State: Acquittals weigh on state's case

STARKE -- The quiet man across the table at the downtown Burger King is dipping his fries in mustard, thankful, he says, for the love of his family, the help of his God and "the sunshine and the fresh air" of a Saturday afternoon.

Charles Austin Brown, 28, portrayed by prosecutors as a murderous goon who left a boot print on a dead inmate's chest, is basking in a carefree day for the first time in 21/2 years.

Gone are the double-breasted suits and starched shirts he wore for weeks in a drab Bradford County courtroom, accused of second-degree murder and other felonies in the 1999 death of inmate Frank Valdes. Gone is the brown uniform he once wore for his old job at the Florida State Prison. Gone are the size 14 black boots that prosecutors said made imprints on Valdes' body.

The day after a jury found Brown and two other former guards not guilty of all charges, the notion that he could end up in prison himself is gone too.

Brown is wearing jeans and tennis shoes. He is riding his motorcycle around town, fielding calls on his cell phone from friends and family. At home are his wife and an 8-month-old son, Austin, who is napping after a starring role Friday night during the courtroom celebration. Brown held him up in the air and thanked God.

"Sometimes it was hard to think about," he said Saturday at lunch, referring to a possible prison term that ranged from five years to life. "You know you're right and you just have to stand strong on that. I can tell you that I couldn't stand on my own because the Lord definitely gave us a lot of support. He kept us strong when we needed to be."

The serene, soft-spoken father who talks about prayer and family -- and who cried as a jury spoke its verdict -- is hard to reconcile with the damning testimony that had him kicking Valdes repeatedly in a moment of obscenity-laced rage.

But it is not the first unresolved issue in the case, nor will it be the last.

Prosecutors in Gainesville said Saturday they will meet "in the near future" with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to decide whether to continue pressing for convictions in the death of Valdes. Five additional guards remain charged with second-degree murder and other charges, but after two trials and two acquittals, State Attorney Bill Cervone must assess whether it's worth the time, money and effort to keep going.

The trial that ended Friday night began in October. It took three months to select a jury. The testimony and lawyers' arguments lasted four weeks. More than 50 witnesses were called, but many were prison inmates whose credibility was easily attacked by defense attorneys. The jury was back in just 31/2 hours.

Much of the evidence is circumstantial or otherwise incomplete, including the report of a state expert who examined the boot prints on Valdes' abdomen and neck and linked them to Brown's boot. Under cross-examination by defense lawyers, the expert acknowledged that he could not rule out the possibility that the marks were made by another guard.

The ending was the same in October 2000 when another Bradford County jury heard some of the same evidence and quickly acquitted another guard, Montrez Lucas, of aggravated battery on Valdes.

"I think that they're probably committed to going forward now," said Guy Rubin, an attorney who has worked with the prosecution and is taking the guards to court in a separate action, a federal civil rights suit in nearby Jacksonville.

With Friday's acquittal of Brown and former guards Timothy A. Thornton and Jason P. Griffis, the spotlight narrows to four other guards who are still charged and would have had closer contact with Valdes in the hours before he was found dead in his cell with severe stomping injuries.

"The last people who had control of Frank Valdes at least should have known he was in a life-threating situation," said Rubin, who believes a conviction on less serious charges is still possible, though not likely in a county where prisons are the lifeblood of the local economy.

Rubin said his two civil rights lawsuits, one of them on behalf of Valdes, stand a better chance of success because they will be heard in front of "more balanced" Jacksonville juries. Prosecutors in Starke tried to move the criminal trial to another venue, but lost.

In the civil rights lawsuits, all eight guards accused in the death would have to stand trial at once, Rubin noted. Separate trials at the state level have so far allowed them to play a "shell game" of shifting blame to whichever guards are not on trial, he said. "Their strategy so far has been to divide and conquer." He said of the criminal case: "I think it's going to be successfully executed again."

Gloria W. Fletcher, the prominent Gainesville defense attorney who represented Thornton, called on the state to end the prosecution.

"I would hope that the travesty's over," she said Saturday. "There needs to be closure. The community needs to move on, the Department of Corrections needs to move on and these men need to move on."

In defeat, prosecutors took solace in the fact that everyone now concedes that Valdes, a 36-year-old death row inmate, was brutally murdered in his 6- by 9-foot cell at the Florida State Prison. Previously, the guards' defense included the assertion that he killed himself. The guards said they saw him hold onto his cell bars and let himself fall backward onto the concrete floor, striking the bunk.

Among the pieces of evidence that undermined the original defense theory were the testimony of two doctors who likened Valdes' injuries to those in a car or plane crash. He had 22 broken ribs, broken collar and shoulder bones, a broken sternum and a broken nose. There was no way he could have injured himself that badly, the doctors said.

In addition, investigators found no fingerprints on the cell bars from where Valdes supposedly launched himself.

By the end of the trial, even defense lawyers were conceding that Valdes had been killed by prison guards, but prosecutors could not establish which one. It certainly wasn't Brown, Thornton or Griffis, defense attorneys said.

"These are the good guys," said Ted C. Curtis, pointing in the direction of his client, Charles Brown, a large, athletic man who still wears a prison guard's flattop.

Strangers three years ago, Curtis and Brown shared tears and hugs Friday night, then joined a party at a home in Starke that was rented to house the defense team. The Police Benevolent Association paid some $750,000 to defend the guards.

"We were talking about that last night, how you meet somebody you don't know and all of a sudden you say, "Okay, I got to trust you with my life,' " Brown said of Curtis.

"It's a precarious position to be in. It worked out, though. It worked out."

Brown and the other guards accused of killing Valdes were fired by the Department of Corrections in 2000. Brown worked as a welder to support his family until October, when he quit so he could be present in the courtroom for his trial. He did not rule out returning to work for the prison system if the Department of Corrections were to agree to hire him back.

The jury of five men and three women made themselves scarce Saturday. But at the Best Western hotel where they spent one night under sequestration before their verdict, the sign that met them coming and going was still up:

"The best tranquilizer is a quiet conscience."