#429 Jason Flom with Greg Brown

In the early morning hours of Valentine's Day in nineteen ninety five, the Pittsburgh Fire Department responded to a blaze on Briceland Street. Darlene Buckner and her teenage son, Greg Brown joined their safely evacuated family members as the raging inferno took the lives of three firefighters. Atf Investigators suspected arson, and a lab tech reported that two of the thirteen samples from the home were positive for gasoline. However, a gas powered mower stored in the basement may have been

Thank you for having me.

And thank you for all the incredible work that you and the team there do. And of course now I get the privilege of interviewing man I first met in Phoenix at the Innocence Network conference Greg Brown. Greg, welcome to Wronful Conviction.

Thanks for having me.

So let's go back to simpler times, before nineteen ninety five Valentine's Day, when this horrible event happened. What was it like did you grow up in Pittsburgh and what was your life like? Did you have brothers and sisters, did you have a happy childhood.

Yes, yeah, I grew up in Pittsburgh. You know, my mom was a single mother until about the age of seven, and she met my stepfather. I have a stepsister that's two years older than me. Stepbrother is about four years older than me. So it was a nice blended family. And my mom didn't have another child until nineteen ninety three, so it was happy. Man. My stepdad was great, good father, figure, great provider, good guy, straight lace, everything by the book,

So you were a typical teenager, just seventeen years old when this tragic fire happened on the night of February thirteenth into the fourteenth of nineteen eighty five.

The next day was obviously it was Valentine's Day, so I was excited when school was gonna have a dance, you know. So like that night, I was over my one of my older cousin's house playing Matten like the kids do now on the Sega Genesis and I'm gonna stepfather said go to the store with mom because it's dark out there or whatever. And my mom was cooking for a relative had died, so she was cooking for

The city of Pittsburgh lost three courageous firefighters, Thomas Brooks, Patty Conroy, and Mark Kalenda. So rest in peace. I can't imagine how that news must have shaken their families and the entire community.

No, this case in Pittsburgh was extremely it still is highly publicized, and there was no way for anyone to move on and including now anything arson related to this day. A lot of times this case will come up with This case was always on the news, so.

You can imagine the rush to judgment to figure out what went wrong here. And often when a death is hard to accept, like in the case of a child or baby, or men and women in uniform, we sometimes see that same urge to blame somebody, even when there's no one to blame.

In investigating several arsen cases here in western Pennsylvania, I think one common denominator is a very quick rush to judgment and determining within hours that the fire is intentionally set, thereby being a crime being arson without having done the painstaking investigation that it takes in order to rule out

So the visual inspection also known as the dunk science portion of the investigation, in which they used disproven fire investigation methods using terms like alligator burn patterns or crazed glass, et cetera. You can hear all about this, by the way, and I encourage you to check it out in our coverage of arson investigation on our series Junk Science, which

I want to just back up a little bit, because so you're right, thirteen samples are taken, and the ATF believes that a gallon of gasoline is poured onto a pile of laundry that is in the basement, and that is what the origin of the fire is. Right, So they during the fire suppression efforts, the basement is flooded. There's about a foot of water in the basement. And so when they're taking these thirteen samples, the concrete, some fabric samples, they're all wet, and the first samples are

And John Lentini is a legendary fire scientist, an actual scientist who started off as an arson investigator, and by the way, he was a true believer in the old way of thinking. But he's become such an asset for exposing this junk science for what it is junk, Unlike his counterpart here, William Kinn, the same quote unquote expert from Christine Bunch's case and so many others will have

Even at a preliminary hearing. One of the investigators outright say that they're from Homewood, breastliness is depressed. Are we don't believe they had over twenty thousand dollars worth of stuff in the house.

So what are we supposed to believe that you had seventeen thousand, nine hundred and fifty dollars worth of stuff in there or something and that this was for two thousand dollars, this great scheme. I mean, come on, this is so it's so sick.

And it's important. I know, me and my mother were black and the firemen were white. And I know for a fact there's been other cases in Pittsburgh Alleghany County alone where fire fighters have died and so caught that the suspects were white and they didn't charge them. So I definitely believe race played a major factor in it. You know, we're gonna get to the bottom and we'll get these guys, these this black family out of here.

So you and your family were under investigation and out of a home. Where'd you go? Where did you live?

Ironically? I moved up the street like two streets above from this house where you could look down with my father and my stepmother, And so I would walk past the house. They had the house just surrounded with agents. They had it there tight, they had it guarded like the White House, and it was on the news so much had me thinking, well, is anybody after me and my family? So you know, I'm like I need protection? Do I need to carry gun? I don't know what's going on.

