POT SMOKER JAILED FOR LIFE IS FREE

Brown Embraces Freedom As Public Campaign Throws Open Prison Doors
After 17 Years

By Brooks Egerton, The Dallas Morning News

Tyrone Brown came home Thursday to a place he'd never been and
relatives he'd never met, 17 years after a single positive marijuana
test while he was on probation led a Dallas judge to sentence him to
life in prison.

Mr. Brown guffawed one minute and melted into tears the next. At every
turn, he struggled to take stock of what freedom looked like: his face
on T-shirts, a bedroom with a window that opens, a kitchen full of
soul food, and well-wishers and camera crews from as far away as New
York.

Having spent his entire adult life behind bars, his immediate desires
were simple.

"I'd like to take a bath," he said. "I've been standing up for 17
years."

Gov. Rick Perry granted the 34-year-old a conditional pardon last week
in a case that attracted national attention and came to symbolize
judicial inequities in Texas.

"It still doesn't feel real," said his mother, Nora Brown. "I kept
pinching him."

At a reception at her Dallas home, Ms. Brown paced among the storm of
food she'd cooked up, which included three types of cake because she
no longer knew which was her son's favorite. She couldn't bring
herself to rest, despite several days of sleeplessness and anxiety
attacks that made her nearly hyperventilate.

Tyrone Brown was a poor teenager with no criminal record when Judge
Keith Dean initially put him on probation in 1990 for taking part in
an armed robbery in which no one was hurt.

The drug test and life sentence that followed contrasted sharply with
another case in the same judge's court, both of which were profiled
last spring by The Dallas Morning News. In the other case, a
well-connected white man got probation for murder and, despite several
positive tests for cocaine and other violations, still avoided prison.

ABC-TV's 20/20 news show featured the same material in November,
leading to formation of a Web-based campaign to free Mr. Brown. Dallas
County officials, including Judge Dean, and the Texas parole board
soon recommended that his sentence be terminated. So did the man Mr.
Brown robbed of $2.

The governor agreed last Friday to release him, but with strings
attached. It's the first conditional pardon Mr. Perry has ever issued,
state officials said.

Among other things, Mr. Brown must live with his mother, report to a
parole officer indefinitely, undergo counseling about his re-entry to
society and submit to drug treatment.

"Even though I've got my freedom, I'm somewhat bound," Mr. Brown said.
"I've got to be very careful" to avoid more prison time.

"I can't predict the future. But I'm going to do everything I can to
stay out of there."

Throughout the day, Mr. Brown thanked God and a long list of people
for helping him get a second chance: the governor, journalists,
relatives and the strangers who, outraged by his extreme sentence,
banded together in the name of justice.

One of those strangers was Charlie Douglas, a Florida attorney who was
fresh out of law school when he saw the 20/20 report. He began
providing moral, financial and logistical support to the Brown family,
in concert with Dallas NAACP leader Bob Lydia and others.

"Justice prevailed," Mr. Douglas said repeatedly. He called for
answers from Judge Dean, who was voted out of office last fall and has
refused to explain his disparate treatment of the two men profiled by
The News .

"He needs to wash his hands of it," Mr. Douglas said. "Otherwise, the
question people will have on their minds forever is 'why?' What was he
thinking?"

'It's Over'

Mr. Douglas joined Mr. Brown's family early Thursday on a fog-shrouded
ride to a state prison in Huntsville, where Mr. Brown was officially
released. The group, traveling aboard a bus provided by Friendship
West Baptist Church, included 16 members of the Brown family spanning
four generations, all wearing welcome-home T-shirts that Ms. Brown had
made for the occasion.

"This time we're going to get him," Ms. Brown declared, recalling
years of similar trips down the same freeway to visit her son. "We're
not going to leave him there."

The entourage pulled up outside the legendary 19th-century unit, known
as "The Walls," shortly before Mr. Brown's scheduled release at 10
a.m. And right on cue, he emerged from the prison's soaring brick
facade and all its razor wire.

Screams and sobs and prayers erupted. A group hug went on and on,
blocking the prison entrance.

"It's over now," Demetria Brown could be heard comforting her
cousin.

Even the bus driver, standing off to the side, started to cry. But
later he had some quiet words of warning: "It's only beginning. It's
exciting now. Come next week, it's going to be tough."

The driver, David Woodberry, spoke from personal experience his son,
he said, spent eight years in prison in a drug case.

Great Expectations

Indeed, the challenges confronting Mr. Brown are more extreme than
those faced by most freed inmates, said Boston therapist Andrew
Linberg, who consulted with the governor's office about the case and
agreed to counsel Mr. Brown by phone.

One reason is the conditions that stunted Mr. Brown's development
poverty, child abuse, spending time in a foster home, entering prison
so young and for so long.

Then there's the anger he has had to live with, anger borne of knowing
he was sentenced much more harshly than most. Having been gone so
long, he must adjust to the new world of cellphones and e-mail and
instant information.

And having gained his freedom in such an unusual way, Mr. Brown has
become a public figure a symbol of both injustice and hope.

"There are going to be lots of people who are highly invested in how
he lives," said Mr. Linberg, an expert in treating ex-inmates.

The interested parties are not just relatives and reporters and
officials who endorsed Mr. Brown's freedom officials who now must
worry that he'll commit another crime.

Also watching, Mr. Linberg said, are those who want him to become an
activist.

"More important is that Tyrone get to live his own life," he said. "If
he wants a simple, quiet life, that's fine. ... He's got to have
permission to not be a test case."

Mr. Linberg is cautiously optimistic that Mr. Brown can productively
enjoy his freedom. He's particularly encouraged to see that the
ex-prisoner has done plenty of soul searching, as reflected in letters
and poetry he wrote while incarcerated.

He also likes the looks of the large support network a network that
may have gotten a little larger Thursday afternoon, when Mr. Brown's
long-estranged father showed up at the party.

The two men embraced and talked quietly for a while.

"He was saying we're going to stay together," Tyrone Brown said
afterward.

How does he feel about that?

"I didn't come out of there to hold a grudge," Mr. Brown said.
"Holding a grudge isn't going to solve anything."