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<v Dr. John Branion Jr>I'm Dr. John Branion Jr and we are here at Dixon <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I'm here unjustly <v Dr. John Branion Jr>but I'm here. <v Narrator>Someone entered the apartment and killed Donna Branion on December 22nd, <v Narrator>1967, sometime between 11:00 and 11:45 <v Narrator>A.M.. <v Narrator>They struggled with Donna in the back bedroom and the kitchen, strangled her with a power <v Narrator>cord, then shot her six times at point blank range. <v Narrator>Her husband, Dr. John Branion, a prominent black physician, was convicted <v Narrator>of the crime the following Spring at a trial that left many questions unanswered. <v Narrator>The events that followed his conviction, the failed appeals, his flight <v Narrator>to Africa and his eventual return to the United States some 13 <v Narrator>years later to serve out his prison sentence of 20 to 30 years <v Narrator>constitute a long and horrific story, possibly a story
<v Narrator>of justice gone awry, but clearly, an American dream turned <v Narrator>nightmare. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Don and I were-were high school sweethearts. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>We had been going together since we were 14. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>We went to Europe when I went to medical school. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>We went all the way through Europe, through medical school in Europe, together in <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Switzerland. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And she and I were very, very close. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Um, she assumed the role of a mother and provider <v Dr. John Branion Jr>or maintainer of the home when we were back in Chicago. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And our life was a mixture of children and <v Dr. John Branion Jr>work, and all the things necessary to keep <v Dr. John Branion Jr>that-that going.
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>We had been married 24 years and <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I thought we would be married at least another 24. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I had no idea that what happened would have happened. <v Narrator>The Hyde Park area in Chicago, just a few miles south of downtown. <v Narrator>This is the alley behind the building that 20 years ago housed Ida Mae Scott Hospital. <v Narrator>On the morning of December 22nd, 1967. <v Narrator>Dr. John Branion got into his car after a morning of seeing patients in the clinic. <v Narrator>It was Friday, three days before Christmas, 10 degrees and <v Narrator>snowing. He was on his way to pick up his four year old son ?Jobi? <v Narrator>at nursery school. The events that morning would change his life forever. <v Narrator>It was at least 11:30 when Branion walked out of the hospital. <v Narrator>It was 11:57 when he and neighbors called the police from his home <v Narrator>to report finding the body of his wife, Donna.
<v Narrator>The crime itself took at least 15 minutes to commit, given the undisputed <v Narrator>physical evidence. The question has always been, did John <v Narrator>Branion have time to drive the entire route, pick up his son, talk <v Narrator>to friends and commit the crime? <v Narrator>The police testified that they could make the drive in six minutes, never exceeding <v Narrator>the posted speed of 30 miles an hour and stopping for all traffic signals. <v Narrator>Given the timetable of events, this leaves just barely the 15 <v Narrator>minutes needed for John to have killed Donna. <v Narrator>The six minute drive time, as claimed by the police, was a key bit of testimony <v Narrator>that led to John Branion's conviction. <v Narrator>The route will be shown in its entirety, driven at the posted speed limit <v Narrator>and stopping for all traffic signals. <v Narrator>The elapsed time for the driver will be shown in the lower right hand corner. <v Anthony D'Amato>Suppose you came home, you found your wife brutally
<v Anthony D'Amato>murdered. There was no sign of entry into- the uh forced entry into <v Anthony D'Amato>the apartment. Your own steak knife had been used in stabbing her to death, <v Anthony D'Amato>and you immediately report it to the police. <v Anthony D'Amato>That's it, Mike. That's all that there was against him. <v Anthony D'Amato>He was the husband. He found the body. <v Anthony D'Amato>There was no sign of breaking and entering into the apartment, and presumably his own <v Anthony D'Amato>weapon was used the gun. In fact I would admit or I would concede that <v Anthony D'Amato>his own gun was used because he had a gun around the house that he used for protection. <v Anthony D'Amato>And that was undoubtedly used by the killer or killers. <v Anthony D'Amato>That's all they had. Now, you would think that that could happen <v Anthony D'Amato>to anybody. I mean, you just come home and and, you know, it's a horrible situation. <v Anthony D'Amato>Your wife has been murdered or your husband has been murdered. <v Anthony D'Amato>It's certainly enough for the police to investigate and ask questions. <v Anthony D'Amato>You say, well, maybe, you know, maybe the husband did it. <v Anthony D'Amato>Maybe the person who found the body did it. <v Anthony D'Amato>Let's look into it. But unless there's more evidence than that, like some <v Anthony D'Amato>motive, like some opportunity, like some other things
<v Anthony D'Amato>that would point to the husband as being the killer, <v Anthony D'Amato>you would normally think, well, gee, after all, he reported the crime, he was grief <v Anthony D'Amato>stricken. Uh if he wanted to murder his wife, he wouldn't have <v Anthony D'Amato>done it in this-this kind of fashion where it would be evident to everybody <v Anthony D'Amato>and you would look into the circumstances. <v Patrick Tuite>I thought it was a very circumstantial case. <v Patrick Tuite>I thought the major piece of evidence is what we found in the search warrant, which I <v Patrick Tuite>knew about earlier, that she was killed with <v Patrick Tuite>four, nine millimeter short type bullets. <v Patrick Tuite>They're called there were nine MMK and the K stands for Kertz, which in German is short. <v Patrick Tuite>And it was found at that through ballistics that <v Patrick Tuite>those shells were fired from a Walther PPK, which at the time <v Patrick Tuite>was very popular because it was James Bond's gun and the James Bond movies. <v Patrick Tuite>And things were pretty popular at that time as they are today.