I mean with nightly media coverage. It's not crazy to think that a target had been painted on your back. But the investigation wasn't keeping up with the court of public opinion. There was a reasonable explanation for the alleged presence of gasoline and Canard's report, so they needed more to go on, and a year after the fire, the ATF started offering reward money fifteen thousand dollars for information.

It was on the noon news, it was on the five o'clock news, and it was on the six o'clock news. This press conference issuing and publicizing this.

Reward what it sounds like a good idea on paper, but it comes with the obvious pitfall of attracting false information, and sure enough, one of your neighbors, Keith Wright, took debate.

Twelve minutes after the six o'clock news, Keith Wright walked down to his local fire department and made a statement a year after the fire, having never made a statement before, saying that he saw Greg standing outside of his family's home before fire park personnel got on scene. Very damaging to Greg, because, as you know, he and his mother have always said we arrived after fire personnel were on scene. We were at the Giant Eagle shopping and so that put a hole in Greg's alibi.

But this hole in the alibi was not quite enough to get a warrant, so they kept going with this strategy.

One of my friends told me that he say, man, you know, the ATF came visit me down South Carolina and they offered me four thousand and they said, just say that his mother made him do it foreign source money. And I was like what he said, yeah, man.

So it appears that they didn't care if the information was false or not. But your friend from South Carolina, Raoul Gibson, stood strong. So the ATF found another taker, which came about when you had actually followed through on getting a gun.

I did end up getting in trouble with a gun, you know, I had it for safety.

The summer of nineteen ninety five, he got in trouble for the first time as a juvenile. And while you know, possession of a gun is a serious juvenile offence, it's the first time he's ever been in front of the juvenile court. And instead of probation or house arrest some type of like check in program, community based program, Greg is sent to Vision Quest in Franklin, Pennsylvania, which is

Nevertheless, this fifteen year old, Imbrahim Abdullah, gave them what they need to make arrests. You were charged with arson and murder, and your mother, Darlene Buckner, was charged with arson, murder, conspiracy and insurance fraud.

I just thought I got arrested, and then I call home and my aunt answered the phone. She said they got your mom too. I said, what you already know? You didn't do anything. Now they're arresting your mother. Basically, they had a person saying I killed three firemen, but I'm bragging about it. You know, he wants you to believe it. And I was bragging about it like it was a cool crime. I mean, name one rap song where rappers was bragging about setting fires, or a movie anything.

It's just crazy man.

As he's preparing for testimony, fifteen year old Ibrahim Abdullah starts to get cold feet, and he tells the ATF agent, I don't think I want to do this. I want to back out. I don't think I want to testify. And the ATF agent puts him in a room with the surviving members of the firefighters, who really, you know, impose upon him how important it is to them that justice be served and what a good thing he's doing.

So this kid, Ibrahim, his cold feet seem to have gotten nice and toasty all of a sudden.

And we got to give this guys proper credit. Jason Wick from the ATF, and.

He definitely was persistent, even when he was receiving no information from these children, he was not afraid to use that financial incentive to get the statement that he wanted.

And I read that later on as a man, Ibraham admitted that it went even deeper than that for him with this ATF agent Jason Wick.

Yeah.

He later testifies that he was kind of smitten with the ATF agent. The ATF agent, you know, helped him with like court costs, helped him with some restitution in his other cases, helped him obtain his birth certificate, would take him on these rides in his car and would like speed, would swear, would tell him how powerful he is as an ATF agent. He said, you know, I thought this guy was cool. I thought he was really cool.

So this kid Ibraham was charmed and incentivized to say the least, as was the neighbor Keith, Right, and they came to testify against you and your mom, who were on trial together.

Oo.

It hurts my heart to even say that. And despite these press conferences, your attorney Al Lindsey was somehow unaware of the wars w money. Nevertheless, the jury nearly found out about this paid testimony scheme.

Anyway, during trial, Greg told you about his friend from South Carolina named Raoul Gibson. Raoul Gibson testified at trial for the defense, saying ATF came to visit me in South Carolina and Agent Wick told me that if I gave an inculpatory statement against Greg I would be paid seven thousand dollars. And at trial, one of the prosecutors, the federal prosecutor who was cross examining him, said, Raoul, do you think that there's just some fun somewhere the

Even though they most definitely were and had been saying so on the news. Yet Greg's attorney was so how unaware, But even so did he try to bring up what Raoul Gibson said. When cross examining Abraham Abdullah.

They talked about what his motivation for testifying would be, and what he testified to was that he talked it over with his mom and his mom said it was the right thing to do. For a defense attorney, you can't cross that, especially for a fifteen year old kid who you're very much trying to be like, use kid gloves with and not look like a jerk in front of the jury. When fifteen year olds, as I talked to my mom as she said it was the right thing to do. There's nowhere to go from there.

