Today,
we're going to be talking with Greg Brown, who served
twenty years in Pennsylvania for an accidental fire with tragic fire. Nonetheless,
three lives were lost, but there was a rush to judgment,
there was junk science, there was all sorts of other
things that you're going to hear about, and we've covered
(01:50):
and our Junk Science podcast. But first I want to
introduce Elizabeth Delosa from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. Elizabeth, I'm
so glad you're here to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And thank you for all the incredible work that you
and the team there do. And of course now I
get the privilege of interviewing man I first met in
Phoenix at the Innocence Network conference Greg Brown. Greg, welcome
to Wronful Conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So let's go back to simpler times, before nineteen ninety
five Valentine's Day, when this horrible event happened. What was
it like did you grow up in Pittsburgh and what
was your life like? Did you have brothers and sisters,
did you have a happy childhood.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yes, yeah, I grew up in Pittsburgh. You know, my
mom was a single mother until about the age of seven,
and she met my stepfather. I have a stepsister that's
two years older than me. Stepbrother is about four years
older than me. So it was a nice blended family.
And my mom didn't have another child until nineteen ninety three,
so it was happy. Man. My stepdad was great, good father, figure,
(02:55):
great provider, good guy, straight lace, everything by the book,
you know, never break the law. It was good. We
had a good upbringing.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So you were a typical teenager, just seventeen years old
when this tragic fire happened on the night of February
thirteenth into the fourteenth of nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
The next day was obviously it was Valentine's Day, so
I was excited when school was gonna have a dance,
you know. So like that night, I was over my
one of my older cousin's house playing Matten like the
kids do now on the Sega Genesis and I'm gonna
stepfather said go to the store with mom because it's
dark out there or whatever. And my mom was cooking
for a relative had died, so she was cooking for
(03:37):
like a funeral of repass. And we went to John
Nagles in one location on the east side and near
our house, and it was closed, so we went to waterworks.
So we come home on Frankstown Avenue. You could look
over and see the houses and we seen fire trucks
and like, man, Mom, I look like our house. And
we pulled into the alleyway in between Franktown and Briceland,
(03:59):
and we were anxious. We wanted to know if our
family was out. And one of the firemen was on
the back porst to yet her out there across the
street at the neighbor's house, and and my mom was frantic.
The fireman just wanted her to get to call out
the alley ways, you know, because there's probably gonna be
more fire trucks coming. And she had to drive around.
You know, we seen our family. We just was the static,
(04:21):
just happy that everybody was out. You know. Now was
waiting game and you're hoping they put the fire out
as soon as possible and and maybe you could get
whatever you can out of the house. And the more
time it goes on, it's obvious that the house is
going to get destroyed. And I went over to one
of the firemen and they I said, as fire as over.
(04:41):
They said, yeah, boy, we lost three of our guys.
I'm like what, so, yeah, three firemen died. I'm like, man,
you know, and then one of them said, like, I
believe it was the furnace. I went back and tell
my family, like, man, they said three firemen that, and
my mom just just broke down, started crying and everybody
we was just in shock.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
The city of Pittsburgh lost three courageous firefighters, Thomas Brooks,
Patty Conroy, and Mark Kalenda. So rest in peace. I
can't imagine how that news must have shaken their families
and the entire community.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
No, this case in Pittsburgh was extremely it still is
highly publicized, and there was no way for anyone to
move on and including now anything arson related to this day.
A lot of times this case will come up with
This case was always on the news, so.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You can imagine the rush to judgment to figure out
what went wrong here. And often when a death is
hard to accept, like in the case of a child
or baby, or men and women in uniform, we sometimes
see that same urge to blame somebody, even when there's
no one to blame.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
In investigating several arsen cases here in western Pennsylvania, I
think one common denominator is a very quick rush to
judgment and determining within hours that the fire is intentionally set,
thereby being a crime being arson without having done the
(06:15):
painstaking investigation that it takes in order to rule out
all accidental causes. And Greg's case is no different. Nine
one one calls first came in around twelve twenty am
on the fourteenth, and by three am the Pittsburgh Fire
Squad Pittsburgh Police knew that they had firefighter fatalities and
(06:39):
called in the ATF in order to assist in the investigation,
and within hours and upon visual inspection alone, it was
determined that this fire had been intentionally set and that
set those criminal investigation gears into motion, and then once
(06:59):
they were started, it seems like there was no stopping them.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So the visual inspection also known as the dunk science
portion of the investigation, in which they used disproven fire
investigation methods using terms like alligator burn patterns or crazed glass,
et cetera. You can hear all about this, by the way,
and I encourage you to check it out in our
coverage of arson investigation on our series Junk Science, which
(07:24):
will be linked in the episode description. So, in an
effort to corroborate that assessment with actual science, they sent
thirteen samples from the basement, which they believe was the
fire's origin point. They sent those samples for testing, and
eventually the lab tech said that two of the thirteen
samples tested positive for gasoline. But there also appears to
be a perfectly logical explanation for that.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I want to just back up a little bit, because
so you're right, thirteen samples are taken, and the ATF
believes that a gallon of gasoline is poured onto a
pile of laundry that is in the basement, and that
is what the origin of the fire is. Right, So
they during the fire suppression efforts, the basement is flooded.
(08:09):
There's about a foot of water in the basement. And
so when they're taking these thirteen samples, the concrete, some
fabric samples, they're all wet, and the first samples are
one through eleven. Those are the first samples that are
sent to the ATF laboratory for chemical analysis. The first
analysis by an ATF chemist named William Canard. He says
(08:32):
negative for any traces of accelerant. That's his first report,
and we know that through discovery and through some handwritten
notes that William Canard said everything is negative. They then
send two additional samples twelve and thirteen, and then somehow
mister Caernard's original report is amended and he eventually says
(08:55):
that Exhibit six and thirteen are positive for trace amounts
of gasoline. And in his testimony he never reveals that
his original analysis is exculpatory to greg and actually said
that there was no trace amounts of any accelerate, including gasoline.
(09:18):
And then another thing is there was a lawnmower in
the basement right next to this alleged a pile of
laundry with a gas can. That's where the family stored
their lawnmower. And so if there were trace amounts of gasoline,
which John Lentini completely refutes, having gone back and looked
at those comratographs, then it would have had a logical explanation.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And John Lentini is a legendary fire scientist, an actual
scientist who started off as an arson investigator, and by
the way, he was a true believer in the old
way of thinking. But he's become such an asset for
exposing this junk science for what it is junk, Unlike
his counterpart here, William Kinn, the same quote unquote expert
(10:02):
from Christine Bunch's case and so many others will have
her story linked as well. So back to the immediate
aftermath with this report from Canard, the investigators developed the
theory that you and your mom plotted to burn down
your own house, destroy all of your possessions, put your
whole family in danger, grave danger, and then out on
(10:23):
the street, including two toddlers no less, in the middle
of a Pittsburgh winter. Right at all of this to
collect on a twenty thousand dollars insurance policy, which I'm
guessing wouldn't cover the replacement costs of what you lost.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Even at a preliminary hearing. One of the investigators outright
say that they're from Homewood, breastliness is depressed. Are we
don't believe they had over twenty thousand dollars worth of
stuff in the house.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So what are we supposed to believe that you had
seventeen thousand, nine hundred and fifty dollars worth of stuff
in there or something and that this was for two
thousand dollars, this great scheme. I mean, come on, this
is so it's so sick.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And it's important. I know, me and my mother were
black and the firemen were white. And I know for
a fact there's been other cases in Pittsburgh Alleghany County
alone where fire fighters have died and so caught that
the suspects were white and they didn't charge them. So
I definitely believe race played a major factor in it.
