Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I know I said last week that I was gonna 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 bonafide 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 rule 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 and bush them and steal their car But they're not just trying to steal many 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 It's out west 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 Dibdle 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 Williams 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 recognized John Then they'd 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 on to 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 DeBell's reporting William was so stunned and confused by what was happening that he had a hard time complying with Donald 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 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 a 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-sleeve 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 But Donald had strangled William to death Not knowing what to do now John helped Donald drag William's body further into the woods Court records state that the duo stole two hundred fifty five dollars in cash from William's wallet and through the rest of his personal belongings deeper into the woods They covered William's lifeless body with a few sticks and leaves before fleeing the scene for good They headed to Chestertown to rob the bank the next day But by the time the Sun came up they changed their minds They figured they 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's by the night in DC trying to figure out his next move He was pretty sure he had 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 DeBell's piece for the Marshall project John always had this thought in the back of his mind that he liked to go to Cuba and joined 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 we bought himself a plane ticket to Cuba with the cash he stole in from Williams 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 already begun to build a life together I'll be 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 already been married and divorced at least once In late June of 58 This is a week before Williams 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 US 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 when we hear about all the time in the true crime space It 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 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 The night sky may look endless, but its secrets could be closer than we think because in this universe you're never truly alone I'm Evangentile and I'm her sister Rasha Pecorero every Friday on so supernatural We investigate alien encounters haunting tales of the unknown and cosmic mysteries that defy explanation ready to discover what's out there Listen to so supernatural wherever you get your podcasts 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 were 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 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 being 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 as you 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 before the trial by not sharing critical evidence with the defense the prosecution had violated John's constitutional right to do process Do 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 six and fourteen 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 gonna 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 report 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 approving that the evidence in question is actually exculpatory is placed on the defense And judges are often very cautious to side with the 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 a secure conviction We all want to see justice served on behalf of innocent victims like William Brooks, but there's no justice in a wrongful conviction There's no justice without a fair trial and the thing is there are so many other factors that 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-junty episodes But later in this year I'm gonna 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 junkie podcast calm Be sure to follow us on Instagram at crime junkie podcast and we'll be back on Monday with a regularly scheduled episode Crime junkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?
When the nights grow longer the shadows start to stir and that can only mean one thing full body chills is back The season step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker every stranger carries a secret and nothing is ever quite what it seems Each story takes you somewhere new but be careful. You never know what might follow you home So gather around listen close and stream full body chills wherever you get your podcast