Jim Brown Recounts Trial, Jail Experience
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Jason Brown
The Daily Advertiser
Despite all that has happened to him during the past few years, former Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown said he still keeps a positive attitude.
Brown, 64, spoke about his run-in with the court system, the changing face of the insurance business and his new book, "Justice Denied," at a Concerned Citizens for Good Government meeting Monday night at Don's Seafood Restaurant.
"The long and short of it is that I ended up being convicted of making five false statements to an FBI agent. No crime but making false statements," Brown said about his six-month prison sentence at Oakdale - the same prison that houses Edwin Edwards. Brown was originally indicted on 56 counts of insurance fraud, but those charges were later dropped.
He said the charges that were filed against him and the sentence that was imposed upon him should never have happened.
"I'm the only person in the history of the federal court system that was ever tried and convicted of making false statements and was not able to confront my accuser or have the handwritten notes that were taken in my case," he said, of notes that an FBI agent took while in his presence before the case went to court.
Brown also recounted how the judge put a gag order on him the minute he was indicted, which effectively forbade him from speaking out in his own defense.
"I couldn't even respond," he said.
Brown was also tried by an anonymous jury.
"That's something that we usually keep for drug dealers. International terrorists are tried by anonymous jurys because they felt threatened," he said.
Brown said he agreed with holding public officials fully accountable for their actions, however, when "merely giving false statements of a crime that never existed and when all is said and done the notes show conclusively that there were no false statements, it's a little bizarre. I'm not asking people to feel sorry for me. I just don't want to let what happened to me happen to one other Louisiana citizen."
Later, Brown discussed insurance issues and said that we are in a "revolutionary time involving insurance."
He said in Nebraska and Kansas, car dealerships are including the cost of your insurance directly into the car's price.
"That's going to be the way in the future," he said, because it will be all-inclusive.
Brown also said that some insurance companies in Texas have now begun installing Global Positioning Systems in customer's cars, which can monitor their driving and base monthly bills on that data. So, he said, the salesman pays more for their insurance than an elderly lady who drives less frequently.
"Some folks may have an objection to that, but that's a dramatic change that's going to come," he said. "I hope it's for the good."
Brown said, however, that he didn't expect the cost of insurance in Louisiana to change much until driver's here begin driving more safely.
He compared statistics between Texas and Louisiana and said that for every 1,000 drivers in Texas only 15 will be involved in a wreck, but here in Louisiana that number is 40, and the average claims and settlements are much higher here as well.
"You can't blame it on the lawyers," he said because the blame falls on us.