(11:24):
You know, we're gonna get to the bottom and we'll
get these guys, these this black family out of here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
So you and your family were under investigation and out
of a home. Where'd you go? Where did you live?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Ironically? I moved up the street like two streets above
from this house where you could look down with my
father and my stepmother, And so I would walk past
the house. They had the house just surrounded with agents.
They had it there tight, they had it guarded like
the White House, and it was on the news so
much had me thinking, well, is anybody after me and
(11:58):
my family? So you know, I'm like I need protection?
Do I need to carry gun? I don't know what's
going on.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I mean with nightly media coverage. It's not crazy to
think that a target had been painted on your back.
But the investigation wasn't keeping up with the court of
public opinion. There was a reasonable explanation for the alleged
presence of gasoline and Canard's report, so they needed more
to go on, and a year after the fire, the
ATF started offering reward money fifteen thousand dollars for information.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
It was on the noon news, it was on the
five o'clock news, and it was on the six o'clock news.
This press conference issuing and publicizing this.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Reward what it sounds like a good idea on paper,
but it comes with the obvious pitfall of attracting false information,
and sure enough, one of your neighbors, Keith Wright, took debate.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Twelve minutes after the six o'clock news, Keith Wright walked
down to his local fire department and made a statement
a year after the fire, having never made a statement before,
saying that he saw Greg standing outside of his family's
home before fire park personnel got on scene. Very damaging
to Greg, because, as you know, he and his mother
(13:05):
have always said we arrived after fire personnel were on scene.
We were at the Giant Eagle shopping and so that
put a hole in Greg's alibi.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
But this hole in the alibi was not quite enough
to get a warrant, so they kept going with this strategy.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
One of my friends told me that he say, man,
you know, the ATF came visit me down South Carolina
and they offered me four thousand and they said, just
say that his mother made him do it foreign source money.
And I was like what he said, yeah, man.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
So it appears that they didn't care if the information
was false or not. But your friend from South Carolina,
Raoul Gibson, stood strong. So the ATF found another taker,
which came about when you had actually followed through on
getting a gun.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I did end up getting in trouble with a gun,
you know, I had it for safety.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
The summer of nineteen ninety five, he got in trouble
for the first time as a juvenile. And while you know,
possession of a gun is a serious juvenile offence, it's
the first time he's ever been in front of the
juvenile court. And instead of probation or house arrest some
type of like check in program, community based program, Greg
(14:20):
is sent to Vision Quest in Franklin, Pennsylvania, which is
like a wilderness slash boot camp program. So one of
the Pittsburgh homicide detectives tells ATF, and then ATF immediately
goes to the Vision Quest program and asks for all
of Greg's bunkmates and starts to reach out to fifteen, sixteen,
(14:44):
seventeen year olds and asking whether Greg has made any
inculpatory statements or is as he mentioned this or confessed
to anybody, and no one is making a statement, and
so they start to reach out to probation off for
each one of these kids, and the fifteen year old
in particular that does eventually end up testifying against Greg.
(15:07):
His probation officer is contacted upwards of twenty times each
and every time money is brought up by the ATF
and the fact that there is a reward in exchange
for testimony implicating Greg, and finally they have a face
to face with fifteen year old Ibrahim Abdullah, who only
(15:30):
after he is told that there is a fifteen thousand
dollars reward if he has information that would implicate Greg,
does he make a statement. And the probation officer notes
that he was really concerned about the statement particularly because
it is yes and no answers to all leading questions.
And so, did Greg Brown tell you something about this fire? Yes, sir?
(15:54):
Did he tell you that he started the fire? Yes, sir.
And so the fifteen year old's not offering any fact,
any new facts, any corroborating facts. He's simply answering these
very lading questions from the ATF.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Nevertheless, this fifteen year old, Imbrahim Abdullah, gave them what
they need to make arrests. You were charged with arson
and murder, and your mother, Darlene Buckner, was charged with arson, murder,
conspiracy and insurance fraud.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I just thought I got arrested, and then I call
home and my aunt answered the phone. She said they
got your mom too. I said, what you already know?
You didn't do anything. Now they're arresting your mother. Basically,
they had a person saying I killed three firemen, but
I'm bragging about it. You know, he wants you to
believe it. And I was bragging about it like it
(16:39):
was a cool crime. I mean, name one rap song
where rappers was bragging about setting fires, or a movie anything.
That's not a cool crime.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
It's just crazy man.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
As he's preparing for testimony, fifteen year old Ibrahim Abdullah
starts to get cold feet, and he tells the ATF agent,
I don't think I want to do this. I want
to back out. I don't think I want to testify.
And the ATF agent puts him in a room with
the surviving members of the firefighters, who really, you know,
(17:27):
impose upon him how important it is to them that
justice be served and what a good thing he's doing.
And so not only does this fifteen year old have
the motivation of fifteen thousand dollars and what it could
do for his family, and then he also has the
pressure of the ATF and the hopes of the victim's
families on him.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
So this kid, Ibrahim, his cold feet seem to have
gotten nice and toasty all of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
And we got to give this guys proper credit. Jason
Wick from the ATF, and.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
He definitely was persistent, even when he was receiving no
information from these children, he was not afraid to use
that financial incentive to get the statement that he wanted.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And I read that later on as a man, Ibraham
admitted that it went even deeper than that for him
with this ATF agent Jason Wick.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
He later testifies that he was kind of smitten with
the ATF agent. The ATF agent, you know, helped him
with like court costs, helped him with some restitution in
his other cases, helped him obtain his birth certificate, would
take him on these rides in his car and would
like speed, would swear, would tell him how powerful he
is as an ATF agent. He said, you know, I
(18:39):
thought this guy was cool. I thought he was really cool.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
So this kid Ibraham was charmed and incentivized to say
the least, as was the neighbor Keith, Right, and they
came to testify against you and your mom, who were
on trial together.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Oo.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It hurts my heart to even say that. And despite
these press conferences, your attorney Al Lindsey was somehow unaware
of the wars w money. Nevertheless, the jury nearly found
out about this paid testimony scheme.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Anyway, during trial, Greg told you about his friend from
South Carolina named Raoul Gibson. Raoul Gibson testified at trial
for the defense, saying ATF came to visit me in
South Carolina and Agent Wick told me that if I
gave an inculpatory statement against Greg I would be paid
(19:25):
seven thousand dollars. And at trial, one of the prosecutors,
the federal prosecutor who was cross examining him, said, Raoul,
do you think that there's just some fun somewhere the
agents can go and grab you seven thousand dollars? And Raoul,
a kid at the time, was like, I don't know
about that. And then in closing arguments, you know, prosecutors
(19:47):
really made it seem like it was preposterous that they
would be paying witnesses.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Even though they most definitely were and had been saying
so on the news. Yet Greg's attorney was so how unaware,
But even so did he try to bring up what
Raoul Gibson said. When cross examining Abraham Abdullah.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
They talked about what his motivation for testifying would be,
and what he testified to was that he talked it
over with his mom and his mom said it was
the right thing to do. For a defense attorney, you
can't cross that, especially for a fifteen year old kid
who you're very much trying to be like, use kid
gloves with and not look like a jerk in front
of the jury. When fifteen year olds, as I talked
(20:27):
to my mom as she said it was the right
thing to do. There's nowhere to go from there.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
So the state successfully passed off these paid witnesses as
concerned citizens, followed by this quote unquote arson expert William Cannard,
who unbeknownst to the jury, judge and defense, had changed
his original report to reflect the presence of gasoline in
two of thirteen samples. And even though you were contending
with an outright lie, there was still the reasonable explanation
(20:52):
of the gas powered lawn more stored in the basement.
