September retrial scheduled for ex-U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown to face fraud, tax charges

Former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown’s repeat trial on fraud and tax charges will start Sept. 12, a federal judge has decided after asking how much preparation time defense lawyers need.

“This is a complex case … It seems to me it’s reasonable that they would need substantial time,” U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan said during a conference call Monday about re-trying the case an appeals court threw out last year.

Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat who spent 24 years in Congress, was convicted in 2017 on 18 counts that included conspiracy and mail and wire fraud charges involving money pulled from a sham charity.

The organization’s founder and Brown’s former chief of staff took pea deals and have completed prison terms.

But Brown is awaiting trial again because the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said in May that Corrigan should not have dismissed a juror from deliberations who said “the Holy Spirit” told him Brown was innocent. The appellate judges sent the case back to Corrigan’s court, where prosecutors offered a deal that Brown rejected, teeing the case up to go to another jury unless one side relents.

“I still believe this is going to trial,” defense attorney Richard Komando told the judge Monday. Komando and co-counsel Sandra K. Young were court-appointed in November to represent Brown, 75, who served two years in a Central Florida prison before being put on something like home confinement in 2020 because of health concerns involving the pandemic.

Corrigan had tentatively scheduled the case for trial next month before Brown requested court-appointed counsel because she couldn’t afford lawyers to handle the second trial. The defense team asked this month to delay the case by at least 90 days, and Corrigan said he preferred setting a date that was realistic but firm.

“Given that these lawyers are starting from scratch, that seems to me like a reasonable time,” the judge said. “I cannot make getting it done quickly the be-all and end-all.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tysen Duva told the judge prosecutors didn’t object to the new schedule, which sets an Aug. 8 deadline for a plea deal and books two days for jury selection before the Sept. 12 opening arguments. Corrigan said attorneys should plan for the trial and deliberations to last up to three weeks.