Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 123
Results 21 to 25 of 25

Thread: Tina Lasonya Brown - Florida Death Row

  1. #21
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Pensacola woman Tina Brown to remain on death row for brutal 2010 murder

    By Kevin Robinson
    The Pensacola News-Journal

    A Pensacola woman on death row for the fatal assault, kidnapping and burning of her neighbor had her most recent appeal denied last week.

    Tina Lasonya Brown, 48, was one of three people who in 2010 ambushed 19-year-old Audreanna Zimmerman, attacked her repeatedly with a stun gun, gagged her, stuffed her in the trunk of a car, drove her into the woods, beat her with a crowbar, doused her with gasoline, set her on fire and left her to die.

    In 2017, Brown filed a motion for post-conviction relief that raised numerous arguments for vacating her conviction and sentence. Among them were claims that her attorneys were ineffective, that multiple jurors should have been dismissed from the trial because of their biases and that "new evidence" implicated one of her co-defendants was more culpable in the murder than jurors were led to believe.

    In a 110-page order filed Friday, Circuit Judge Gary L. Bergosh reviewed all of Brown's arguments and found them insufficient. In most instances, the accusations failed to provide supporting evidence or demonstrate how they had impacted the outcome of the trial.

    Brown was the only one of the three co-defendants who received the death penalty in the case. Brown's daughter Britnee Miller, who was 16 when she participated in the vicious attack, was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the murder.

    Heather Lee, a friend and neighbor of Brown and Miller, was the third accomplice in the killing, and she was sentenced to 25 years in prison after making a plea agreement with the state.

    Much of Brown's appeal was dedicated to a claim that Lee had actually been the party most responsible for Zimmerman's killing.

    The appeal claimed Lee wanted revenge against Zimmerman because she had an affair with Lee's husband. It said all the weapons used in the attack — the stun gun, crowbar and gas can — came from Lee's house, and that Lee later admitted to associates she had been the one to set Zimmerman on fire.

    Brown's appeal said multiple witnesses could have testified to these facts, but Bergosh noted that none of that testimony would have affected the case against Brown. He said there was evidence Brown had been the one to use the stun gun against Zimmerman, to kidnap her and to beat her with the crowbar.

    "The evidence is simply too strong against (Brown) that she played a substantial role in the victim's murder," the judge wrote. "... Regardless of whether (Brown) actually poured the gasoline and lit the victim on fire, the evidence at trial shows (Brown) was not being dominated or under extreme duress when she launched the fatal attack against the victim."

    Brown was sentenced to death because of the brutality of Zimmerman's murder, and she is currently one of only three Florida women on death row.

    Last week, Miller also had an appeal of her life sentence denied.

    https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2019/...er/3411077002/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #22
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    4,795
    Pensacola woman Tina Brown condemned to death in brutal 2010 murder

    By Kevin Robinson
    The Pensacola News-Journal

    Tina Brown, a Pensacola woman who is among just three women in the state currently on death row, had her death sentence upheld by the Florida Supreme Court last week.

    Brown, 50, arrived on death row in October 2013 for the brutal murder of her neighbor, Audreanna Zimmerman. Brown, with help from a friend and her then 16-year-old daughter, attacked Zimmerman with a stun gun, beat her with a crow bar, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire.

    Although Brown has not denied her involvement in the murder, she has sought to have her conviction and sentence overturned in a series of appeals. In her most recent postconviction appeal, Brown argued that she had ineffective counsel who failed to properly question witnesses and made other mistakes. She also claimed new evidence indicated one of her co-defendants was the main aggressor in the attack.

    In a 73-page opinion, the Florida Supreme Court dissected Brown's claims and found that neither the purported errors nor the new evidence did or was likely to have a significant impact on the outcome of the trial.

    The court wrote that evidence of Brown's culpability was "overwhelming," and given that Brown had been "very frank about her role in the victim's murder" there is "no reasonable probability of a different sentence."

    Evidence presented at trial showed that Brown, her daughter, Britnee Miller, and her friend, Heather Lee, all lived in the same mobile home park with Zimmerman. In 2010, after Miller and Zimmerman got into a physical altercation, Brown invited Zimmerman to her home under the pretense of patching things up.

    Instead, the three women incapacitated Zimmerman with a stun gun, beat her savagely, gagged her, put her in the trunk of a vehicle and drove her to a secluded wood clearing where they set her on fire. Despite being severely burned, Zimmerman managed to walk to about a third of a mile to residence and seek help. She reportedly named her attackers and asked EMTs to protect her children. She died in an Alabama burn ward 16 days later.

    Miller was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the attack. Lee is currently serving a 25-year sentence as part of a plea agreement. Brown, who prosecutors and witnesses presented as the ring leader of the attack, was the only one sentenced to death.

    Brown has exhausted all of her appeals at the state level. Although she could petition a federal court for relief, the U.S. Supreme Court has previously declined to review her case.