<v Patrick Tuite>And he denied owning a Walther <v Patrick Tuite>PPK. And these policemen, who I always felt did a magnificent job <v Patrick Tuite>in putting this case together, checked with Walther <v Patrick Tuite>and found the names of dealers in the Chicago area and then went to the gun <v Patrick Tuite>shops in Chicago, you're looking for all sales of Walter PPKs. <v Patrick Tuite>Gun shops have to keep records of all guns purchased and sold. <v Patrick Tuite>And they found one gun that was sold to the best friend of the defendant, <v Patrick Tuite>John Branion. He wasn't the defendant at the time. <v Patrick Tuite>And uh he um he said that <v Patrick Tuite>he gave that, they went to the best friend and <v Patrick Tuite>said, where's the gun? He said, I gave it to Dr. Branion for Christmas the year before. <v Patrick Tuite>So now we had Branion saying he didn't own such a gun and we had somebody telling us that <v Patrick Tuite>he had given him the gun. So we got a search warrant for the house looking for the gun. <v Patrick Tuite>And in the house we found not we, but the police found the box
<v Patrick Tuite>the gun came in with the serial number on the box, which matched the serial number at the <v Patrick Tuite>records at the gun shop and a box of bullets and the <v Patrick Tuite>bullets had four missing. <v Patrick Tuite>And the bullets were in a bag up on a closet shelf in the doctor's closet in his bedroom. <v Patrick Tuite>And there was a box and the box has I think 16 shells and four were missing. <v Patrick Tuite>And it was the same brand as the bullets found next to her body. <v Patrick Tuite>And that we felt was was very strong evidence against him. <v Barbara D'Amato>It was a real revelation to me. <v Barbara D'Amato>I had, I guess, a quite optimistic notion about what the criminal <v Barbara D'Amato>justice system was like, and I think so also back then did Branion. <v Barbara D'Amato>He really thought that an innocent person couldn't be convicted. <v Barbara D'Amato>As I started to read back through the data, I found <v Barbara D'Amato>that the points they had, had considered <v Barbara D'Amato>proof of his guilt tended to vanish.
<v Barbara D'Amato>They sounded very solid in the Illinois Supreme Court report. <v Barbara D'Amato>When you went back to the trial, they were by no means that clear. <v Barbara D'Amato>When you went back to the original police reports, in most cases they vanished <v Barbara D'Amato>altogether. So it was quite a learning experience <v Barbara D'Amato>for me. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>The historical timing of the Branion case is remarkable. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>The death of Martin Luther King, the riots in Chicago, the public <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>convulsion. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>In order to create the perception that the police were doing a good job <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>and that the prosecutors and the courts were backing them up, that you had to find <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>somebody guilty of something. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>I don't know how to dissect that out. It is unmistakable. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>If you simply look at the timing that somehow that may have been an unconscious factor. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>I would prefer not to think that it was a deliberate factor, but I don't know. <v Barbara D'Amato>John's father was the grandson of a slave.
<v Barbara D'Amato>He had come up to Chicago from one of the southern states to study at the University <v Barbara D'Amato>of Chicago Law School. When he graduated from law school, he decided stay here in <v Barbara D'Amato>Chicago. And he went into the public defender's office, he was the first black public <v Barbara D'Amato>defender in the history of Chicago. <v Barbara D'Amato>And very good at it, he rose through the ranks and became <v Barbara D'Amato>essentially the manager of the public defender's office and something of a legend <v Barbara D'Amato>in Chicago. People would go hear him argue cases, students from the law schools would go <v Barbara D'Amato>to hear him argue his cases. <v Barbara D'Amato>John Branion, of course, grew up in Chicago and went to Chicago High School where <v Barbara D'Amato>he met Donna Brown, Donna Brown was the daughter of Sidney Brown, who was a very <v Barbara D'Amato>wealthy black realtor and banker in Chicago, <v Barbara D'Amato>one of the owners of one of the first black owned savings and loans in Chicago. <v Barbara D'Amato>The Browns opposed the relationship between Donna <v Barbara D'Amato>and John. And when John graduated from high school and went to college
<v Barbara D'Amato>at the University of Wisconsin, they sent Donna to one of the universities <v Barbara D'Amato>in California, I think it was UCLA to be as far away as possible. <v Barbara D'Amato>After a year, John was drafted it was 1942 <v Barbara D'Amato>and he went off to war. <v Barbara D'Amato>On one of his furloughs in California, he and <v Barbara D'Amato>Donna married, but the Browns had the marriage annulled a few months <v Barbara D'Amato>later. And it wasn't until after John came home from the Army. <v Barbara D'Amato>I think it was 1946. <v Barbara D'Amato>And he and Donna still wanted to marry that the Browns finally gave their permission <v Barbara D'Amato>for the match. <v Barbara D'Amato>John had come back honorably discharged and wanted to go to college on <v Barbara D'Amato>the G.I. Bill. But at this time there were just thousands of <v Barbara D'Amato>veterans wanting to get into medical school, which was what John really had always wanted <v Barbara D'Amato>to do, become a doctor.
<v Barbara D'Amato>Not being able to, he went to the University of Illinois and got a degree in <v Barbara D'Amato>pharmacology. But a couple of years later, he heard from a friend that <v Barbara D'Amato>in Europe, particularly in France and Switzerland, it was comparatively easy for <v Barbara D'Amato>a black person to be admitted to a medical school. <v Barbara D'Amato>So he and Donna packed up and went over there and <v Barbara D'Amato>he was admitted to a medical school in Switzerland. <v Barbara D'Amato>The only catch was that the classes were all taught either in German or in French. <v Barbara D'Amato>And so in a matter of a couple of months before classes started, he had learned both <v Barbara D'Amato>German and French to be able to handle the classes which he did, and <v Barbara D'Amato>graduated five years later with honors. <v Barbara D'Amato>When John got back to the States, he started his residency, <v Barbara D'Amato>I guess actually his internship and then residency at Cook County Hospital. <v Barbara D'Amato>During that time, he met a number of people who were interested in increasing <v Barbara D'Amato>the number of blacks admitted to both medical schools, nursing schools in this country.
