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The case involves one of two retarded men who were sentenced as teens to life in prison in the 1990 shooting death of a Broward sheriff's deputy.
©Associated Press
October 3, 2002
FORT LAUDERDALE -- A man serving a life sentence for the murder of a Broward sheriff's deputy told a judge that detectives hit him and forced him to falsely confess to the crime.
Timothy Brown testified in his own defense Tuesday for the first time in the 11-year case history of the 1990 shooting of Deputy Patrick Behan.
Brown, who has an IQ of 56, said he falsely admitted shooting Behan after Broward sheriff's detectives shackled him to the floor of the interrogation room and threatened him with the electric chair.
"I thought they was going to beat me again, sir, and I really didn't think I was going to get out of that room alive," Brown said in a Miami federal court.
Brown said Detective James Carr, who resigned this year, hit him twice during questioning and nodded his head up and down when he wanted Brown to agree during the taping of the confession.
Brown, 26, has served 11 years of a life sentence for Behan's murder.
A judge accepted an innocence claim last month from Brown after it was revealed this year that another man, Andrew Johnson, admitted on undercover tapes that he shot Behan.
U.S. District Judge Donald Graham's decision Sept. 9 didn't clear Brown of his life prison sentence, but allowed further review of the constitutionality of his conviction in either state or federal court.
Johnson and his wife told undercover agents he killed Behan in a mistaken ambush targeting another deputy who got him fired as a Broward County jail deputy.
Johnson later said he made up the confession to impress undercover officers who he thought were criminals who might hire him. The Broward Sheriff's Office decided there was insufficient evidence to charge Johnson after the investigation became public in February.
During cross-examination Tuesday, Broward prosecutor Tim Donnelly pointed out that Brown had previously said detectives showed him a photograph of Behan slumped over the wheel of his cruiser.
But that photograph didn't exist because Behan was quickly removed from the cruiser by emergency workers, Donnelly said.
"I might have said that, but I said it in the wrong manner," Brown said. He saw pictures of the crime scene and a photograph of Behan's body with a bullet hole in his cheek, Brown said.
Brown and Keith King, 28, were teenagers when they were convicted of shooting Behan as he sat in his patrol car writing a report outside a Pembroke Park convenience store.
King, who also is retarded, was released from prison after serving nine years for manslaughter.