Florida Prisoner Returns to Custody After Overturned Conviction Reinstated
Exactly one week before his 67th birthday, Florida prisoner Crosley Green returned to custody of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) on September 4, 2024—two and a half years after a state court granted him provisional release while the state continued to fight a 2018 ruling overturning his conviction for a 1989 murder.
Green has consistently maintained that he never met Chip Flynn before the 22-year-old was fatally gunned down in a Brevard County orange grove. Flynn’s then-girlfriend, Kim Hallock, claimed that they were abducted by an unknown Black man, from whom only she managed to escape. She also identified Green from a photo lineup. But no other evidence tied him to the killing, which occurred during a party that other witnesses said he attended.
Nevertheless, Green went to trial for the murder, maintaining his innocence and refusing a plea bargain. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1990. Only then did the case that prosecutors made begin to fall apart. A witness recanted his testimony that Green confessed to him, claiming he was threatened with the loss of parole. Two other witnesses, including one of Green’s sisters, also recanted their testimony, claiming it was coerced. Green’s attorneys got him off death row in 2009, successfully arguing that the original sentencing was flawed.
During that case, the attorneys also discovered notes made in Green’s case by then-Assistant 18th Judicial District Attorney Christopher White, recording how investigators suspected Hallock of the crime. Those records were never turned over to Defense attorneys, though. They took that complaint to the federal court for the Middle District of Florida, which agreed in June 2018 that this was a violation of prosecutor’s obligations to share potentially exculpatory evidence, as laid out in Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).
While the state turned to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Green remained in custody until his provisional release in 2021. On March 14, 2022, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling, finding no error in the failure to disclose the investigators’ suspicions because they would’ve been inadmissible hearsay, anyway. Denial of Green’s related claim of ineffective assistance of counsel—for his trial attorney’s failure to cross-examine Hallock— was also affirmed because he hadn’t raised it in state Court. The Supreme Court of the U.S. then refused to hear any further appeal on February 27, 2023. See: Green v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 28 F.4th 1089 (11th Cir. 2022); and Green v. Dixon, 143 S. Ct. 982 (2023).
“The last two years have been the best years of my life,” Green said. “I reunited with my family and met my grandkids for the first time. I learned a new job that I really love. I’ve enjoyed worshiping with my church in Titusville. And I’ve begun new relationships that have changed my life. I would like to live the years I have left in freedom and peace.”
He is now back in DOC custody at Tamoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach. Meanwhile, Hallock, who has never been investigated or charged, issued a statement in April 2023, insisting: “I testified to the truth. [Green] needs to go back to [prison] where he belongs.”
Additional source: CBS News, PBS News
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