<v Barbara D'Amato>He got involved in that movement. <v Barbara D'Amato>It was about this time that he met another doctor interested in the civil rights <v Barbara D'Amato>movement, Dr. Quentin Young. <v Barbara D'Amato>As time went on, this was now the early 60s. <v Barbara D'Amato>The black civil rights movement in this country was growing very rapidly and he became <v Barbara D'Amato>heavily involved in it. He was engaged in marches and in some cases, <v Barbara D'Amato>as the situation grew more violent. He treated some young black men <v Barbara D'Amato>who had been injured by the police in scuffles, which I think brought him to the <v Barbara D'Amato>attention of the state's attorney's office and probably the Chicago police. <v Barbara D'Amato>Martin Luther King came to Chicago in 1966 <v Barbara D'Amato>or possibly late 1965 to start the fair housing marches <v Barbara D'Amato>here in Chicago. Housing was heavily segregated in the city. <v Barbara D'Amato>John became involved in that movement as a natural extension of what he had been doing <v Barbara D'Amato>before. And when the marches began, John marched
<v Barbara D'Amato>next to Dr. King in order as a physician to be able to treat him if he was injured. <v Barbara D'Amato>People were throwing bricks and rocks and ?M80s? <v Barbara D'Amato>and pop bottles and all kinds of things off of the buildings onto the marchers. <v Barbara D'Amato>So there were a lot of injuries. And John was there to help treat them <v Barbara D'Amato>along with him was a nurse from his hospital named Shirley Hudson, <v Barbara D'Amato>with whom he was having a relationship that was going on some six years at this point. <v Barbara D'Amato>Shirley was was, as I say, a nurse. <v Barbara D'Amato>She was willing to do a lot of things like hunting and fishing and so forth, <v Barbara D'Amato>that John's wife Donna apparently was not. <v Barbara D'Amato>Donna was quite a homebody and primarily liked to stay <v Barbara D'Amato>around the house and cook and take care of the family. <v Barbara D'Amato>As nearly as I can tell from talking with friends of the family, Donna was <v Barbara D'Amato>aware of the situation with Shirley and there apparently was not very
<v Barbara D'Amato>much dissension. <v Barbara D'Amato>Obviously, from the people I've talked with, a great many of their friends knew about it <v Barbara D'Amato>and it seemed to be relatively accepted. <v Barbara D'Amato>By 1967, Donna and John had two children. <v Barbara D'Amato>There was Jan, who was 14, the daughter and ?Jobi?, <v Barbara D'Amato>who was four, and his life was was pretty stable. <v Barbara D'Amato>He was seeing Shirley Hudson, but he spent a great deal <v Barbara D'Amato>of his time at home as well and was very close with the children. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I went in the house. All the lights were on. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>All the lights were on and the TVs were playing, and I <v Dr. John Branion Jr>?saw that screen?. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I said, "Babe?", I hollered down the hall and we started <v Dr. John Branion Jr>walking to the master bedroom. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Nobody was in the master bedroom. Turned around, walked back up the hallway, looked in
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>the other bedrooms and walked into the kitchen. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I looked to my right, and I could see her legs. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>She was lying in a puddle of blood in the utility room, in the-off <v Dr. John Branion Jr>the kitchen. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I uh I reached in, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>turn on the light and bent down and I could just see she was dead, there's <v Dr. John Branion Jr>no breathing, no movement. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>She was-she was purple. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>So I grabbed ?Jobi? And ran out the back door, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>yelling for Helen. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>A neighbor upstairs. I don't remember what happened, but I understand that <v Dr. John Branion Jr>people saw me. I stood there in a daze as though I was in shock. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And somebody rang for the police at 11:57 and the police came at 11:58. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And then I remember talking to a policeman after that on the back porch.
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>A guy in uniform, so he must have been if I ?would have came initial?. <v Interviewer>Something I've always been kind of described the scene after the <v Interviewer>detective showed up in the ?inaudible? <v Interviewer>With the apartment. What was going on in the apartment? <v Dr. John Branion Jr>It was a circus. It was an absolute circus. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>There were people everywhere, detectives, my friends. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>There must've been 50 people in the house. Everywhere. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Every room. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And nobody did anything. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Nobody took fingerprints anywhere. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Nobody there-there was blood on the back. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>In the master bedroom, under the carpet, nobody examined it. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Nobody did anything. Nobodydid anything. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>My dear friend, Wilbur Tuggle. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>After they took pictures and took Donna away, he <v Dr. John Branion Jr>cleaned up all that blood. I remember we were doing that.
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>I'll never forget that. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>But they did nothing. They-there [indistinct]. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>They didn't prevent anyone from coming out. <v Oscar Brown Jr>There weren't so many suspects. <v Oscar Brown Jr>If you knew Donna, she was not a-an <v Oscar Brown Jr>outgoing person particularly, she didn't have a large circle of friends <v Oscar Brown Jr>who she intimately associated with, and so there <v Oscar Brown Jr>would be very few people who could get mad enough <v Oscar Brown Jr>to brutalize her the way this was. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And one of the few, of course, would be John. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And so it would came as no surprise, I don't think to anybody when <v Oscar Brown Jr>my wife and I first heard the news in Los Angeles. <v Oscar Brown Jr>The first person we say, "you think John did it?" Because we couldn't think of <v Oscar Brown Jr>anybody else who would get that mad at Donna.
<v R. Eugene Pincham>My impression is that I thought that it was some robber <v R. Eugene Pincham>who had gone berserk and <v R. Eugene Pincham>in the process of robbing Mrs. Branion, that she probably resisted <v R. Eugene Pincham>and he ended up killing her. <v R. Eugene Pincham>I can say this in all candor, it never dawned on me. <v R. Eugene Pincham>I've never dreamed that they had the vaguest, the slightest suspicion, the remotest <v R. Eugene Pincham>suspicion that her husband could possibly have been in the way involved in it. <v Interviewer>What did you think when John was arrested? <v R. Eugene Pincham>Amazed, shocked, surprised and frustrated. <v R. Eugene Pincham>My suspicion was that he was being made a scapegoat. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I was-I was at the clinic doing seeing our patients, you go <v Dr. John Branion Jr>from one room to another and you have to come out the hallway. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I saw the detectives down there because I'd recognize them before, so I <v Dr. John Branion Jr>went down said, "may I help you fellas?" And they said, "Well, are you working?"