A defense expert could have and should have gone a
long way to combat this, had your offense attorney even bothered,
but he didn't. Now, after seeing all this go down,
did you still hold out hope that the jury would
get it right?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
To be honest, part of me did. The bailiff grabs
the verdict from the jury foreman, and he hands it
to the judge. The judge was he was definitely referreening
for them the whole time. You know every rule. I mean,
we didn't get any type of calls if this would
be a game. And I seen the judge's face, he
had a confused look on his face when he read
(21:29):
the verdict to hisself, and his facial expression was like,
what the hell is this? And I was like, maybe
I got a chance. So he read the ver my
mother was getting acquitted of everything, and I'm like, WHOA
did we do this? And then when they got to
the very last charge on my mother, they found her
guilty of insurance fraud. So I said, okay, now they're
(21:52):
going to get me, and sure enough, they found me
guilty on everything except they acquitted us of conspiracy, which
absolutely made no sense because if she's the mastermind and
she made her son do it, that's obviously a conspiracy.
(22:21):
I might have been up there a month and I
called home one day and my uncle answered the phone
and he said, you're going to court. Something involve a
Jordy misconduct. You know, during the trial they tell the dury,
don't talk to your family members, don't read any papers,
don't listen to the news, don't discuss the case with anybody,
don't visit the crime scene. So what had happened was
(22:42):
a drawer had signed Afford David after I got found guilty,
and he was stating how one of the drawers had
her daughter at the trial every day and was sitting
with the fireman's family and she visited the crime scene.
So I should have got a new trial based stoff
of that, you know. But when I went to the
hearing in front of Josh Coo, he said, well, it
(23:05):
doesn't matter, it's that dream was shattered. So yeah, I'm
just a kid, and I get sent to Greater for Prison,
the biggest prison in the state at the time. Man,
it was it was rough. It was rough in there then,
you know, And I pretty much depended on my lawyer, Lindsey,
my trial lawyer, to get me out.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
And not too long after trial, mister Lindsey, while litigating
that during misconduct issue and seeking a retrial, he discovered
the paid witness scheme.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, and it came to light during discovery for Greg's
retrial that that reward was offered one year to the
date of the fire. His attorney asks the court to
reopen the evidence to tell the jury about the fact
that this reward was offered and that it, you know,
(23:54):
certainly could be known and expected by these two witnesses,
and he's not allowed to do this, so the jury
is never told that there is a fifteen thousand dollars reward.
And then so Greg does his direct appeal. You know,
here in Pennsylvania, he does his federal habeas corpus And
each and every time members of the prosecution team say
(24:16):
no witnesses were paid, there is no evidence that witnesses were.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Paid, even though Raoul Gibson had testified about being offered
a reward at the original trial. So this issue became
central to your post conviction efforts. But only after the
journalism students at Point Park Universities, in this institute, under
the guidance of Bill Mushy, they were able to develop
the evidence to prove what had happened with these witnesses.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
They got in touch with Abraham Abdullah and he acknowledged
that he got paid. And the neighbor, Keith Wright. You know,
it's like the summer twenty ten, right after the two
witnesses acknowledged that they did received some type of benefits.
We had got in touch with jerro Hurst. It was
a great arson expert in Texas. He wrote back and
(25:04):
agreed it didn't look like it was Arson at him.
I got back in Colorida on won my pill rights
and Judge Williams agreed to give me a hearing based
off of I didn't have a proper expert witness at
my trial. After that, mister Mushie said, I'm just a professor.
He said, you're going to need representation. We're not lawyers.
And it just so happened. Also in the summer of
(25:25):
twenty ten, Did Temple started their Innocent Project and he
got in touch with Marissa Bluestain.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
The Pennsylvania Insist Project picked up your case, and the
lead up to this hearing in front of Judge Williams,
while Bill Mushie's team continued to gather evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Bill Mushie and his students they did several for requests,
and one of the documents that they got from the
ATF were these two redacted checks.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
The check for ten thousand, the check for five thousand,
and it was blacked.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Out, and so really all they could tell was that
the ATF issued two checks, one for five thousand and
one for ten thousand. They couldn't tell who they are
gone to. And so they went back and they looked
at all of the appellate history in Greg's case and
they were confused, right, because prosecutors really made it seem
like it was preposterous that they would be paying witnesses.
(26:18):
And so finally in twenty ten, when these redacted checks
are obtained by the Innocence Institute and Point Park go
back and they say to the Alleghany County District Attorney's Office, Okay,
if no witnesses were paid, what are these.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
When mister Mushie confronted them, David Hickden was in charge
of the ATF at the time, he responded, Oh, well,
they got paid, but they weren't expecting anything. We didn't
make any promises beforehand. You know, we basically paid the
malt de clear blue.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Oh yeah, that's a good story. That's a I got
a nice bridge outside of Pittsburgh, right, So that's great.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
And so Point Park investigators find Ibrahim Abdullah, who is now,
you know, in his late twenties, and they asked him
when were you paid and did you know you were
going to be paid at the time of your testimony,
and he very freely said yes, I was a fifteen
year old kid. They offered me fifteen thousand dollars. It
(27:15):
was more money than I had ever seen in my life,
and it was highly motivating. I knew before trial, and
actually I expected the fifteen thousand. I was disappointed to
get only.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Five, okay, So that solves the mystery of whose name
was on each redacted check five thousand for Ibrahim and
ten for Keith.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Right point, Park was having a really difficult time locating
Keith Wright, and so the Pennsylvania Innocence Project then got
Dave Fawcett involved from Reid Smith, and Dave was actually
able to locate Keith Wright. Mister Wright also said, yes,
I absolutely knew about the reward. I knew about it
before trial. Then we were able to bring in Keith Wright,
(28:01):
bring in Ibrahim Abdullah at the post conviction hearing and
testify about not only their knowledge prior to trial, but
that promises were made to them. And then Ibrahim Abdullah,
the fifteen year old kid at the time, further testified
that Jason Wick told him prior to his testimony, They're
going to ask you if I've promised you of anything,
(28:22):
if there's any kind of incentive or reward. And I
want to be very clear, I didn't promise you anything.
Do you understand right?
Speaker 1 (28:30):
So the prosecution is saying to this fifteen year old kid, wow,
we want you to lie and we want to make
sure wink wink, you're going to lie about the lie right's.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And there's a failed threat of there's this money on
the line, right, so lie well.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So both paid witnesses exposed the scheme in front of
Judge Williams in twenty twelve. And then the ATF agent
Jason Wick, he was also at this hearing.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
He threatened Dave Fawcet in the hallway. He threatened Dave
and said, YEA said, trying to ruin my fucking name,
you know, excuse my language, just trying to ruin my name,
you know. Dave said, he just threatened me in the
hallway when he's on the stand like a perfect gentleman,
you know. And of course he denied everything any witness
anything or offering any anything.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Dave Fawcett also presented a few other witnesses that lent
credibility to Abdullah and Wrights recantations. So things must have
been looking up.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Dave said, man, I never seen nothing like this. He said,
everything went perfect for us these three days, you know.
And then I might have waited for my answers for
two years, all right, And.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Then January two twelve is a hearing and then February
twenty fourteen is the relief.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Then twenty fourteen, I was in the courtroom and Jeorge
Williams said, mister Brown, your attorneys made good points. The
prosecutors made good points too, And my heart started beating.
And but mister Brown, I believe your witnesses. You ask
for a new trauma, give you a new trial. I
couldn't hear nothing but my heart beating. And I just
remember given my brother, my youngest brother, de Ronce, because
(30:03):
he was they both for babies, but he was a
new born when all this happened, and I like gave
him like a head, not man. That was the best
day right there, Well, second best day, because obviously the
day I got out was the best day. And I
stayed down there for two years, down the county, from
twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen. I had a belt that
was ridiculously high. The district attorney appealed immediately, and when
(30:25):
they lost their last appeal, they tried to go back
to the old playbook. Tried to get people that was
on the pard with me to you know, jail house informants.
