Crime Junkie - PRECEDENT: John Brady

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

In 1958 John Brady, along with an accomplice, was accused of murdering his friend, William Brooks. John maintained that he had not taken part in the murder, that he was only part of a plan to rob the man. However, his accomplice turned on him and he was eventually found guilty. Though there was something the prosecution was holding back that would completely change the way a jury would view the case. And when the shady tactics of the prosecution were revealed, a new legal precedent was set that aimed to ensure a fair trial to defendants.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/precedent-john-brady/

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and I know I said last week that I was going to take this week off, but you guys know me better than that by now. So I decided to drop in your feeds to give you another precedent episode. You know you're a real bona fide crime junkie if you roll your eyes every time someone on a podcast starts to explain what a Brady violation is. Yes, we know. The prosecution didn't share evidence that could have helped the defense at trial. Everyone deserves the right to a fair trial. But that actually wasn't always an actual rule. And even though I could spot a Brady violation from a mile away, I never knew the whole story behind it until now.

Before there was the Brady rule and a right to a fair trial, there was John Brady. This is his story. On Friday, June 27th, 1958, it was a warm, stuffy summer night in the rural outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland. 25-year-old John Brady and his friend, 25-year-old Charles Donald Boblett, who most publications just called Donald, were sweating and nervous as they dragged a heavy tree log across a dirt road. According to the Washington Post, the two men had a plan. They were going to block the road for the next oncoming driver, ambush them and steal their car. But they're not just trying to steal any old car from any

old stranger. They're waiting for someone specific. John's good family friend, a man named William Brooks. William was 53 years old and worked a late night shift at a plastics factory in a town about 20 minutes southwest of Baltimore. He'd been friends with John's grandfather for years and even worked with John at one point doing random manual labor jobs on his grandfather's farm. According to a story by Thomas Dibdoul for the Marshall Project, William had a brand new car and John needed a reliable car, badly, because John and Donald were planning to rob a bank in a small nearby town the next day. John and Donald had become familiar with William's exact route of travel to and from work each

night. So on Friday, they made sure to set everything in motion to catch William off guard by placing a log in his path. Their hope was that when William drove up to the log and saw it blocking the street, he'd get out of his car and try and move it. And when he did, Donald would blindfold William. It had to be Donald because duh, he'd recognize John. Then they tie him up and take him to a vacant house nearby where they hold him until after the robbery. Once they were back in town, they'd set William free, give back his car, and everyone could go back to living their lives. No one would get hurt. So when the time came, they dragged that log onto the road just before they knew William would

be driving by. And they waited. Around midnight, right on schedule, William's car came bumping down the dirt road and stopped right in front of the log. William got out of the car and started trying to move it off the road, which is when Donald jumped out of the shadows with a double barreled shotgun in his hands. John was still tucked away in some nearby trees waiting for William's eyes to be covered so he could do his part. According to Thomas Dibdoll's reporting, William was so stunned and confused by what was happening that he had a hard time complying with Donald's orders to get in the back seat of the car. Instead, terrified, William tried to sit down in the front passenger seat instead. And the whole

time he's muttering, please don't kill me, please. Now, Donald pulling the shotgun on William was already way off plan. That's not what John had agreed to. So you can imagine his surprise when Donald slammed the butt of the shotgun into William's head and knocked him unconscious. That's when John stepped out from his perch in the bushes to help. They put William's body across the back seat of the car and got the heck out of there. But as they were driving, John started to have second thoughts about everything, all of it, and he especially felt bad that William had gotten injured. While they were driving, John suggests maybe instead of this abandoned house, they could just walk William into the

woods and leave him there. I mean, he's already disoriented and confused from being hit with the butt of a gun. John figured eventually he'd come out of his stupor and he'd be able to find help. So a few miles from where this whole thing went down, they stopped the car, got out and walked William into the dense woods to find a place to leave him. But Donald had other plans. He had changed his mind. He told John that William had for sure seen his face and that meant they had to kill him. But John disagreed, saying William had been good to him and he didn't have to die. And more than that, he said, if Donald fired the gun, someone would hear it. And then they'd be in trouble. Just put the gun away, he begged

him. John said he needed a couple of minutes to think, to come up with another plan. One that would ensure William wasn't hurt any further. And maybe they could still get away with the robbery that they had planned for the next morning. He could do it. Just give him a minute. John walked off and started pacing around a ways away. And that's when Donald took off his long sleep shirt and twisted it around William's neck. When John realized what was going on, he rushed over and tried to intervene. But by the time he saw what was happening, it was too late. Donald had strangled William to death. Not knowing what to do now, John helped Donald drag Williams body further into the woods. Court records

state that the duo stole $255 in cash from Williams wallet and threw the rest of his personal belongings deeper into the woods. They covered Williams' lifeless body with a few sticks and leaves before fleeing the scene for good. They headed to Chester Town to rob the bank the next day. But by the time the sun came up, they changed their minds. They figured they'd probably had a couple of days anyway before anyone reported William missing. So they drove the car into Virginia, ditched it on the street, and then caught a bus to Washington DC. Donald wanted to go home, but John, he was hatching a very different plan. John and Donald parted ways, and John spent the night in DC trying to figure out

