It would feel wrong for the state of Florida to do the right thing in Crosley Green's case at this point.
In for a penny, in for a pound, right?
Even if the state truly believed Green is guilty of killing Charles "Chip" Flynn in 1989, even if the powers-that-be convinced themselves that Green received a fair trial and prosecutors didn't cheat, even if they feel the 33-plus years Green has spent in prison is not enough, it still takes pretty big cojones to say they shouldn't fix a mistake regarding his parole date due to a technicality.
And cojones they have indeed. And to no one's surprise, a court in the second judicial circuit late last week ruled in the state's favor.
What does this mean? It means the court ruled that the Florida Commission on Offender Review does not have to reset Crosley Green’s eligible parole date or correct a miscalculation that arbitrarily added more than 40 years to his imprisonment.
“We are deeply disappointed by the court’s decision. It is wrong on the law and the facts, and we will appeal,” said Green's lead attorney Keith J. Harrison, a partner with Crowell & Moring, the firm that has defended him pro bono since 2008
The state (remember the cojones) never argued that the added 40 years is correct. They never even addressed the mistake in their argument. They couldn't when they know it's wrong. The state simply and successfully argued that Green missed his chance to appeal the mistake.
Just wait, it gets even better.
Green was originally sentenced to die in Florida's electric chair when he was convicted of murder, kidnapping and robbery for a crime that many ― including myself, many in the legal community and the two responding law enforcement officers from the Brevard County Sheriff's Office ― believe he did not do. After serving nearly 20 years on Florida's death row, Green was re-sentenced to life in prison.
It should be noted that more than 100 prominent law professors, former state-court judges, and a group of current and former prosecutors filed amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court urging them to hear Green's case.
More: Torres: Will Crosley Green ever go free?
In 2015, the state erroneously took into account both the felony murder charge as well as the kidnapping conviction, which added 45 years to his parole eligibility date. By their own rules, the commission should have only considered the murder conviction. The state correctly did exclude time for the robbery conviction but set Green's parole release date to 2054 when in fact he is eligible right now.
The state's main argument, which again has nothing to do with the miscalculation, is that Green missed the deadline to ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to change the date in 2015. But Green says he didn’t miss the deadline at all, because the state never sent him the decision so he could not appeal it until 2023 when he was ordered back to prison.
Remember, Green had been released on house arrest in 2021, nearly three full years after the Middle District Court of Florida ruled that the state cheated in the case by not divulging information prosecutors knew. That information was that responding officers believed Flynn's ex-girlfriend was the murderer and not Green. The court ordered the conviction to be vacated and so Green was released into house arrest. The reason it was house arrest was because the state appealed the decision, naturally.
So, Once Green was released from prison, his old parole date ― the wrong one ― should have ceased to exist, I mean, only if we're going by Florida law. So...he needs a new date! And Green’s lawyers say the Commission can and should correct their mistake right now, regardless of the appellate timeline.
During his two years of freedom, Green reunited with his family, got engaged, and held full-time employment.
But much like in Las Vegas, the house always wins and the state won that appeal, and sadly, Green was sent back to prison in 2023. Upon returning to incarceration, Green once again took up the parole issue that needed to be fixed. During a hearing in November, the commission chair, Melinda Coonrod agreed to change the mistake but the other two commissioners voted to "take no action."
Unfortunately, Coonrod was replaced in June after her second six-year term came to an end.
Luckily for Green, his attorneys with Washington D.C.-based Crowell & Moring believe in his innocence and have and they plan to appeal the decision.
Maybe someday the case will land before someone with common sense and this will be corrected. Until then, those of us who believe that justice is a fundamental right and that the most un-American thing you can do is to lock up an innocent person, will be wringing our fists at a system that cares more about procedure than fixing a clear mistake.
Contact Torres at jtorres@floridatoday.com. You can follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @johnalbertorres
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Torres: Florida and court ignore parole mistake and deny Crosley Green...again
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