They went to all my salemates through twenty years that
they confered. Fortunately for me, those guys still firm and
then you know, didn't allow on me.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
So they had one final play with the ATF in Bob.
This case was always under joint federal and state jurisdiction,
but with Judge Williams on this case, their options in
state court were finally running out.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And so this dual prosecution, this state and federal prosecution
once again got together and said, Okay, we don't want
to go and to trial in front of Judge Williams.
We can't get him to recuse, and so we'll drop
state charges. We'll switch forums, and we'll take Greg up
the street to the federal court. They asked to withdraw
(31:13):
state charges. Judge Williams when he granted the nol Pross motion,
the motion to withdraw, he did do it with prejudice,
meaning that you know, if they lost in federal court,
they couldn't come immediately back to state court and prosecute Greg.
And then we got to federal court and argued for
supervised release.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
I was released a week before Thanksgiving of twenty sixteen.
It was bittersweet, man, because I was obviously happy to
come home, but I had to live four or five
years with this case hanging over my head.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
You know the one thing that stands out obviously, like
Greg walking out of the Allegheny County Jail. We're standing
in the lobby. First thing he says to the journalists
who are asking him questions is I want to thank
the firefighters for saving my family. That's the first thing
that's on his mind. Find the moment he's walking out
of being wrongly incarcerated for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
That's beautiful. Greg. So now you're released, but still not
totally free. You still had this case hanging over your head.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
I was pretty much free with deception of I couldn't
leave Western Pennsylvania or out the state without permission. So
it was basically like me getting his charge from the beginning,
but making bond.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
And this dragged out for about six long years, right,
and this time you did not have Judge Williams.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
The players on this case in nineteen ninety seven are
Prosecutor Mark Clark, Assistant United States Attorney Sean Sweeney, Judge
Sir Cone presiding over the case. When we get to
the federal court, we have Sewn Sweeney, United States Attorney.
He's going to prosecute the case federally, we're initially assigned
(32:56):
to Judge schwab here in the Western District, who recuses himself,
and who is the case assigned to but Judge Sharcone,
who has been appointed to the federal bench. And so
once again we have a state federal team and the
exact same players as twenty two years ago, who all have.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
A professional interest in maintaining this conviction. So how did
it finally get resolved?
Speaker 3 (33:19):
I had a meeting with my attorneys. They said, the
government is offering the alpha plea right and my thing was,
I'm never going to admit to something I didn't do.
And they said, well, this is unique saying the case
will be over and you're pleading guilty while maintaining your
innocence at the same time.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That was a hard decision. I remember we presented this
to Greg. We're all sitting at reed Smith. It's still
during COVID, so we're sitting out on an outdoor patio.
That's what I don't know, Greg thirteen stories above. Yeah, Eli,
Greg is afraid of heights, so he's skirting across like
the wall trying.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
To get to his seat.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
And yeah, we just had like a very kind of
conversation about like, if we go back to trial, we
have Judge Starkne, we have Sean Tweeney, we have the
exact same players. None of us can labor under any
illusions that you could not be wrongfully convicted. Again, we
have seen it happen. We have seen it happen with
these exact people.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
It was hard for me, man, it was very hard
for me. And that's what we end up doing in
June of twenty twenty two to this day, Man, it
bothers me. What I mean, I don't know it's over.
I'm glad it's over with. And like Liz told me,
she's like, look, there's no restrictions. You'll be able to
tell your story. And then Dave said, like, if we
(34:38):
do fight it and get it, quit it, there's no
guaranteed that I will get compensated. So it was tough. Man,
It's still tough. Man. It definitely bothers me.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Right, even though you had amassed all of this evidence
and served all of that time. Plus the Great John
Lintini was prepared to testify about Canard's false report actually
showing no presence at all of gasoline on any of
the samples, and that this was actually not an arson
case at all. Still, there was no guarantee that you
(35:11):
get an acquittal, and even if you manage that, there
was no guarantee the compensation would be forthcoming.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
The most accountability that we can have is telling you,
telling you, telling your listeners what happened to Greg.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
And we're very honored to have you. So is there
anything at all you'd like to ask of our audience,
anything they can do.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I just want to say, I got a book coming
out to Greg Brown Story Volume one. I'm almost done
with it. I just want to ask the audience. Man,
you know, she's a little bit of common sense. You
just can't take everything they say is go. You can't
be that naive when someone's life is in your hands.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Amen. And we'll keep our ears to the ground about
your book as well as link the Pennsylvania Innis's Project
in the episode description so people can show some support.
Without them and other organizations like them, folks like Greg
would have even harder. And with that, let's go to
my favorite part of the show. Closing arguments, of course,
is a part of the show where I have the
(36:08):
honor of thanking each of you. And now I'm just
going to kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off,
close my eyes, and leave my headphones on, and then Liz,
you have the microphone to say whatever has been left unsaid,
and then just hand it off to Greg.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
So, you know, experts theorize that anywhere from three to
ten percent of all people convicted in the United States
annually are actually innocent. I think that's probably very conservative.
But even if we are very conservative and say that
it's only one percent, that's like more than ten thousand
people a year who are convicted of a crime that
(36:45):
they didn't commit. Innocence organizations like mine are underfunded, we're understaffed,
we're very small nonprofit organizations, and so it takes us
years to investigate and then to litigate a wrongful conviction.
And so when you do see that exoneration in the news,
it's wonderful. It's a wonderful day. It has been years
(37:06):
in the making. If we can prevent wrongful convictions from happening,
if we can be better jurors, better prosecutors, better defense attorneys,
better judges, then we won't cost people and their families'
literal decades of their life in prison. And so be
skeptical be healthily skeptical of what you're hearing and don't
(37:28):
just take You know, someone who is very confident and
also can be very wrong word for it.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, that family members, neighbors. You know, everyone needs to
hear these type of stories because you know everyone might
not listen to this, so no one wants to get
involved or care until it's their cousin, their son, or brother,
their nephew. You have to pay attention beforehand because you
have a responsibility because if you're not helping out beforehand
(37:57):
and it's too late, and then when you miss your
loved one, they get charged and then you're crying. You
should have did something about it. You know, you see
a face on TV or in the papers. It's kind
of hard. You know, the average person that never had
a loved one to deal with this, or a friend. Ay,
he's guilty, Look what he did? You know, don't You
shouldn't judge because you never know when it would be
(38:18):
you and you found me out the front row bagging
and pleading these judges. When you get to the point
where you need an edison project, it's bad anyway because
that means obviously it didn't work out at court. So
people just need to just hear these type of stories
as much as possible. The last thing I want to say,
I got extremely blessed and lucky at the same time.
(38:40):
Things just came together for me the right time. I
just to still be in there trying to reach out
to different organizations. You know, it's messed up what happened
to me, but I wouldn't want another kid to go
through this or no other family.
Speaker 5 (38:54):
So that said, thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
(39:27):
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with signal company number
one
In the early morning hours of Valentine's Day in nineteen
ninety five, the Pittsburgh Fire Department responded to a blaze
on Briceland Street. Darlene Buckner and her teenage son, Greg
Brown joined their safely evacuated family members as the raging
inferno took the lives of three firefighters. Atf Investigators suspected arson,
and a lab tech reported that two of the thirteen
(00:23):
samples from the home were positive for gasoline. However, a
gas powered mower stored in the basement may have been
the source. Reward money brought forth two alleged witnesses to
confirm what investigators had suspected. That Darlene Buckner and Greg
Brown intentionally set the blaze to collect on the twenty
thousand dollars insurance policy, a dollar amount that must have
(00:46):
been incentive enough to destroy all their possessions and the
lives of three brave firefighters. But this is wrongful conviction.