So the state successfully passed off these paid witnesses as concerned citizens, followed by this quote unquote arson expert William Cannard, who unbeknownst to the jury, judge and defense, had changed his original report to reflect the presence of gasoline in two of thirteen samples. And even though you were contending with an outright lie, there was still the reasonable explanation of the gas powered lawn more stored in the basement.

To be honest, part of me did. The bailiff grabs the verdict from the jury foreman, and he hands it to the judge. The judge was he was definitely referreening for them the whole time. You know every rule. I mean, we didn't get any type of calls if this would be a game. And I seen the judge's face, he had a confused look on his face when he read the verdict to hisself, and his facial expression was like, what the hell is this? And I was like, maybe

And not too long after trial, mister Lindsey, while litigating that during misconduct issue and seeking a retrial, he discovered the paid witness scheme.

Yeah, and it came to light during discovery for Greg's retrial that that reward was offered one year to the date of the fire. His attorney asks the court to reopen the evidence to tell the jury about the fact that this reward was offered and that it, you know, certainly could be known and expected by these two witnesses, and he's not allowed to do this, so the jury is never told that there is a fifteen thousand dollars reward.

Paid, even though Raoul Gibson had testified about being offered a reward at the original trial. So this issue became central to your post conviction efforts. But only after the journalism students at Point Park Universities, in this institute, under the guidance of Bill Mushy, they were able to develop the evidence to prove what had happened with these witnesses.

They got in touch with Abraham Abdullah and he acknowledged that he got paid. And the neighbor, Keith Wright. You know, it's like the summer twenty ten, right after the two witnesses acknowledged that they did received some type of benefits. We had got in touch with jerro Hurst. It was a great arson expert in Texas. He wrote back and agreed it didn't look like it was Arson at him.

The Pennsylvania Insist Project picked up your case, and the lead up to this hearing in front of Judge Williams, while Bill Mushie's team continued to gather evidence.

Bill Mushie and his students they did several for requests, and one of the documents that they got from the ATF were these two redacted checks.

The check for ten thousand, the check for five thousand, and it was blacked.

Out, and so really all they could tell was that the ATF issued two checks, one for five thousand and one for ten thousand. They couldn't tell who they are gone to. And so they went back and they looked at all of the appellate history in Greg's case and they were confused, right, because prosecutors really made it seem like it was preposterous that they would be paying witnesses.

When mister Mushie confronted them, David Hickden was in charge of the ATF at the time, he responded, Oh, well, they got paid, but they weren't expecting anything. We didn't make any promises beforehand. You know, we basically paid the malt de clear blue.

Oh yeah, that's a good story. That's a I got a nice bridge outside of Pittsburgh, right, So that's great.

And so Point Park investigators find Ibrahim Abdullah, who is now, you know, in his late twenties, and they asked him when were you paid and did you know you were going to be paid at the time of your testimony, and he very freely said yes, I was a fifteen year old kid. They offered me fifteen thousand dollars. It was more money than I had ever seen in my life, and it was highly motivating. I knew before trial, and actually I expected the fifteen thousand. I was disappointed to get only.

Five, okay, So that solves the mystery of whose name was on each redacted check five thousand for Ibrahim and ten for Keith.

Right point, Park was having a really difficult time locating Keith Wright, and so the Pennsylvania Innocence Project then got Dave Fawcett involved from Reid Smith, and Dave was actually able to locate Keith Wright. Mister Wright also said, yes, I absolutely knew about the reward. I knew about it before trial. Then we were able to bring in Keith Wright, bring in Ibrahim Abdullah at the post conviction hearing and testify about not only their knowledge prior to trial, but

So the prosecution is saying to this fifteen year old kid, wow, we want you to lie and we want to make sure wink wink, you're going to lie about the lie right's.

And there's a failed threat of there's this money on the line, right, so lie well.

So both paid witnesses exposed the scheme in front of Judge Williams in twenty twelve. And then the ATF agent Jason Wick, he was also at this hearing.

He threatened Dave Fawcet in the hallway. He threatened Dave and said, YEA said, trying to ruin my fucking name, you know, excuse my language, just trying to ruin my name, you know. Dave said, he just threatened me in the hallway when he's on the stand like a perfect gentleman, you know. And of course he denied everything any witness anything or offering any anything.

Dave Fawcett also presented a few other witnesses that lent credibility to Abdullah and Wrights recantations. So things must have been looking up.

Dave said, man, I never seen nothing like this. He said, everything went perfect for us these three days, you know. And then I might have waited for my answers for two years, all right, And.

Then January two twelve is a hearing and then February twenty fourteen is the relief.