his next move. He was pretty sure he'd have at least a couple of days before anyone reported William missing. And he wanted to be long gone by the time they started looking. And the only place he could think of to go was Cuba. According to Thomas Dibdall's piece for the Marshall Project, John always had this thought in the back of his mind that he'd like to go to Cuba and join Fidel Castro's rebels, be a part of the revolution. And he figured there was no better time to chase this dream than now before the cops started chasing him. Except they were already looking for John. Because within just an hour or two of William being a no show for work, his boss, who also happened to be his landlord, reported

him missing. And when she did, she told police they might want to talk to John because she'd seen the two of them together. So when John showed up at his aunt's place on Sunday afternoon, she told him the police had been by the day before looking for him. So he bought himself a plane ticket to Cuba with the cash he'd stolen from William's wallet, and he headed out. The only problem was running from the law and hiding out in Cuba meant giving up on the love of his life Nancy. John was head over heels in love with the 19 year old girl who also happened to be Donald's sister by the way. And he wanted to build a life with her. In a way, they'd already begun to build a life together, albeit a bit of a complicated

one. See, Nancy was already married to another man and pregnant with John's child. John didn't have a lot to offer his pregnant girlfriend, though. He came from a poor family and had never really had a steady home or a good paying job. He was a middle school dropout who'd been discharged from the military, and he'd already been married and divorced at least once. In late June of 58, this is a week before William's abduction and murder, John wrote Nancy a check for $35,000 and told her to hold on to it. In two weeks' time, he said, when she cashed the check, the money would be there. He promised. He was going to find a way to support her and their baby. But he didn't tell Nancy that his plan was

to rob a bank with her brother to make it happen. Within two days of fleeing to Cuba, John had changed his mind about hiding out. He wanted to go back to America and see the birth of his child and be with Nancy again. So he walked right into the U.S. Embassy and turned himself in for car theft. FBI agents transported him to Miami, Florida, where he explained that he was willing to plead guilty to stealing a car and transporting it over state lines. In his mind, that was all he was guilty of anyway. He didn't even mention anything about murder. But by that point, the FBI knew from talking with police in Maryland that there was a lot more to John's story than a stolen

car. So the agents moved John into an interrogation room and told him that Donald had been arrested in Maryland and was already spilling the beans about what really happened to William Brooks. But that was a lie. The FBI didn't have any information from Donald when they first talked with John. In fact, federal authorities had not even arrested or interrogated Donald when they first sat down with John. It was a slick interrogation tactic to try and get John to talk first, one we hear about all the time in the true crime space. But turns out, they didn't need it. Because a few hours later, agents arrested Donald and he cracked in a

matter of minutes. And Donald didn't just talk. He led authorities straight to William's body. And he claimed that it was John who killed William Brooks and that everything that unfolded on that Friday night, the plan, the car theft, the murder, all of it was John's doing. According to the Associated Press, the stage was set for a he said, he said situation. But the FBI and Maryland state prosecutors were having none of it. Instead, they charged both of the men with first degree felony murder during the course of a robbery and said they'd be seeking the death penalty against both men. Police continued to press them for information about what happened. Court documents show that Donald gave police five statements during

the course of their investigation. In his first four, he pointed the finger squarely at John for strangling William. But in his fifth statement, that all changed. Police went to Donald with John's story, at which point Donald caved and admitted that he was actually the one who'd hit William with the butt of the gun and eventually strangled him to death. But here's the thing, John and his attorneys wouldn't find out about Donald's fifth statement, at least not for many years. During a two day trial in December, 1958, John's defense team admitted that John was present during the murder and had helped plan the robbery. They knew he was going to be convicted of murder, but they asked jurors for a life

sentence, not the death penalty. John and Donald were tried separately, but they were both found guilty of first degree murder, and they were both sentenced to death. John's spent the next few years on death row in a Baltimore prison fighting his conviction on appeal. According to the Washington Post, a prison chaplain eventually connected him with a defense lawyer named E. Clinton Bamberger, who everyone called Clinton. And it was Clinton who really turned this whole thing on its head. He reviewed thousands of pages of documents and trial transcripts from both John and Donald's cases, and in doing so, he uncovered something incredible. He read in Donald's trial transcript that Donald had given five statements to investigators

after his arrest. But only four statements were ever provided to John's first defense attorney in the initial trial discovery. As you probably know, and don't roll your eyes, I have to explain this, discovery is the evidence or information in a case that U.S. law requires to be provided to both sides in a criminal case. That means the prosecution has to hand over all of their evidence to the defense and vice versa. Of course, Donald's fifth statement was the one where he confessed to the crime, to the actual murder of William Brooks. And Clinton figured out that the prosecution had intentionally withheld Donald's fifth statement from John's defense lawyer before trial because it hurt the state's argument