(01:07):
Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I hate wrongful convictions. I
hate every one of the cases that we've covered, and
for different reasons. But there's a particular thing that keeps
me up at night, which are cases like the one
that we're going to talk about today, where someone was
(01:28):
wrongfully convicted of a crime that never even happened. Today,
we're going to be talking with Greg Brown, who served
twenty years in Pennsylvania for an accidental fire with tragic fire. Nonetheless,
three lives were lost, but there was a rush to judgment,
there was junk science, there was all sorts of other
things that you're going to hear about, and we've covered
(01:50):
and our Junk Science podcast. But first I want to
introduce Elizabeth Delosa from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. Elizabeth, I'm
so glad you're here to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And thank you for all the incredible work that you
and the team there do. And of course now I
get the privilege of interviewing man I first met in
Phoenix at the Innocence Network conference Greg Brown. Greg, welcome
to Wronful Conviction.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So let's go back to simpler times, before nineteen ninety
five Valentine's Day, when this horrible event happened. What was
it like did you grow up in Pittsburgh and what
was your life like? Did you have brothers and sisters,
did you have a happy childhood.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yes, yeah, I grew up in Pittsburgh. You know, my
mom was a single mother until about the age of seven,
and she met my stepfather. I have a stepsister that's
two years older than me. Stepbrother is about four years
older than me. So it was a nice blended family.
And my mom didn't have another child until nineteen ninety three,
so it was happy. Man. My stepdad was great, good father, figure,
(02:55):
great provider, good guy, straight lace, everything by the book,
you know, never break the law. It was good. We
had a good upbringing.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So you were a typical teenager, just seventeen years old
when this tragic fire happened on the night of February
thirteenth into the fourteenth of nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
The next day was obviously it was Valentine's Day, so
I was excited when school was gonna have a dance,
you know. So like that night, I was over my
one of my older cousin's house playing Matten like the
kids do now on the Sega Genesis and I'm gonna
stepfather said go to the store with mom because it's
dark out there or whatever. And my mom was cooking
for a relative had died, so she was cooking for
(03:37):
like a funeral of repass. And we went to John
Nagles in one location on the east side and near
our house, and it was closed, so we went to waterworks.
So we come home on Frankstown Avenue. You could look
over and see the houses and we seen fire trucks
and like, man, Mom, I look like our house. And
we pulled into the alleyway in between Franktown and Briceland,
(03:59):
and we were anxious. We wanted to know if our
family was out. And one of the firemen was on
the back porst to yet her out there across the
street at the neighbor's house, and and my mom was frantic.
The fireman just wanted her to get to call out
the alley ways, you know, because there's probably gonna be
more fire trucks coming. And she had to drive around.
You know, we seen our family. We just was the static,
(04:21):
just happy that everybody was out. You know. Now was
waiting game and you're hoping they put the fire out
as soon as possible and and maybe you could get
whatever you can out of the house. And the more
time it goes on, it's obvious that the house is
going to get destroyed. And I went over to one
of the firemen and they I said, as fire as over.
(04:41):
They said, yeah, boy, we lost three of our guys.
I'm like what, so, yeah, three firemen died. I'm like, man,
you know, and then one of them said, like, I
believe it was the furnace. I went back and tell
my family, like, man, they said three firemen that, and
my mom just just broke down, started crying and everybody
we was just in shock.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
The city of Pittsburgh lost three courageous firefighters, Thomas Brooks,
Patty Conroy, and Mark Kalenda. So rest in peace. I
can't imagine how that news must have shaken their families
and the entire community.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
No, this case in Pittsburgh was extremely it still is
highly publicized, and there was no way for anyone to
move on and including now anything arson related to this day.
A lot of times this case will come up with
This case was always on the news, so.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You can imagine the rush to judgment to figure out
what went wrong here. And often when a death is
hard to accept, like in the case of a child
or baby, or men and women in uniform, we sometimes
see that same urge to blame somebody, even when there's
no one to blame.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
In investigating several arsen cases here in western Pennsylvania, I
think one common denominator is a very quick rush to
judgment and determining within hours that the fire is intentionally set,
thereby being a crime being arson without having done the
(06:15):
painstaking investigation that it takes in order to rule out
all accidental causes. And Greg's case is no different. Nine
one one calls first came in around twelve twenty am
on the fourteenth, and by three am the Pittsburgh Fire
Squad Pittsburgh Police knew that they had firefighter fatalities and
(06:39):
called in the ATF in order to assist in the investigation,
and within hours and upon visual inspection alone, it was
determined that this fire had been intentionally set and that
set those criminal investigation gears into motion, and then once
(06:59):
they were started, it seems like there was no stopping them.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So the visual inspection also known as the dunk science
portion of the investigation, in which they used disproven fire
investigation methods using terms like alligator burn patterns or crazed glass,
et cetera. You can hear all about this, by the way,
and I encourage you to check it out in our
coverage of arson investigation on our series Junk Science, which
(07:24):
will be linked in the episode description. So, in an
effort to corroborate that assessment with actual science, they sent
thirteen samples from the basement, which they believe was the
fire's origin point. They sent those samples for testing, and
eventually the lab tech said that two of the thirteen
samples tested positive for gasoline. But there also appears to
be a perfectly logical explanation for that.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I want to just back up a little bit, because
so you're right, thirteen samples are taken, and the ATF
believes that a gallon of gasoline is poured onto a
pile of laundry that is in the basement, and that
is what the origin of the fire is. Right, So
they during the fire suppression efforts, the basement is flooded.
(08:09):
There's about a foot of water in the basement. And
so when they're taking these thirteen samples, the concrete, some
fabric samples, they're all wet, and the first samples are
one through eleven. Those are the first samples that are
sent to the ATF laboratory for chemical analysis. The first
analysis by an ATF chemist named William Canard. He says
(08:32):
negative for any traces of accelerant. That's his first report,
and we know that through discovery and through some handwritten
notes that William Canard said everything is negative. They then
send two additional samples twelve and thirteen, and then somehow
mister Caernard's original report is amended and he eventually says
(08:55):
that Exhibit six and thirteen are positive for trace amounts
of gasoline. And in his testimony he never reveals that
his original analysis is exculpatory to greg and actually said
that there was no trace amounts of any accelerate, including gasoline.
(09:18):
And then another thing is there was a lawnmower in
the basement right next to this alleged a pile of
laundry with a gas can. That's where the family stored
their lawnmower. And so if there were trace amounts of gasoline,
which John Lentini completely refutes, having gone back and looked
at those comratographs, then it would have had a logical explanation.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And John Lentini is a legendary fire scientist, an actual
scientist who started off as an arson investigator, and by
the way, he was a true believer in the old
way of thinking. But he's become such an asset for
exposing this junk science for what it is junk, Unlike
his counterpart here, William Kinn, the same quote unquote expert
(10:02):
from Christine Bunch's case and so many others will have
her story linked as well. So back to the immediate
aftermath with this report from Canard, the investigators developed the
theory that you and your mom plotted to burn down
your own house, destroy all of your possessions, put your
whole family in danger, grave danger, and then out on
(10:23):
the street, including two toddlers no less, in the middle
of a Pittsburgh winter. Right at all of this to
collect on a twenty thousand dollars insurance policy, which I'm
guessing wouldn't cover the replacement costs of what you lost.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Even at a preliminary hearing. One of the investigators outright
say that they're from Homewood, breastliness is depressed. Are we
don't believe they had over twenty thousand dollars worth of
stuff in the house.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So what are we supposed to believe that you had
seventeen thousand, nine hundred and fifty dollars worth of stuff
in there or something and that this was for two
thousand dollars, this great scheme. I mean, come on, this
is so it's so sick.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And it's important. I know, me and my mother were
black and the firemen were white. And I know for
a fact there's been other cases in Pittsburgh Alleghany County
alone where fire fighters have died and so caught that
the suspects were white and they didn't charge them. So
I definitely believe race played a major factor in it.