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>Yeah, I'm working. And they said, well, we'll wait <v Dr. John Branion Jr>for you to finish it. Okay. I'll be back about 11:30. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>So I finished the clinic and went back down there. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And with great reluctance, they told me I was under arrest. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I said, you must be kidding. For what? <v Dr. John Branion Jr>For murdering your wife. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I couldn't believe it. I called Nelson immediately <v Dr. John Branion Jr>and Nelson knew he was waiting for the call. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>He said, don't worry, I have a blank check here for you from Sydney. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I'll come right down to get you out. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And that's what he did. But boy, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>when they took me to 12th street. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>It was just urine and dirt and you couldn't sit, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>you couldn't stand. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>It was the worst experience I'd ever had in my life. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And no matter how many times you see it on the screen, when you see pictures
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>of of prisons and that <v Dr. John Branion Jr>last shutting of the-of the bar door, boy <v Dr. John Branion Jr>when it shuts on you, it's all different. <v Narrator>As the trial approached, one event set an ominous tone for Branion's day in <v Narrator>court. Dr. Martin Luther King was shot on April 4th, 1968. <v Narrator>Anger raged through the country and Chicago burned more violently than most cities. <v Narrator>On the evening of April 5th, 36 major fires were roaring throughout the <v Narrator>metropolitan area. By 10:00 that night, the fire alarms came into the station <v Narrator>so fast that they could no longer be counted. <v Narrator>Mayor Daley issued an order to shoot looters and arsonists. <v Narrator>By April 9th, huge areas of the city lay in ruins and fire <v Narrator>hoses laced the city streets. <v Narrator>Nine black people, mostly youths, had been killed. <v Narrator>10,000 police and 7,000 National Guard troops occupied <v Narrator>the city. Three weeks later, in a city tense with fear and
<v Narrator>overhung by the odor of charred buildings, John Branion went on trial for <v Narrator>murder. On this block is the Hyde Park Neighborhood Nursery <v Narrator>School, where Dr. Brennan picked up his son ?Jobi? <v Narrator>on that morning, on that December day. <v Narrator>Branion parked and went in to get his son. <v Patrick Tuite>I think that, however, a black going to trial after the Martin Luther King riots, <v Patrick Tuite>if you had suburban people who were who were afraid of the blacks, <v Patrick Tuite>who were afraid of a-a black movement into the suburbs, <v Patrick Tuite>yeah, it would have been a bad time to have a black man on trial. <v Patrick Tuite>But he wasn't a-he was not-John Branion was a very distinguished looking guy, <v Patrick Tuite>had a very distinguished lawyer, Maury Scott, and was not a street criminal <v Patrick Tuite>or somebody that the average citizen be afraid of. <v Patrick Tuite>Looking back, I don't know. <v Patrick Tuite>I'm-I'm trying to think I didn't get any feeling as I sit here thinking back 20 years <v Patrick Tuite>that there was a strong anti-black movement or a strong anti
<v Patrick Tuite>defendant feeling going on there, particularly with a professional man. <v Anthony D'Amato>There were 11 out of 12 members of the jury were white. <v Anthony D'Amato>One was a middle aged black, rather timid woman. <v Anthony D'Amato>Everyone else in the trial was white. The prosecutors, the judge, <v Anthony D'Amato>we had a flamboyant prosecutor and a very incompetent defense attorney <v Anthony D'Amato>and a judge who is now in federal prison for corruption and bribery and extortion. <v Anthony D'Amato>Presiding is the judge, you had a combination of such circumstances. <v Anthony D'Amato>Unbelievable streak of bad luck against John Branion that in a way, prove that <v Anthony D'Amato>this is one of those rare exceptional cases. <v Anthony D'Amato>I mean, you don't-you're not going to find another case like this probably if you <v Anthony D'Amato>if you search for a very long time. <v R. Eugene Pincham>One of the unique ingredients of the case was that the <v R. Eugene Pincham>defense team and the defendant were <v R. Eugene Pincham>close personal acquaintances and indeed associates
<v R. Eugene Pincham>and friends. <v R. Eugene Pincham>Hindsight is 20/20. <v R. Eugene Pincham>Close personal associations and relationships between attorney <v R. Eugene Pincham>and client during the course of the trial sometimes <v R. Eugene Pincham>blinds the objectivity on the part of the client <v R. Eugene Pincham>as well as on the part of the lawyer. <v R. Eugene Pincham>Hindsight, again, is 20/20 and the lawyers in the case as well as John. <v R. Eugene Pincham>Perhaps misjudged the quality and the quantity <v R. Eugene Pincham>of the evidence. <v R. Eugene Pincham>Misjudged the attitudes of the jurors. <v R. Eugene Pincham>And that's understandable. And indeed, it is excusable, particularly if the <v R. Eugene Pincham>defendant did not, in fact, commit the crime. <v R. Eugene Pincham>And one of the problems in representing a defendant who did not commit a crime
<v R. Eugene Pincham>is that he feels there's nothing to the case. <v R. Eugene Pincham>I didn't do it, so I'm not going to be convicted. <v R. Eugene Pincham>And that attitude overflows often to the lawyer. <v Oscar Brown Jr>Branion's trial um as I said, most of I don't remember who <v Oscar Brown Jr>the testimony. I think somebody was testifying as to the wounds. <v Oscar Brown Jr>So it must been early on in the trial. <v Oscar Brown Jr>As to the wounds. And then they were describing John's activities and how he had gone <v Oscar Brown Jr>this whole scenario of the time. The 11:37 or whatever. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And that was a part of it. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And he was to have gone and picked up Maxine. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And she was put on the witness stand before lunch and um <v Oscar Brown Jr>mis-stated the facts, and <v Oscar Brown Jr>had to correct them, otherwise she was going to be held for perjury. <v Oscar Brown Jr>I know that questions when the questions would come up as to Shirley
<v Oscar Brown Jr>there would be an objection and that would not be allowed. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And that seemed to me to have been the case of much of what was <v Oscar Brown Jr>discussed during that portion of the trial. <v Oscar Brown Jr>Then afterward, I went out to lunch with them and it was like, <v Oscar Brown Jr>oh like we'd been to a tense football game, ya know a basketball <v Oscar Brown Jr>game. And the outcome was still, you know, we were all having lunch, you know, and you <v Oscar Brown Jr>talking about the seriousness of this game. <v Oscar Brown Jr>But, you know, bleachers have a fat ass and I was also noticing- <v Interviewer> Why don't you kind of give us the police version? <v Interviewer>And then what we've been able to figure out, what's the more likely version? <v Barbara D'Amato>Right. Well, the prosecutor's version, I would say, rather than the police version, <v Barbara D'Amato>because the actual police reports contradict in some ways some of the prosecutor's <v Barbara D'Amato>version. The prosecutor's assertion was that Branion had left the hospital
<v Barbara D'Amato>about 11:30. <v Barbara D'Amato>Driven to his apartment, shot his wife. <v Barbara D'Amato>Then gone on to pick up his four year old ?Jobi? <v Barbara D'Amato>at nursery school. <v Barbara D'Amato>Then gone on to the place of work of a friend of his and her is Maxine <v Barbara D'Amato>Brown, was intending to pick up Maxine Brown for lunch. <v Barbara D'Amato>She was busy, then drove home and entered the apartment <v Barbara D'Amato>with ?Jobi? In their version, pretended to be <v Barbara D'Amato>surprised at finding the body of his wife. <v Barbara D'Amato>Then ran out on the back porch with ?Jobi? <v Barbara D'Amato>To yell for a neighbor's help. And then the police were called. <v Barbara D'Amato>In fact, the more research we did on it, the more impossible it came to <v Barbara D'Amato>seem that he would have time to do it. <v Barbara D'Amato>Essentially, they were saying that he had 27 minutes to accomplish this. <v Barbara D'Amato>We found that in fact, he had stayed and stayed on at the hospital about four or five <v Barbara D'Amato>minutes longer. To see an emergency patient who would come in in pain. <v Barbara D'Amato>We discovered that the police notion that the route could have been driven