that John was the murderer. Actually, it didn't just hurt their argument, it full on contradicted it. Clinton fought Maryland courts on this for years. And in 1961, he won. That year, the Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the state had a duty to provide Donald's murder confession to John's defense team before the trial. By not sharing critical evidence with the defense, the prosecution had violated John's constitutional right to due process. Due process is spelled out in the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. It clearly states that the government cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without following certain rules. The sixth and 14th Amendments together are

what guarantee all Americans the right to a fair trial. But John couldn't just walk out of prison a free man after the Maryland Court of Appeals ruling. The appeals justices said that nothing Donald told police would change the fact that John was guilty of murder. That verdict had nothing to do with who actually killed William and everything to do with the fact that he died during a robbery that John himself confessed to. That's felony murder. But the courts did say that if Donald's fifth statement had been presented to the jury in John's trial, they may not have sentenced him to death. So they granted John a new trial, but only for his sentencing phase. And there was no guarantee he wouldn't end up right

where he started on death row awaiting execution. And that wasn't going to be good enough for John and his legal team. So they took the appeal to the US Supreme Court. And in May of 1963, the justices agreed with the Maryland Court of Appeals that John should get a new sentencing trial, but that his murder conviction stood. Clinton and John might have lost their battle for a new murder trial, but they won the war. Because the summary of the Supreme Court's final ruling is what is now widely known as the Brady Rule, which states that the prosecution can't suppress evidence and especially not evidence that speaks to a person's guilt or innocence. It's almost like the more it hurts to hand it over, the more important

it is to hand over. Because as the justices wrote in their decision, quote, society wins not only when the guilty are convicted, but when criminal trials are fair. Our system of the administration of justice suffers when any accused is treated unfairly. End quote. John's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but Clinton wasn't done yet. Court documents published by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute state that between 1963 and 1973, John stayed in prison while Clinton continued to fight to have John's conviction overturned. During his incarceration, John got married, had a couple of kids, and then finally in 1974, he was granted clemency and released on parole. The Washington Post

reported that after he was released, John signed up for college classes and majored in criminal justice. He divorced and remarried one more time, and then he died in 2009 at the age of 76. At the time of his death, reports state that he lived full time in Florida and was working as a truck driver and a charter fisherman. According to the Marshall Project, John's accomplice, Donald, his death sentence was overturned after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. That was in 1972. He was paroled in the late 80s, but ended up back in prison again in 1992 after being convicted of rape, and he was never set free again. Since 1963, federal and state courts have reversed hundreds of convictions for Brady

violations. But even still, lawyers we've talked to for this show say proving a Brady violation in court is actually a monumental task. If you were to ask a criminal attorney today, whether that be a prosecutor or a defense lawyer, they would probably tell you that the biggest problem with a Brady violation argument is that it's actually not as specifically defined as the legal community would like to believe. According to Andrew Cohen's reporting for the Atlantic, at the heart of the rule is proving that a constitutional error occurred because material evidence was withheld. Evidence is considered material if there is reasonable probability that the defense team having it and a jury hearing

it during a trial would likely result in a different verdict because it would have helped prove a defendant was innocent. So things like DNA evidence or alternate suspects confessing to the crime or eyewitness statements, all of those things are material evidence that must be made available to both sides. Oftentimes, you'll hear terms like material evidence and exculpatory evidence used synonymously when discussing Brady violations. And it's the definition of what is material or exculpatory that is still highly debated today. A lot of defense lawyers argue that judges and appeal courts have been notoriously unwilling to overturn convictions for alleged Brady violations because the evidence in question may or may

not be exculpatory. According to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, more often than not, the burden of proving that the evidence in question is actually exculpatory is placed on the defense. And judges are often very cautious to side with a legal argument of someone that a jury has already convicted of a crime. According to an article in the Atlantic, prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence on a regular basis is still a really big problem in America, a problem the Supreme Court justices realized in 1963. The Supreme Court became starkly aware that the investigative powers governments have give the prosecution access to information and evidence that a defendant might otherwise never see, unless

the law compelled the state to turn it over. When you boil it down, the fact is, the defense and the prosecution must be working off of the same discovery in a criminal trial. The government cannot withhold evidence from the defense, even if, especially if, that evidence creates reasonable doubt. The government cannot violate a person's constitutional rights just to secure a conviction. We all want to see justice served on behalf of innocent victims like William Brooks, but there is no justice in a wrongful conviction. There's no justice without a fair trial. And the thing is, there are so many other factors at play leading up to a trial that can throw it off completely. So many areas where precedents have had to

have been set to ensure a person is even on a level playing field before they walk into a courtroom. Next week, we're back to our regular crime-genki episodes. But later in this year, I'm going to come back and bring you some bonus episodes and talk about some of these other precedent-setting cases. They might not always drop on a Monday, so make sure you're following the show to get notified. And I'll see you next week. To find all the source material for this episode, you can go to our website, crime-genki-podcast.com. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, at crime-genki-podcast, and we'll be back on Monday with a regularly scheduled episode.

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