12 April 2021 :
Crosley Green has been freed.
Citing Green’s age and health risks related to continued incarceration during the pandemic, Judge Roy B. Dalton of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on April 7, 2021, ordered Green’s immediate release while a federal appeals court (the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals) considers prosecutors’ appeal of the district court’s July 2018 decision overturning his conviction. Green, who is Black, was sentenced to death in 1990 for the 1989 murder of Charles “Chip” Flynn. An all-white jury voted 8-4 to sentence him to death. No physical evidence linked him to the crime, and the one witness to the crime was the victim’s ex-girlfriend, who first responders initially identified as the likely perpetrator. The two police officers who responded to the crime scene told prosecutors they believed the ex-girlfriend had killed Flynn, but prosecutors withheld their notes from Green’s defense team, denying him access to potentially exculpatory evidence. All three witnesses who testified that Green had confessed to the murder later recanted their statements, saying they had been coerced by prosecutors. In 2007, the trial court overturned Green’s death sentence, finding that trial counsel had failed to investigate court records that would have disproven the prosecution’s claim that Green had a previous conviction in New York for a crime of violence. The Florida Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2008 and Green was resentenced to life in 2009. His pro bono counsel from the Washington, D.C. law firm Crowell & Moring continued their efforts to overturn Green’s conviction. On July 20, 2018, Judge Dalton overturned Green’s conviction, ruling that the prosecutors’ suppression of exculpatory evidence violated due process. Florida prosecutors appealed that ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit heard argument on the case in March 2020 but has not yet issued a decision.
