Jim Brown puts his grievances in writing
Friday, November 19, 2004
James Gill
Excerpts from Times-Picayune Review of Jim Brown's book Justice Denied
Eighteen months after his release from prison, former state Insurance
Commissioner Jim Brown is still fuming and has come out with a book
protesting his innocence.
Brown, who did six months for lying to the feds, is entitled to feel
aggrieved.
The FBI investigation that snared him, former Gov. Edwin Edwards and
others, was incompetent and unscrupulous, the prosecution's theory of the
case utterly preposterous and the trial a travesty.
Brown, Edwards et al. were charged with rigging a sweetheart settlement
for the benefit of David Disiere, owner of a failed insurance company
called Cascade. In fact, the settlement guaranteed that neither taxpayers
nor Cascade's creditors would lose a penny, and there was no suggestion
that any of the defendants had received a payoff.
Judge Edith Brown Clement had imposed a gag order, and ordered that the
jury remain anonymous, signaling that the defendants were such sinister
characters that their right to a public trial must be abridged. The jury
must have wondered what all the fuss was about, since it soon became
apparent that no crime had been committed.
The jury threw prosecutors a bone, however, finding Brown guilty of
lying to FBI agent Harry Burton when he was investigating the imaginary
conspiracy. That was a peculiar thing for Brown to do; why he would want
to conceal his entirely legal actions never was explained.
Brown maintained that Burton's typewritten summary of their interview,
concocted some days later, was inaccurate. The only way to prove it would
be to examine the notes Burton's took down by hand on the spot, but
Clement refused to order prosecutors to hand them over to the defense.
Prosecutors' refusal to provide the handwritten notes naturally raised
suspicions that they did not jibe with the summary given to the defense.
If there were no discrepancies, why would prosecutors have balked?
If Burton did make an error, it wouldn't have been his first. He
achieved immortality among crimefighters as the agent who forgot to turn
the video camera on in time to record Edwards handing an envelope full of
cash to Cleo Fields. By the time Burton pushed the button, Fields was
already struggling to put the moolah in his pocket. A witness in Edwards'
riverboat license-shakedown trial, also testified that he had been
interviewed by Burton, who later produced a summary riddled with errors.
Brown claims that, when the handwritten notes came to light after the
trial, they vindicated his claims. Clement, meanwhile, was promoted to the
court of appeals. A panel of her new colleagues dismissed Brown's appeal,
and he was off to prison.
Brown is not telling us much new in his book, "Justice Denied," because
nobody who followed his case could possible doubt that, guilty or not, he
was unlucky to be put on trial in a court that had an unmistakable whiff
of the kangaroo.
Still, he has driven his point home here. The next time the FBI comes
calling he will be more circumspect.