    Only two women have been executed in Florida, according to the state's Department of Corrections. One was Aileen Wuornos, a woman who was implicated in the deaths of more than half-a-dozen men and who was the subject of the Charlize Theron biopic film "Monster." The other was Santa Rosa County resident Judias Goodyear Buenoano, who was convicted of poisoning her husband and drowning her son.

    About a dozen other women have been sent to death row before ultimately being resentenced.

    Besides Brown, only two women are currently awaiting execution in Florida. Tiffany Cole of Duval County helped rob a Jacksonville couple and bury them alive. Margaret Allen of Brevard County tortured and murdered a housekeeper she believed stole money from her purse.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...er/ar-BB18DSjR

    https://www.floridasupremecourt.org/...e/sc19-704.pdf
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #23
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,318
    Distributed for conference June 17, 2021.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/20-7732.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  4. #24
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,318
    Petition for certiorari denied.

    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Florida
    Case Numbers: (SC19-704, SC19-1419)
    Decision Date: August 27, 2020
    Rehearing Denied: November 12, 2020

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/20-7732.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  5. #25
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,318
    Pensacola woman wants death sentence thrown out due to newly-discovered evidence

    Pensacola News-Journal

    A Pensacola woman sentenced to death for kidnapping, beating and burning another woman alive is asking that her conviction and sentenced be vacated due to newly discovered evidence.

    Tina Lasonya Brown, 52, was one of three people who in 2010 ambushed 19-year-old Audreanna Zimmerman in a trailer, attacked her repeatedly with a stun gun, gagged her, stuffed her in the trunk of a car, drove her into the woods, beat her with a crowbar, doused her with gasoline, set her on fire and left her to die.

    Brown was convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 and a jury unanimously recommended she receive the death sentence. Brown is currently one of only three women on death row in Florida.

    However, attorneys for Brown now argue that Brown's death sentence should be thrown out based on newly-discovered evidence of false testimony at her trial.

    In a 2022 motion to vacate her conviction and sentence, Brown's attorneys claimed a key witness against Brown, Corie Doyle, had lied on the witness stand at the behest of Heather Lee, another co-defendant in Zimmerman's murder. Lee, a friend and neighbor of Brown, was an accomplice in the killing, and she was sentenced to 25 years in prison after making a plea agreement with the state and testifying against Brown.

    Doyle was housed with both Brown and Lee while the women were in jail awaiting trial. Brown's attorneys claim that Lee threatened Doyle and coerced her to tell jurors a false story that Brown had confessed to her and said Lee was present but had nothing to do with the murder.

    "Doyle's trial testimony was damaging to Ms. Brown, not only because it alleged a sensational and spontaneous confession by Ms. Brown, but because it bolstered the credibility of Ms. Brown's co-defendant — and the State's star witness — Heather Lee," the motion said. "Doyle claimed to be a completed uninterested party who stumbled upon information that absolved Lee of all culpability in the murder and implicated Ms. Brown as the primary aggressor and direct cause of Zimmerman's death."

    According to Brown's attorney, Doyle signed a sworn affidavit on Dec. 12, 2021 saying she had testified untruthfully at Brown's trial. She claimed Lee had directed her to give the false testimony "or else."

    "I took this as a threat I could be either physically hurt or killed. I believed correctional officers and law enforcement could not protect me if I did not agree to Heather's demands," Doyle's affidavit said.

    Brown's attorney argues that Doyle's testimony bolstered Lee's testimony minimizing her own role in the murder and skewed all proceedings against Brown by painting her as "the mastermind, the aggressor, and the major participant" in the kidnapping and murder of Zimmerman.

    "In light of the testimony's falsity and the significant prejudice it created against Ms. Brown at multiple stages of her capital litigation, her sentence and conviction cannot stand," the motion said.

    However in its response to the motion, the state prosecutors argued that this motion to vacate was not made in a timely manner — as Doyle's false testimony could have been discovered far earlier with proper due diligence — and that even if the evidence had been presented sooner, it would not have led to an acquittal or a lesser sentence.

    "As the Florida Supreme Court detailed, the evidence at trial is overwhelming that Brown was involved in the murder and none of the newly discovered evidence would do anything to disturb the evidence of felony murder. The victim miraculously survived long enough to identify all three women as her attackers. Additionally, the observations of (witness) M.A. at the trailer and other forensic evidence clearly shows that Tina Brown was the instigator and primary aggressor."

    Court records indicate that Brown's attorney's will present their case to a circuit judge in Escambia County on Wednesday.

    Brown was the only one of the three co-defendants who received the death penalty in the case.

    Along with Lee's 25-year sentence, Brown's daughter Britnee Miller, who was 16 when she participated in the vicious attack, was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the murder.

    https://www.pnj.com/story/news/crime...r/70020367007/
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 123

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •