The Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case that Shook the Texas Prison System
In the early 1980s, a black Texas inmate seemed headed to death. He admitted to drowning a prison warden and shooting a farm manager in a tussle for the warden’s gun. But after three trials, Eroy Brown was acquitted by reason of self-defense.
Texas Southern University professor Michael Berryhill has written the first book about Brown’s acquittal. He says that Brown’s trial confirmed the mistreatment of inmates in Texas prisons in a civil rights case called Ruiz.
“What was interesting was tying Eroy’s story to the Ruiz civil rights case,” Berryhill said. “Both trials gave voice to people who were convicts, and in both trials the convicts had lawyers who were advocating on their behalf. Bad things were being done by high prison officials and Eroy Brown brought that all out in the public.”
On Saturday night, the two officials took Brown to the Trinity River bottoms, where prisoners usually go to receive beatings.
“[Moore] had Brown half-way handcuffed,” said Michael Berryhill, a journalism professor at Texas Southern University,“ and they said they wanted to see if he could swim at the bottom of the Trinity River.”
Warden Wallace Pack pulled a gun out, as farm manager Billy Max Moore was handcuffing Brown. Brown knocked the gun down shooting himself in the foot while Moore was accidentally shot dead.
“[The warden] just kept on wanting to fight,” said Brown during his testimony.
Pack and Brown tussled for the gun, and then ended up in a ditch where Brown drowned Pack.
As a result of Pack’s murder, Brown received his first trial in Galveston, Texas in 1981. In 1982, he returned for a second trial and was acquitted. In 1984, he was tried in Edinburg, Texas for the death of Moore, and he received his second acquittal.
Brown murdered the prison officials three months after Judge William Justice found the Texas Department of Corrections guilty of cruel and unusual punishment towards prison inmates. The case, in violation of the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, is known as Ruiz V. Estelle.
“Ruiz created the possibility that [Eroy] could defend himself,” Berryhill said.
Brown spent most of his adult life in prison, and he was three months away from parole when he committed the murders. He was incarcerated after he pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary and one count of armed robbery, but was innocent of murder. In 2000 and he was tentatively approved for parole, but then he was denied. In 2006, he was selected and denied parole.
Eroy Brown is 59 years old and is scheduled for release in 2017.
“We are hoping that the book will bring the Texas Parole Board under pressure to parole him.” Berryhill said.
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