(11:24):
You know, we're gonna get to the bottom and we'll
get these guys, these this black family out of here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
So you and your family were under investigation and out
of a home. Where'd you go? Where did you live?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Ironically? I moved up the street like two streets above
from this house where you could look down with my
father and my stepmother, And so I would walk past
the house. They had the house just surrounded with agents.
They had it there tight, they had it guarded like
the White House, and it was on the news so
much had me thinking, well, is anybody after me and
(11:58):
my family? So you know, I'm like I need protection?
Do I need to carry gun? I don't know what's
going on.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I mean with nightly media coverage. It's not crazy to
think that a target had been painted on your back.
But the investigation wasn't keeping up with the court of
public opinion. There was a reasonable explanation for the alleged
presence of gasoline and Canard's report, so they needed more
to go on, and a year after the fire, the
ATF started offering reward money fifteen thousand dollars for information.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
It was on the noon news, it was on the
five o'clock news, and it was on the six o'clock news.
This press conference issuing and publicizing this.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Reward what it sounds like a good idea on paper,
but it comes with the obvious pitfall of attracting false information,
and sure enough, one of your neighbors, Keith Wright, took debate.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Twelve minutes after the six o'clock news, Keith Wright walked
down to his local fire department and made a statement
a year after the fire, having never made a statement before,
saying that he saw Greg standing outside of his family's
home before fire park personnel got on scene. Very damaging
to Greg, because, as you know, he and his mother
(13:05):
have always said we arrived after fire personnel were on scene.
We were at the Giant Eagle shopping and so that
put a hole in Greg's alibi.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
But this hole in the alibi was not quite enough
to get a warrant, so they kept going with this strategy.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
One of my friends told me that he say, man,
you know, the ATF came visit me down South Carolina
and they offered me four thousand and they said, just
say that his mother made him do it foreign source money.
And I was like what he said, yeah, man.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
So it appears that they didn't care if the information
was false or not. But your friend from South Carolina,
Raoul Gibson, stood strong. So the ATF found another taker,
which came about when you had actually followed through on
getting a gun.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I did end up getting in trouble with a gun,
you know, I had it for safety.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
The summer of nineteen ninety five, he got in trouble
for the first time as a juvenile. And while you know,
possession of a gun is a serious juvenile offence, it's
the first time he's ever been in front of the
juvenile court. And instead of probation or house arrest some
type of like check in program, community based program, Greg
(14:20):
is sent to Vision Quest in Franklin, Pennsylvania, which is
like a wilderness slash boot camp program. So one of
the Pittsburgh homicide detectives tells ATF, and then ATF immediately
goes to the Vision Quest program and asks for all
of Greg's bunkmates and starts to reach out to fifteen, sixteen,
(14:44):
seventeen year olds and asking whether Greg has made any
inculpatory statements or is as he mentioned this or confessed
to anybody, and no one is making a statement, and
so they start to reach out to probation off for
each one of these kids, and the fifteen year old
in particular that does eventually end up testifying against Greg.
(15:07):
His probation officer is contacted upwards of twenty times each
and every time money is brought up by the ATF
and the fact that there is a reward in exchange
for testimony implicating Greg, and finally they have a face
to face with fifteen year old Ibrahim Abdullah, who only
(15:30):
after he is told that there is a fifteen thousand
dollars reward if he has information that would implicate Greg,
does he make a statement. And the probation officer notes
that he was really concerned about the statement particularly because
it is yes and no answers to all leading questions.
And so, did Greg Brown tell you something about this fire? Yes, sir?
(15:54):
Did he tell you that he started the fire? Yes, sir.
And so the fifteen year old's not offering any fact,
any new facts, any corroborating facts. He's simply answering these
very lading questions from the ATF.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Nevertheless, this fifteen year old, Imbrahim Abdullah, gave them what
they need to make arrests. You were charged with arson
and murder, and your mother, Darlene Buckner, was charged with arson, murder,
conspiracy and insurance fraud.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I just thought I got arrested, and then I call
home and my aunt answered the phone. She said they
got your mom too. I said, what you already know?
You didn't do anything. Now they're arresting your mother. Basically,
they had a person saying I killed three firemen, but
I'm bragging about it. You know, he wants you to
believe it. And I was bragging about it like it
(16:39):
was a cool crime. I mean, name one rap song
where rappers was bragging about setting fires, or a movie anything.
That's not a cool crime.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
It's just crazy man.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
As he's preparing for testimony, fifteen year old Ibrahim Abdullah
starts to get cold feet, and he tells the ATF agent,
I don't think I want to do this. I want
to back out. I don't think I want to testify.
And the ATF agent puts him in a room with
the surviving members of the firefighters, who really, you know,
(17:27):
impose upon him how important it is to them that
justice be served and what a good thing he's doing.
And so not only does this fifteen year old have
the motivation of fifteen thousand dollars and what it could
do for his family, and then he also has the
pressure of the ATF and the hopes of the victim's
families on him.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
So this kid, Ibrahim, his cold feet seem to have
gotten nice and toasty all of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
And we got to give this guys proper credit. Jason
Wick from the ATF, and.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
He definitely was persistent, even when he was receiving no
information from these children, he was not afraid to use
that financial incentive to get the statement that he wanted.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And I read that later on as a man, Ibraham
admitted that it went even deeper than that for him
with this ATF agent Jason Wick.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
He later testifies that he was kind of smitten with
the ATF agent. The ATF agent, you know, helped him
with like court costs, helped him with some restitution in
his other cases, helped him obtain his birth certificate, would
take him on these rides in his car and would
like speed, would swear, would tell him how powerful he
is as an ATF agent. He said, you know, I
(18:39):
thought this guy was cool. I thought he was really cool.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
So this kid Ibraham was charmed and incentivized to say
the least, as was the neighbor Keith, Right, and they
came to testify against you and your mom, who were
on trial together.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Oo.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It hurts my heart to even say that. And despite
these press conferences, your attorney Al Lindsey was somehow unaware
of the wars w money. Nevertheless, the jury nearly found
out about this paid testimony scheme.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Anyway, during trial, Greg told you about his friend from
South Carolina named Raoul Gibson. Raoul Gibson testified at trial
for the defense, saying ATF came to visit me in
South Carolina and Agent Wick told me that if I
gave an inculpatory statement against Greg I would be paid
(19:25):
seven thousand dollars. And at trial, one of the prosecutors,
the federal prosecutor who was cross examining him, said, Raoul,
do you think that there's just some fun somewhere the
agents can go and grab you seven thousand dollars? And Raoul,
a kid at the time, was like, I don't know
about that. And then in closing arguments, you know, prosecutors
(19:47):
really made it seem like it was preposterous that they
would be paying witnesses.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Even though they most definitely were and had been saying
so on the news. Yet Greg's attorney was so how unaware,
But even so did he try to bring up what
Raoul Gibson said. When cross examining Abraham Abdullah.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
They talked about what his motivation for testifying would be,
and what he testified to was that he talked it
over with his mom and his mom said it was
the right thing to do. For a defense attorney, you
can't cross that, especially for a fifteen year old kid
who you're very much trying to be like, use kid
gloves with and not look like a jerk in front
of the jury. When fifteen year olds, as I talked
(20:27):
to my mom as she said it was the right
thing to do. There's nowhere to go from there.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
So the state successfully passed off these paid witnesses as
concerned citizens, followed by this quote unquote arson expert William Cannard,
who unbeknownst to the jury, judge and defense, had changed
his original report to reflect the presence of gasoline in
two of thirteen samples. And even though you were contending
with an outright lie, there was still the reasonable explanation
(20:52):
of the gas powered lawn more stored in the basement.
