Inmate in '86 South St. slaying ordered freed
A Philadelphia man convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1986 was ordered freed yesterday after a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had taken too long to retry him for a killing in a nightclub.
A Philadelphia man convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1986 was ordered freed yesterday after a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had taken too long to retry him for a killing in a nightclub.
U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam's ruling outraged the District Attorney's Office, which swiftly won an order delaying the release of Curtis Brinson, 47, until an appeal.
Prosecutors said Brinson's lawyers, not the District Attorney's Office, bore the blame for the lag in retrying him.
"There is no dispute. All of the delay is officially the result of defense requests for more time," wrote Thomas W. Dolgenos, chief of the office's federal litigation unit.
In an interview, he added: "I was shocked. This was a cold-blooded, first-degree murder, an intentional murder."
In 1986, a jury found Brinson guilty of shooting Arthur Johnson. The prosecutor, Jack McMahon, told jurors that Brinson had shot Johnson inside the men's room of the old Ripley's nightclub on South Street in an effort to steal his gold chain.
While serving his sentence at the state prison at Graterford, Brinson has pursued a tangled and complex appeal.
In 2005, a federal appeals court ruled that Brinson's conviction appeared flawed because McMahon had struck numerous African Americans from the jury.
To win that ruling, Brinson's lawyer, Norris Gelman, cited a videotape that McMahon made in the late 1980s to train younger prosecutors. The tape became notorious after its release in 1997; on it, McMahon urged prosecutors to block poor African Americans and younger black women from juries.
The District Attorney's Office asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court's ruling. Last year, after the high court declined to take the case, Fullam ordered a new trial and gave prosecutors four months to begin it or let Brinson go.
In his opinion yesterday, Fullam acknowledged that both prosecutors and defense lawyers had agreed to delay beyond four months while they talked about a possible plea.
However, he said prosecutors were "the driving force" behind the failure to resolve Brinson's fate. He said they had taken months to decide to move forward with a trial rather than accept a plea.
Gelman, who represented Brinson for free, said prosecutors had rejected his proposal that Brinson's sentence be changed to time served. He called Fullam's order "a just result."
Gelman also said Brinson posed no threat.
"He's a much different guy than the guy who came to prison," Gelman said. "Prison has not made him tough and hard or difficult to manage. He's grown into a good human being in a pretty bad environment."
The retrial is scheduled for June. It was delayed in part because Brinson's new lawyer, Bernard Siegel, could not find time in his schedule before that, Fullam wrote. Siegal could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Prosecutors vigorously disputed Fullam's reasoning.
Dolgenos said the judge had not cited any authority for the "startling proposition that a state prisoner may ask for more time in state court and simultaneously complain in federal court that the trial is taking too long."
"This contradicts common sense and violates the public trust," he wrote. "As a result, a convicted murderer is poised to go free."