<v Barbara D'Amato>in six minutes was simply wrong. <v Barbara D'Amato>We discovered that he had spent longer in the nursery school than <v Barbara D'Amato>was summed up at the end of the trial. <v Barbara D'Amato>Although in fact during the trial the nursery school teacher had said he'd spent five <v Barbara D'Amato>minutes in there, simply lost in his summation. <v Barbara D'Amato>We discovered also in a kind of circuitous way that that the crime would have taken <v Barbara D'Amato>longer than they thought then what they summed up at the trial. <v Oscar Brown Jr>This trial was a sort of fill in the blanks trial. <v Oscar Brown Jr>They didn't really talk about what they were about. <v Oscar Brown Jr>You wouldn't know what they allowed in the trial. <v Oscar Brown Jr>The guy had a girlfriend, they don't want to talk about that in all of your relevant <v Oscar Brown Jr>material. All this stuff I objected and they objected the whole the reality <v Oscar Brown Jr>of the relationship out of the picture that they were just sort of talking about <v Oscar Brown Jr>legalisms, in my opinion, and never really talking about the people and what might have <v Oscar Brown Jr>happened. They were accusing John Branion he left the hospital <v Oscar Brown Jr>over here and come home, plotted this now, come home,
<v Oscar Brown Jr>go in his house, knock his wife off, beat it back to the hospital <v Oscar Brown Jr>and then come back later and pretend to find her. <v Oscar Brown Jr>Now, I suppose it's conceivable that that's what he did, but for him to have planned that <v Oscar Brown Jr>would have been insane. They should've tried him for being nuts because <v Oscar Brown Jr>you can't plan to come into these neighborhoods in the middle of the morning <v Oscar Brown Jr>and not be seen, especially not to do anything like murder. <v Oscar Brown Jr>I mean, you wouldn't you wouldn't sit home for an hour and what I'll do is <v Oscar Brown Jr>I'll sneak in the house about 10:30. <v Oscar Brown Jr>How the hell do you know that somebody, a mail man wouldn't see you? The neighbors would <v Oscar Brown Jr>come and the kids home from school. Anything, anything. <v Oscar Brown Jr>You couldn't-it could happen that you could've come home and not be seen by a soul and <v Oscar Brown Jr>that you could do a murder and go-go back out and not be seen by a soul. <v Oscar Brown Jr>But to plan on that would be nuts. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Well, the first problem is that the entire matrix of facts was not submitted <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>to the jury for consideration.
<v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>This, I suppose, from one point of view comes under the rubric <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>of attorney discretion. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>The system contains the perception <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>that the person charged with the crime is innocent, <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>and you have to establish beyond reasonable doubt his or her guilt. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>The truth of the matter is quite different. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>You have to establish reasonable your innocence to counter the force <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>of whatever evidence is marshaled to establish your guilt. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>You shouldn't have to do that, but that's what actually has to occur. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>The doctor's attorney left out witnesses, did very superficial investigation of <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>his own. And so an incomplete story was presented to the jury, <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>I have been informed. I don't have firsthand knowledge, but I have been informed that the <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>prosecutor in this case has subsequently indicated that he had reasonable reason <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>to believe at the time Dr. Branion could not have done it and yet proceeded with the
<v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>prosecution. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>That to me is ethical misfeasance of the worst sort. <v Interviewer>Is that-is there-are we saying something about the justice system as a whole? <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>We are. <v Interviewer>You want to-want to put your finger right on it? <v Interviewer>I mean, is it-is it a problem in terms of who is a-who is alive? <v Interviewer>I mean, I always wanted to ask that question. <v Interviewer>Who-who does the lawyer serve? <v Interviewer>Who does the prosecutor serve? Is it-. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>He serves his own interest. <v Barbara D'Amato>The jury never heard anything specific about the number of wounds in Donna Branion's <v Barbara D'Amato>body. The original police report talked about 13 <v Barbara D'Amato>wounds. The police testimony at the inquest described 13 <v Barbara D'Amato>wounds in the pathology report, describes the 13 wounds in detail. <v Barbara D'Amato>But the jury was led to think that there were possibly <v Barbara D'Amato>four or five wounds and that they could have been caused by four bullets. <v Barbara D'Amato>This was connected by the prosecutor to a box of bullets he had found in the closet where
<v Barbara D'Amato>one of the policemen found in the closet from which four bullets were missing. <v Barbara D'Amato>And the fact that there were four bullets missing from a box in the closet, he argued, <v Barbara D'Amato>was proof that John Branion had shot Donna Branion. <v Barbara D'Amato>The prosecutor in his closing argument led the jury to think that Dr. Branion <v Barbara D'Amato>had been asked for a Walter PPK and denied having one. <v Barbara D'Amato>It actually didn't happen that way. <v Barbara D'Amato>During the early afternoon, the police who had seen <v Barbara D'Amato>some empty shells with mark 9 millimeter on the base and it seemed Dr. Branion's gun <v Barbara D'Amato>collection around the-round the house, there was-there were guns in the-in the den <v Barbara D'Amato>and a display case in several other places. <v Barbara D'Amato>Asked him if he had a 9 millimeter weapon and he gave them one. <v Barbara D'Amato>They apparently took that back to the Chicago Police Department <v Barbara D'Amato>and it was fired and tested and didn't match the bullets found in her body. <v Barbara D'Amato>And in the course of that afternoon, one of the experts at the Chicago Police Department
<v Barbara D'Amato>told them to ask for a .380. <v Barbara D'Amato>.380 is American designation for a size that's similar to a 9 millimeter, but not <v Barbara D'Amato>identical. <v Barbara D'Amato>They went back in the early evening, ask Dr. Branion for <v Barbara D'Amato>a .380, and he gave them one. <v Barbara D'Amato>At that point, they asked if he had another .380 and apparently he said no, <v Barbara D'Amato>but the Walter PPK is a 9 millimeter, and none of the policemen who testified <v Barbara D'Amato>at the trial; there were five or six who testified ever testified that they <v Barbara D'Amato>actually asked him for a Walter PPK. <v Barbara D'Amato>I think they couldn't have because I think it took them-the lab, according to the police <v Barbara D'Amato>reports, several days to put together the the data that led them to think the Walter <v Barbara D'Amato>PPK might have been the weapon that made those kinds of marks on those cartridges and <v Barbara D'Amato>pellets. <v Narrator>This was the block that contained Maxine Brown's office. <v Narrator>John and ?Jobi? parked and went inside only to find that Maxine <v Narrator>was unable to join them for lunch.
<v Narrator>They continued home. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Yes, I wanted to testify. I uh I've-Well <v Dr. John Branion Jr>several things I wanted to. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>They had created a picture of four bullets <v Dr. John Branion Jr>coming from a box that I had, and these four bullets causing <v Dr. John Branion Jr>the 12-the 13 holes in my wife's <v Dr. John Branion Jr>body, which was impossible, but they went to great lengths to do <v Dr. John Branion Jr>this, and I had gotten a friend of mine who was an excellent <v Dr. John Branion Jr>an expert gun person Tom Haas, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>he was coming up and he came to Chicago to testify as an expert witness <v Dr. John Branion Jr>about the difference between these two gun groups they use, .380s and <v Dr. John Branion Jr>9mm. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And so Maurice after the man had <v Dr. John Branion Jr>come, didn't want to use him, and I thought that was strange. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I thought-I thought he had had questioned all the witnesses.
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>The ones I told him I was with that day, so I didn't ask him again about those <v Dr. John Branion Jr>because I thought he questioned them and he said, well, we can't use them. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I didn't even know what they would have said. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I didn't find out what they would have said until 1985. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>So when. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>So then I said to him, look, I think I should get on the stand. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>No one has told my side of the story. No one has said anything. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>But we don't need to, he said. They have to prove your guilt. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And I said, well, do you think they have proved my guilt? <v Dr. John Branion Jr>No, no, no. They haven't proved you. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Excuse me. You're guilty. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Now, at that point. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Had I been a little more rational, I would have understood his-his answer should have <v Dr. John Branion Jr>been. No, they didn't prove your guilt. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>They proved your innocence. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>But because he didn't know the facts of the crime, of the testimony. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>The only one who knew the-the facts could take the facts in the testimony
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>and add them together, could come out with the conclusion that they proved that I <v Dr. John Branion Jr>couldn't have done it. But he never did made that statement, which meant he'd never knew <v Dr. John Branion Jr>that to be correct. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And had I known that. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I could have said. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Well, I would have said bring on witnesses and everything else because they proved, he <v Dr. John Branion Jr>didn't even argue in his summation, in his argument. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>He didn't argue that the state proved I didn't do it. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>He mumbled and fumbled over the times, but he was not clear <v Dr. John Branion Jr>because he didn't understand it himself, nor did I at the time. <v Patrick Tuite>He told the whole jury panel his client was <v Patrick Tuite>having an affair. We never could find her. <v Patrick Tuite>So it never came out in evidence. <v Patrick Tuite>He never took the witness stand to explain the affair or to say <v Patrick Tuite>the you know, that was a fling and it had nothing to do with it. <v Patrick Tuite>I wasn't being pressured to divorce my wife or anything of that sort. <v Patrick Tuite>So the jury had the evidence through the voir dire questioning that he was an adulterer
<v Patrick Tuite>and that there was no evidence brought out about it. <v Patrick Tuite>And-and I wondered about that tactic. <v Patrick Tuite>Now, maybe Scott believed we would find her and put her on the stand and the jury would <v Patrick Tuite>be shocked to hear about it. And he wanted to take the shock away from it, which is a <v Patrick Tuite>good tactic. And maybe he-he didn't know that she was unavailable. <v Patrick Tuite>But that was the only thing is the jury was-was told by the defense <v Patrick Tuite>that there was an extramarital affair, which the state never proved. <v Patrick Tuite>And we could never prove it because we didn't have the witness. <v R. Eugene Pincham>My recollection is that John was a at least <v R. Eugene Pincham>alleged to have been having affairs <v R. Eugene Pincham>with other women, we discussed that they were afraid that <v R. Eugene Pincham>if he testified, the prosecutor would cross-examine him on his <v R. Eugene Pincham>infidelity and his loyalty to his wife. <v R. Eugene Pincham>My suggestion to them was simply that
<v R. Eugene Pincham>we may not want to admit it, but I don't think society is going to send <v R. Eugene Pincham>this man to jail for murdering his wife because he was disloyal or <v R. Eugene Pincham>violated his marital vows. <v R. Eugene Pincham>I even went so far as to suggest to them that in my judgment, many <v R. Eugene Pincham>jurors will accept the reality that <v R. Eugene Pincham>doctors do have affairs with other women. <v R. Eugene Pincham>And I suggested that perhaps. <v R. Eugene Pincham>That would be an avenue that could be pursued beneficial to his defense. <v R. Eugene Pincham>The reason the prosecutors are bringing this is because they don't have evidence of the <v R. Eugene Pincham>murder and they want to arouse your passion to convict him of murder because he had an <v R. Eugene Pincham>affair with another woman. And quite frankly, when I last talked to them about it, my <v R. Eugene Pincham>understanding was that he was going to testify. <v R. Eugene Pincham>And when I arrived at court the next morning, when he spoke, testified, they were arguing <v R. Eugene Pincham>the case to the jury and they had decided that he wouldn't. <v R. Eugene Pincham>I frankly feel within the recess of my soul that the fatal mistake in that case
<v R. Eugene Pincham>was he rolled the dice. <v R. Eugene Pincham>It came up that he would not testify. He didn't testify and the jury convicted him. <v Barbara D'Amato>It seems to me that John was trusting the judicial system <v Barbara D'Amato>to find him innocent because he was innocent and he underrated <v Barbara D'Amato>the possibility of mistakes happening. <v Barbara D'Amato>In his case, it was an avalanche of errors, everything that could <v Barbara D'Amato>possibly go wrong with the criminal justice system went wrong with his case. <v Barbara D'Amato>He was arrested, I think, partly because no other good <v Barbara D'Amato>possibility presented itself. <v Barbara D'Amato>He was arrested in the absence of any evidence that he had been in the house <v Barbara D'Amato>that day earlier or any evidence that placed the gun in his hand or anything <v Barbara D'Amato>else of that sort. <v Barbara D'Amato>He was tried at a very difficult, <v Barbara D'Amato>violent time in Chicago's history at a time of extreme racial unrest. <v Barbara D'Amato>He was tried in front of a jury that was already intimidated by the
<v Barbara D'Amato>social upheaval that was going on in the city, a jury of 11 whites and one black. <v Barbara D'Amato>By a prosecutor who knew from talking with the <v Barbara D'Amato>witnesses that Dr. Branion could not have-could not <v Barbara D'Amato>have found the time to be in the house that day, and who nevertheless, in his closing <v Barbara D'Amato>summed up by saying you stood over her and shot her like <v Barbara D'Amato>a dog. <v Barbara D'Amato>And sentenced by a judge who was an extortionist then <v Barbara D'Amato>and who apparently was holding off, giving a directed verdict <v Barbara D'Amato>or a judgment not withstanding the verdict in order to extort money from Branion's <v Barbara D'Amato>friends and family. <v Barbara D'Amato>It goes beyond that, actually. He was also the conviction was also upheld <v Barbara D'Amato>by the Illinois Supreme Court when the Illinois Supreme Court had just lost <v Barbara D'Amato>one member to death and I think two or three through a scandal. <v Barbara D'Amato>And they upheld the conviction by leaving out
<v Barbara D'Amato>of their summation the prosecutor's own pathologist's testimony <v Barbara D'Amato>that Donna's neck bruise would have taken 15 to 30 minutes to develop. <v Patrick Tuite>My argument, I can remember it now, there was a chair in the courtroom and I made <v Patrick Tuite>folly of that and I said, yes. Knock on the door of marshal field's, punch her in the <v Patrick Tuite>mouth, run to the closet, get on a chair, go up and get the bullets, load <v Patrick Tuite>the gun, go shoot her. <v Patrick Tuite>That still doesn't explain the bullets. It doesn't explain the gun, type of thing. <v Patrick Tuite>There was always the problem, the ligature around the neck, of course. <v Patrick Tuite>How long? And there's a question what Belmonte said there. <v Interviewer>Yeah. I mean, that is something that they brought up the fact that he testified a minimum <v Interviewer>of 15 minutes. <v Patrick Tuite>Well, it wasn't clear, at least to me at the time, because you take notes and you don't <v Patrick Tuite>have the cold transcript. Whether he said you had to hold it like that for at least <v Patrick Tuite>fifteen minutes or the marks would ?inaudible? would show up 15 minutes later. <v Interviewer>I subsequently read some things and they have all that-what they've said it's a tale-it
<v Interviewer>would take a minimum 15 minutes that the cord would have been around the neck before <v Interviewer>death for fifteen minutes. <v Patrick Tuite>15 minutes for a total of 15? <v Interviewer>Oh, yeah. <v Patrick Tuite>Least it had to have been around the neck 15 minutes before death? <v Interviewer>15 minutes before death. <v Patrick Tuite>Because once you have death, the mark won't show up. <v Interviewer>Exactly. <v Interviewer>Something you mentioned about the pathologist. You know, there's been all this argument <v Interviewer>about the number of bullets. And at the trial, he seemed to indicate that it took more <v Interviewer>than the four shots. <v Interviewer>I mean, this whole explanation I've seen diagram, is it trying to explain how four shot <v Interviewer>produced 13 bullet wounds. <v Interviewer>You think the jury was getting all this stuff? <v Interviewer>I mean, it's very- <v Patrick Tuite>?Could I ever? Till somebody called me about it, I didn't even-that never was an issue in <v Patrick Tuite>the trial. And I haven't looked at the pathologist's report in 20 <v Patrick Tuite>years. But it never was an issue of what all those bullets were for. <v Patrick Tuite>Shells laying next to the body and which <v Patrick Tuite>would indicate an automatic weapon, which a Walther PPK is. <v Patrick Tuite>There was never indication of more than four shots fired.
<v Patrick Tuite>And Scott never made an issue of of more than 13. <v Patrick Tuite>When somebody had called me, it may have been D'Amato or Tom ?Garrity? <v Patrick Tuite>From Northwestern had said there were 13 bullet wounds is really, I can't say the first <v Patrick Tuite>time I heard it for the first time had any impact because it really never came up at the <v Patrick Tuite>trial. <v Interviewer>Can-can you give us a sense of the person who shot the weapon, the size, shape like that? <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Yes, I worked that out based upon reconstruction of the three dimensional <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>characteristics of the bullet wounds. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>And I came up with a figure of about 5'5" to 5' 6", <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>something in that range for their height, which, of course, is much shorter than Dr. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Branion was at that time. <v Interviewer>Bottom line, I mean, we might as well get to it. <v Interviewer>I have to ask you this sooner or later. You're-in your expert opinion, the likelihood <v Interviewer>that Dr. Branion committed the crime? <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Zero. He did not do it. <v Interviewer>You can say with all even with the 20 years looking back over the evidence? <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Absolutely, the evidence does not demonstrate his guilt.
<v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>That evidence demonstrates his innocence. <v Interviewer>Even the original trial? The evidence doesn't-?. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Yes, because it was grossly misused. I mean, there was a sound heard at <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>roughly 11:20 or something like that. <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>Long before he was on the scene and long before he could conceivably have been on the <v Dr. Douglas Shanklin>scene. That sound was obviously gunfire. <v Narrator>John Branion was convicted and sentenced to 20 to 30 years. <v Narrator>While the case worked its way through the Illinois Supreme Court, Branion was free on <v Narrator>bond. He married Shirley Hudson several months after the trial. <v Narrator>As a convicted felon, he had lost his right to practice medicine. <v Narrator>So with permission from the court, they moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming they had a son the <v Narrator>next year. When the Illinois Supreme Court upheld his conviction, <v Narrator>omitting the state's pathologist evidence that the neck bruise would have taken 15 <v Narrator>to 30 minutes to form. <v Narrator>Branion decided there was no justice for him in the United States. <v Narrator>He left for Africa that day. <v Narrator>Shirley remained in the United States to raise their son.
<v Narrator>Some 10 years later, ?dealing? with hypertension. <v Narrator>John asked Shirley to come to Uganda, where he was working as an obstetrician. <v Narrator>During that stay, Shirley became pregnant again, this time with a daughter, Jade. <v Narrator>In 1983, with Shirley four months pregnant. <v Narrator>John was arrested and brought back to this country to serve his sentence. <v Narrator>He was then 58 years old. <v Narrator>Professors Anthony D'Amato, Tom Garrity and John Walsh from Northwestern <v Narrator>Law School have taken Branion's case through the federal courts with no success. <v Narrator>Over the past several years, Dr. Branion has had four heart attacks and bilateral <v Narrator>coronary bypass surgery. <v Narrator>The prison appointed physician estimates that he will die within four years. <v Narrator>His case won't come up for a parole hearing before then. <v Interviewer>Do you think you proved beyond reasonable-I mean now-I mean, the fact that you're not <v Interviewer>a defense lawyer. Would you think-?
