FLORIDA’S ONLY WOMAN ON DEATH ROW, TINA BROWN, CLAIMS GENDER BIAS IN FIGHT TO GET OFF

After yet another unsuccessful motion to reverse her conviction and death sentence, Tina Brown is trying again to get herself off death row.

Brown landed on death row in 2013 after she was convicted of the first-degree premeditated murder of 19-year-old Audreanna Zimmerman. Brown repeatedly attacked Zimmerman with a stun gun, gagged her, stuffed her in the trunk of a car, drove her into the woods, beat her with a crowbar, doused her with gasoline, set her on fire and left her to die.

Zimmerman lived long enough to tell law enforcement that Brown, Brown's 16-year-old daughter Britnee Miller, and Brown's neighbor Heather Lee were the people who kidnapped her. Zimmerman died two weeks after the incident.

Now, two years after a Pensacola judge denied her motion to vacate the conviction and sentence based on allegations that a witness lied on the stand, attorneys met with Chief Judge John Simon on Sept. 9 to to ask for a new hearing for the defense to argue Brown was wrongly sentenced to death because she's a woman.

In court filings, Brown's attorneys are relying on research conducted by Sandra Babcock — a clinical professor at Cornell Law School and faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide — who found "prejudicial tropes" throughout Brown's trial transcripts.

"The coding analysis revealed that Ms. Brown's trial was saturated with prejudicial tropes, including the State describing her as 'a woman scorned;' equating her to an animal; intimating that she was a bad mother; and minimizing her experiences of gender-based violence," her attorneys wrote. "The effect was a jury primed to sentence Ms. Brown to death based on pernicious gender tropes.

"For example, regarding the use of the 'woman scorned' trope, Professor Babcock noted that 'even assuming that term has legitimate use in describing a certain type of defendant, Ms. Brown does not fit that profile,' and so the State's framing 'invoked an age-old trope casting jilted women as particularly dangerous,' which was not even accurate to Ms. Brown," the attorneys continued. "Professor Babcock explained that, regarding Ms. Brown's intersectional identity as a Black woman, 'both gender and race must be considered to understand the depth of the prejudicial impact."

Brown's attorneys filed a motion for postconviction relief based on the newly discovered evidence of Babcock's "innovative research," saying their client's Fourteenth Amendment due process rights were violated by the "State's superfluous invocation of prejudicial tropes" and is entitled to a new trial.

During the Sept. 9 hearing, both Chief Assistant State Attorney Bridgette Myers Jensen and Assistant Attorney General Stephen Ake, who is representing the state in Brown's appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, claim that Brown's motion was not timely filed and argued Simon should not grant a hearing.

"The case law is clear that this is not based on newly discovered evidence," Ake said during the hearing. "New studies do not constitute new evidence. That underlying evidence has been there since Tina Brown's trial in 2012.

"This court must dismiss this claim, because it's untimely," he added. "I'd argue that it is untimely, and I'd also argue that it's procedurally barred based on basically the same argument ... and I'd argue that it's meritless."

Brown was the only person involved in the murder who received the death penalty. Miller received life in prison while Lee received 25 years after accepting a plea deal to testify against Brown.

Chief Judge John Simon did not immediately rule whether or not he will allow a hearing, and took the attorneys' arguments under advisement. Simon said he would file an order in the coming days to determine if Brown and her defense lawyers can argue for a new penalty phase of her trial.

Benjamin Johnson is the breaking news, crime and military reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. He covers local law enforcement, courts, breaking news and military within Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. He can be reached at bjohnson@pnj.com.

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