A defense expert could have and should have gone a
long way to combat this, had your offense attorney even bothered,
but he didn't. Now, after seeing all this go down,
did you still hold out hope that the jury would
get it right?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
To be honest, part of me did. The bailiff grabs
the verdict from the jury foreman, and he hands it
to the judge. The judge was he was definitely referreening
for them the whole time. You know every rule. I mean,
we didn't get any type of calls if this would
be a game. And I seen the judge's face, he
had a confused look on his face when he read
(21:29):
the verdict to hisself, and his facial expression was like,
what the hell is this? And I was like, maybe
I got a chance. So he read the ver my
mother was getting acquitted of everything, and I'm like, WHOA
did we do this? And then when they got to
the very last charge on my mother, they found her
guilty of insurance fraud. So I said, okay, now they're
(21:52):
going to get me, and sure enough, they found me
guilty on everything except they acquitted us of conspiracy, which
absolutely made no sense because if she's the mastermind and
she made her son do it, that's obviously a conspiracy.
(22:21):
I might have been up there a month and I
called home one day and my uncle answered the phone
and he said, you're going to court. Something involve a
Jordy misconduct. You know, during the trial they tell the dury,
don't talk to your family members, don't read any papers,
don't listen to the news, don't discuss the case with anybody,
don't visit the crime scene. So what had happened was
(22:42):
a drawer had signed Afford David after I got found guilty,
and he was stating how one of the drawers had
her daughter at the trial every day and was sitting
with the fireman's family and she visited the crime scene.
So I should have got a new trial based stoff
of that, you know. But when I went to the
hearing in front of Josh Coo, he said, well, it
(23:05):
doesn't matter, it's that dream was shattered. So yeah, I'm
just a kid, and I get sent to Greater for Prison,
the biggest prison in the state at the time. Man,
it was it was rough. It was rough in there then,
you know, And I pretty much depended on my lawyer, Lindsey,
my trial lawyer, to get me out.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
And not too long after trial, mister Lindsey, while litigating
that during misconduct issue and seeking a retrial, he discovered
the paid witness scheme.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, and it came to light during discovery for Greg's
retrial that that reward was offered one year to the
date of the fire. His attorney asks the court to
reopen the evidence to tell the jury about the fact
that this reward was offered and that it, you know,
(23:54):
certainly could be known and expected by these two witnesses,
and he's not allowed to do this, so the jury
is never told that there is a fifteen thousand dollars reward.
And then so Greg does his direct appeal. You know,
here in Pennsylvania, he does his federal habeas corpus And
each and every time members of the prosecution team say
(24:16):
no witnesses were paid, there is no evidence that witnesses were.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Paid, even though Raoul Gibson had testified about being offered
a reward at the original trial. So this issue became
central to your post conviction efforts. But only after the
journalism students at Point Park Universities, in this institute, under
the guidance of Bill Mushy, they were able to develop
the evidence to prove what had happened with these witnesses.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
They got in touch with Abraham Abdullah and he acknowledged
that he got paid. And the neighbor, Keith Wright. You know,
it's like the summer twenty ten, right after the two
witnesses acknowledged that they did received some type of benefits.
We had got in touch with jerro Hurst. It was
a great arson expert in Texas. He wrote back and
(25:04):
agreed it didn't look like it was Arson at him.
I got back in Colorida on won my pill rights
and Judge Williams agreed to give me a hearing based
off of I didn't have a proper expert witness at
my trial. After that, mister Mushie said, I'm just a professor.
He said, you're going to need representation. We're not lawyers.
And it just so happened. Also in the summer of
(25:25):
twenty ten, Did Temple started their Innocent Project and he
got in touch with Marissa Bluestain.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
The Pennsylvania Insist Project picked up your case, and the
lead up to this hearing in front of Judge Williams,
while Bill Mushie's team continued to gather evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Bill Mushie and his students they did several for requests,
and one of the documents that they got from the
ATF were these two redacted checks.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
The check for ten thousand, the check for five thousand,
and it was blacked.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Out, and so really all they could tell was that
the ATF issued two checks, one for five thousand and
one for ten thousand. They couldn't tell who they are
gone to. And so they went back and they looked
at all of the appellate history in Greg's case and
they were confused, right, because prosecutors really made it seem
like it was preposterous that they would be paying witnesses.
(26:18):
And so finally in twenty ten, when these redacted checks
are obtained by the Innocence Institute and Point Park go
back and they say to the Alleghany County District Attorney's Office, Okay,
if no witnesses were paid, what are these.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
When mister Mushie confronted them, David Hickden was in charge
of the ATF at the time, he responded, Oh, well,
they got paid, but they weren't expecting anything. We didn't
make any promises beforehand. You know, we basically paid the
malt de clear blue.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Oh yeah, that's a good story. That's a I got
a nice bridge outside of Pittsburgh, right, So that's great.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
And so Point Park investigators find Ibrahim Abdullah, who is now,
you know, in his late twenties, and they asked him
when were you paid and did you know you were
going to be paid at the time of your testimony,
and he very freely said yes, I was a fifteen
year old kid. They offered me fifteen thousand dollars. It
(27:15):
was more money than I had ever seen in my life,
and it was highly motivating. I knew before trial, and
actually I expected the fifteen thousand. I was disappointed to
get only.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Five, okay, So that solves the mystery of whose name
was on each redacted check five thousand for Ibrahim and
ten for Keith.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Right point, Park was having a really difficult time locating
Keith Wright, and so the Pennsylvania Innocence Project then got
Dave Fawcett involved from Reid Smith, and Dave was actually
able to locate Keith Wright. Mister Wright also said, yes,
I absolutely knew about the reward. I knew about it
before trial. Then we were able to bring in Keith Wright,
(28:01):
bring in Ibrahim Abdullah at the post conviction hearing and
testify about not only their knowledge prior to trial, but
that promises were made to them. And then Ibrahim Abdullah,
the fifteen year old kid at the time, further testified
that Jason Wick told him prior to his testimony, They're
going to ask you if I've promised you of anything,
(28:22):
if there's any kind of incentive or reward. And I
want to be very clear, I didn't promise you anything.
Do you understand right?
Speaker 1 (28:30):
So the prosecution is saying to this fifteen year old kid, wow,
we want you to lie and we want to make
sure wink wink, you're going to lie about the lie right's.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And there's a failed threat of there's this money on
the line, right, so lie well.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So both paid witnesses exposed the scheme in front of
Judge Williams in twenty twelve. And then the ATF agent
Jason Wick, he was also at this hearing.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
He threatened Dave Fawcet in the hallway. He threatened Dave
and said, YEA said, trying to ruin my fucking name,
you know, excuse my language, just trying to ruin my name,
you know. Dave said, he just threatened me in the
hallway when he's on the stand like a perfect gentleman,
you know. And of course he denied everything any witness
anything or offering any anything.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Dave Fawcett also presented a few other witnesses that lent
credibility to Abdullah and Wrights recantations. So things must have
been looking up.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Dave said, man, I never seen nothing like this. He said,
everything went perfect for us these three days, you know.
And then I might have waited for my answers for
two years, all right, And.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Then January two twelve is a hearing and then February
twenty fourteen is the relief.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Then twenty fourteen, I was in the courtroom and Jeorge
Williams said, mister Brown, your attorneys made good points. The
prosecutors made good points too, And my heart started beating.