Then twenty fourteen, I was in the courtroom and Jeorge Williams said, mister Brown, your attorneys made good points. The prosecutors made good points too, And my heart started beating. And but mister Brown, I believe your witnesses. You ask for a new trauma, give you a new trial. I couldn't hear nothing but my heart beating. And I just remember given my brother, my youngest brother, de Ronce, because he was they both for babies, but he was a new born when all this happened, and I like gave

So they had one final play with the ATF in Bob. This case was always under joint federal and state jurisdiction, but with Judge Williams on this case, their options in state court were finally running out.

And so this dual prosecution, this state and federal prosecution once again got together and said, Okay, we don't want to go and to trial in front of Judge Williams. We can't get him to recuse, and so we'll drop state charges. We'll switch forums, and we'll take Greg up the street to the federal court. They asked to withdraw

I was released a week before Thanksgiving of twenty sixteen. It was bittersweet, man, because I was obviously happy to come home, but I had to live four or five years with this case hanging over my head.

You know the one thing that stands out obviously, like Greg walking out of the Allegheny County Jail. We're standing in the lobby. First thing he says to the journalists who are asking him questions is I want to thank the firefighters for saving my family. That's the first thing that's on his mind. Find the moment he's walking out of being wrongly incarcerated for twenty years.

That's beautiful. Greg. So now you're released, but still not totally free. You still had this case hanging over your head.

I was pretty much free with deception of I couldn't leave Western Pennsylvania or out the state without permission. So it was basically like me getting his charge from the beginning, but making bond.

And this dragged out for about six long years, right, and this time you did not have Judge Williams.

The players on this case in nineteen ninety seven are Prosecutor Mark Clark, Assistant United States Attorney Sean Sweeney, Judge Sir Cone presiding over the case. When we get to the federal court, we have Sewn Sweeney, United States Attorney. He's going to prosecute the case federally, we're initially assigned to Judge schwab here in the Western District, who recuses himself, and who is the case assigned to but Judge Sharcone,

A professional interest in maintaining this conviction. So how did it finally get resolved?

I had a meeting with my attorneys. They said, the government is offering the alpha plea right and my thing was, I'm never going to admit to something I didn't do. And they said, well, this is unique saying the case will be over and you're pleading guilty while maintaining your innocence at the same time.

That was a hard decision. I remember we presented this to Greg. We're all sitting at reed Smith. It's still during COVID, so we're sitting out on an outdoor patio. That's what I don't know, Greg thirteen stories above. Yeah, Eli, Greg is afraid of heights, so he's skirting across like the wall trying.

To get to his seat.

And yeah, we just had like a very kind of conversation about like, if we go back to trial, we have Judge Starkne, we have Sean Tweeney, we have the exact same players. None of us can labor under any illusions that you could not be wrongfully convicted. Again, we have seen it happen. We have seen it happen with these exact people.

It was hard for me, man, it was very hard for me. And that's what we end up doing in June of twenty twenty two to this day, Man, it bothers me. What I mean, I don't know it's over. I'm glad it's over with. And like Liz told me, she's like, look, there's no restrictions. You'll be able to tell your story. And then Dave said, like, if we do fight it and get it, quit it, there's no guaranteed that I will get compensated. So it was tough. Man, It's still tough. Man. It definitely bothers me.

Right, even though you had amassed all of this evidence and served all of that time. Plus the Great John Lintini was prepared to testify about Canard's false report actually showing no presence at all of gasoline on any of the samples, and that this was actually not an arson case at all. Still, there was no guarantee that you get an acquittal, and even if you manage that, there was no guarantee the compensation would be forthcoming.

The most accountability that we can have is telling you, telling you, telling your listeners what happened to Greg.

And we're very honored to have you. So is there anything at all you'd like to ask of our audience, anything they can do.

I just want to say, I got a book coming out to Greg Brown Story Volume one. I'm almost done with it. I just want to ask the audience. Man, you know, she's a little bit of common sense. You just can't take everything they say is go. You can't be that naive when someone's life is in your hands.

Amen. And we'll keep our ears to the ground about your book as well as link the Pennsylvania Innis's Project in the episode description so people can show some support. Without them and other organizations like them, folks like Greg would have even harder. And with that, let's go to my favorite part of the show. Closing arguments, of course, is a part of the show where I have the

So, you know, experts theorize that anywhere from three to ten percent of all people convicted in the United States annually are actually innocent. I think that's probably very conservative. But even if we are very conservative and say that it's only one percent, that's like more than ten thousand people a year who are convicted of a crime that

Yeah, that family members, neighbors. You know, everyone needs to hear these type of stories because you know everyone might not listen to this, so no one wants to get involved or care until it's their cousin, their son, or brother, their nephew. You have to pay attention beforehand because you have a responsibility because if you're not helping out beforehand and it's too late, and then when you miss your loved one, they get charged and then you're crying. You

So that said, thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.

You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and