And but mister Brown, I believe your witnesses. You ask
for a new trauma, give you a new trial. I
couldn't hear nothing but my heart beating. And I just
remember given my brother, my youngest brother, de Ronce, because
(30:03):
he was they both for babies, but he was a
new born when all this happened, and I like gave
him like a head, not man. That was the best
day right there, Well, second best day, because obviously the
day I got out was the best day. And I
stayed down there for two years, down the county, from
twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen. I had a belt that
was ridiculously high. The district attorney appealed immediately, and when
(30:25):
they lost their last appeal, they tried to go back
to the old playbook. Tried to get people that was
on the pard with me to you know, jail house informants.
They went to all my salemates through twenty years that
they confered. Fortunately for me, those guys still firm and
then you know, didn't allow on me.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
So they had one final play with the ATF in Bob.
This case was always under joint federal and state jurisdiction,
but with Judge Williams on this case, their options in
state court were finally running out.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And so this dual prosecution, this state and federal prosecution
once again got together and said, Okay, we don't want
to go and to trial in front of Judge Williams.
We can't get him to recuse, and so we'll drop
state charges. We'll switch forums, and we'll take Greg up
the street to the federal court. They asked to withdraw
(31:13):
state charges. Judge Williams when he granted the nol Pross motion,
the motion to withdraw, he did do it with prejudice,
meaning that you know, if they lost in federal court,
they couldn't come immediately back to state court and prosecute Greg.
And then we got to federal court and argued for
supervised release.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
I was released a week before Thanksgiving of twenty sixteen.
It was bittersweet, man, because I was obviously happy to
come home, but I had to live four or five
years with this case hanging over my head.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
You know the one thing that stands out obviously, like
Greg walking out of the Allegheny County Jail. We're standing
in the lobby. First thing he says to the journalists
who are asking him questions is I want to thank
the firefighters for saving my family. That's the first thing
that's on his mind. Find the moment he's walking out
of being wrongly incarcerated for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
That's beautiful. Greg. So now you're released, but still not
totally free. You still had this case hanging over your head.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
I was pretty much free with deception of I couldn't
leave Western Pennsylvania or out the state without permission. So
it was basically like me getting his charge from the beginning,
but making bond.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
And this dragged out for about six long years, right,
and this time you did not have Judge Williams.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
The players on this case in nineteen ninety seven are
Prosecutor Mark Clark, Assistant United States Attorney Sean Sweeney, Judge
Sir Cone presiding over the case. When we get to
the federal court, we have Sewn Sweeney, United States Attorney.
He's going to prosecute the case federally, we're initially assigned
(32:56):
to Judge schwab here in the Western District, who recuses himself,
and who is the case assigned to but Judge Sharcone,
who has been appointed to the federal bench. And so
once again we have a state federal team and the
exact same players as twenty two years ago, who all have.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
A professional interest in maintaining this conviction. So how did
it finally get resolved?
Speaker 3 (33:19):
I had a meeting with my attorneys. They said, the
government is offering the alpha plea right and my thing was,
I'm never going to admit to something I didn't do.
And they said, well, this is unique saying the case
will be over and you're pleading guilty while maintaining your
innocence at the same time.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That was a hard decision. I remember we presented this
to Greg. We're all sitting at reed Smith. It's still
during COVID, so we're sitting out on an outdoor patio.
That's what I don't know, Greg thirteen stories above. Yeah, Eli,
Greg is afraid of heights, so he's skirting across like
the wall trying.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
To get to his seat.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
And yeah, we just had like a very kind of
conversation about like, if we go back to trial, we
have Judge Starkne, we have Sean Tweeney, we have the
exact same players. None of us can labor under any
illusions that you could not be wrongfully convicted. Again, we
have seen it happen. We have seen it happen with
these exact people.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
It was hard for me, man, it was very hard
for me. And that's what we end up doing in
June of twenty twenty two to this day, Man, it
bothers me. What I mean, I don't know it's over.
I'm glad it's over with. And like Liz told me,
she's like, look, there's no restrictions. You'll be able to
tell your story. And then Dave said, like, if we
(34:38):
do fight it and get it, quit it, there's no
guaranteed that I will get compensated. So it was tough. Man,
It's still tough. Man. It definitely bothers me.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Right, even though you had amassed all of this evidence
and served all of that time. Plus the Great John
Lintini was prepared to testify about Canard's false report actually
showing no presence at all of gasoline on any of
the samples, and that this was actually not an arson
case at all. Still, there was no guarantee that you
(35:11):
get an acquittal, and even if you manage that, there
was no guarantee the compensation would be forthcoming.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
The most accountability that we can have is telling you,
telling you, telling your listeners what happened to Greg.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
And we're very honored to have you. So is there
anything at all you'd like to ask of our audience,
anything they can do.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I just want to say, I got a book coming
out to Greg Brown Story Volume one. I'm almost done
with it. I just want to ask the audience. Man,
you know, she's a little bit of common sense. You
just can't take everything they say is go. You can't
be that naive when someone's life is in your hands.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Amen. And we'll keep our ears to the ground about
your book as well as link the Pennsylvania Innis's Project
in the episode description so people can show some support.
Without them and other organizations like them, folks like Greg
would have even harder. And with that, let's go to
my favorite part of the show. Closing arguments, of course,
is a part of the show where I have the
(36:08):
honor of thanking each of you. And now I'm just
going to kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off,
close my eyes, and leave my headphones on, and then Liz,
you have the microphone to say whatever has been left unsaid,
and then just hand it off to Greg.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
So, you know, experts theorize that anywhere from three to
ten percent of all people convicted in the United States
annually are actually innocent. I think that's probably very conservative.
But even if we are very conservative and say that
it's only one percent, that's like more than ten thousand
people a year who are convicted of a crime that
(36:45):
they didn't commit. Innocence organizations like mine are underfunded, we're understaffed,
we're very small nonprofit organizations, and so it takes us
years to investigate and then to litigate a wrongful conviction.
And so when you do see that exoneration in the news,
it's wonderful. It's a wonderful day. It has been years
(37:06):
in the making. If we can prevent wrongful convictions from happening,
if we can be better jurors, better prosecutors, better defense attorneys,
better judges, then we won't cost people and their families'
literal decades of their life in prison. And so be
skeptical be healthily skeptical of what you're hearing and don't
(37:28):
just take You know, someone who is very confident and
also can be very wrong word for it.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, that family members, neighbors. You know, everyone needs to
hear these type of stories because you know everyone might
not listen to this, so no one wants to get
involved or care until it's their cousin, their son, or brother,
their nephew. You have to pay attention beforehand because you
have a responsibility because if you're not helping out beforehand
(37:57):
and it's too late, and then when you miss your
loved one, they get charged and then you're crying. You
should have did something about it. You know, you see
a face on TV or in the papers. It's kind
of hard. You know, the average person that never had
a loved one to deal with this, or a friend. Ay,
he's guilty, Look what he did? You know, don't You
shouldn't judge because you never know when it would be
(38:18):
you and you found me out the front row bagging
and pleading these judges. When you get to the point
where you need an edison project, it's bad anyway because
that means obviously it didn't work out at court. So
people just need to just hear these type of stories
as much as possible. The last thing I want to say,
I got extremely blessed and lucky at the same time.
(38:40):
Things just came together for me the right time. I
just to still be in there trying to reach out
to different organizations. You know, it's messed up what happened
to me, but I wouldn't want another kid to go
through this or no other family.
Speaker 5 (38:54):
So that said, thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
(39:27):
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with signal company number
one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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