<v Patrick Tuite>It's so hard to say. I mean, I try cases all the time where I think there are so many <v Patrick Tuite>reasonable doubts and juries don't think there are. <v Patrick Tuite>There were reasonable doubts a jury could have accepted. <v Patrick Tuite>There's no question that jury did not think there was reasonable doubt. <v Patrick Tuite>It's one of the quirks of our system is we say that a jury found <v Patrick Tuite>him guilty. Another jury could have found him innocent. <v Interviewer>It was in-so you think it was in that gray area? <v Patrick Tuite>?Yeah?, and it happens in any kind of trial. And there's trials where people are found <v Patrick Tuite>not guilty and a different jury would have found him guilty. <v Patrick Tuite>And the same facts, same lawyers and everything. <v Patrick Tuite>So it's a quirk as to what type of jury you get. <v Patrick Tuite>It's that and the jury isn't universal. <v Patrick Tuite>They make a fiction that it is the embodiment of the community. <v Patrick Tuite>It's nonsense. You get 12 people from over here and you get 12 people over there and then <v Patrick Tuite>you'll hear the same facts, you might reach different decisions. <v Patrick Tuite>This jury reached that decision. Another jury could have said reasonable doubt and <v Patrick Tuite>made a different decision. <v Interviewer>A question I have to ask you. Do you think John actually committed the crime?
<v Patrick Tuite>Well, it was a question in my mind whether Maury Scott put a little seed <v Patrick Tuite>of doubt in my mind during the trial, and that was <v Patrick Tuite>about whether he actually pulled the trigger. I always believed he had it done. <v Patrick Tuite>My belief was that he took his Walther PPK, gave <v Patrick Tuite>it to somebody and said, I'll be out of the house. <v Patrick Tuite>She'll be home alone. She'll let you in. <v Patrick Tuite>Do me a favor. She's a no good bitch or whatever. <v Patrick Tuite>She won't give me a divorce. Do me a favor. <v Patrick Tuite>And that he then went and he set up this luncheon with Maxine Brown all of a sudden <v Patrick Tuite>the night before out of the blue. <v Patrick Tuite>And he went and picked up his child, and he was gonna go to lunch in that, well, Maxine <v Patrick Tuite>Brown is, you know, the luncheon was aborted and she had another appointment. <v Patrick Tuite>So then he comes home instead. <v Patrick Tuite>Scott pointed out and I think, you know, it had a lot to do is, would he <v Patrick Tuite>be that cold and calculated to walk in on a dead body knowing she was dead with
<v Patrick Tuite>the kid who was then four or five? <v Patrick Tuite>And do you think that he's that bad guy to do that? <v Patrick Tuite>And it was always a question. Did he expected to have ?inaudible? <v Patrick Tuite>been done? That I don't know. <v Patrick Tuite>I don't know whether you expected it then, or expected at some other time. <v Patrick Tuite>I always felt that he was involved in it, that he had planned to do it with his gun, <v Patrick Tuite>whether he was actually there pulling the trigger, was a good question. <v Oscar Brown Jr>Feel kind of evenly divided between people who thought he did it, people who didn't know. <v Oscar Brown Jr>As I recall, there was no you know, there was. <v Oscar Brown Jr>I don't recall any great groundswell of animosity toward Branion. <v Oscar Brown Jr>It was one of the-it was a tragedy had he done it <v Oscar Brown Jr>if he were guilty of it, it would be just a sort of an American tragedy you know, like <v Oscar Brown Jr>what you got-what do you call this program? American Dream-. <v Interviewer>American Nightmare.
<v Oscar Brown Jr>?Yeah?, it's very American. <v Oscar Brown Jr>It's very American, it's very American in its aspiration. <v Oscar Brown Jr>It's very American in its color consciousness, it's very American in <v Oscar Brown Jr>its class consciousness. <v Oscar Brown Jr>It's very American in its um kind of acquisitiveness, <v Oscar Brown Jr>its desire to get over and to enjoy <v Oscar Brown Jr>the finer things. <v Oscar Brown Jr>And um it goes through the changes <v Oscar Brown Jr>of life of a man. <v Oscar Brown Jr>He was a fine doctor. <v Oscar Brown Jr>We all thought so. <v Oscar Brown Jr>He treated my wife, my girlfriend too. <v Patrick Tuite>One of the problems with the justice system is that <v Patrick Tuite>the quality of your lawyer could affect the outcome. <v Patrick Tuite>That the facts will really become secondary to the quality of the lawyers. <v Patrick Tuite>And so you could have the most innocent defendant and have a terrible lawyer,
<v Patrick Tuite>or a mediocre lawyer, or an average lawyer, and you could have a stirring <v Patrick Tuite>uh prosecutor who's going to convict. <v Patrick Tuite>The problem, even though a lot of people are presumed innocent and there's proof beyond a <v Patrick Tuite>reasonable doubt. Jurors are prone to convict. <v Patrick Tuite>I believe that jurors do not like to acquit and uh <v Patrick Tuite>that's a problem. <v Patrick Tuite>And so then it gets to the quality of the lawyer and we see it a lot. <v Patrick Tuite>If this guy had less, you know, I've had clients who had been acquitted said, <v Patrick Tuite>you know, if it wasn't for you, I could see my going with the other lawyer who was in the <v Patrick Tuite>case that I'd be in jail right now. <v Patrick Tuite>It's unfortunate. That's one of the problems, it's not computerized, here are the facts, <v Patrick Tuite>put it in a machine, the machine comes out and that's human nature. <v Patrick Tuite>And so th-the best part of the system is you get the best lawyer <v Patrick Tuite>on one side and the best lawyer the other side and you present everything the jury <v Patrick Tuite>decides. Unfortunately, you don't always have the quality of counsel <v Patrick Tuite>and therefore you do end up with innocent people convicted or sometimes
<v Patrick Tuite>then the argument can go the other way. <v Patrick Tuite>Guilty people going free because he had a better defense lawyer than he had than he had a <v Patrick Tuite>prosecutor. <v Interviewer>Which is tougher, defense or prosecution? <v Patrick Tuite>Defense much tougher. Much- <v Anthony D'Amato>7th Circuit is announcing that John Branion has been <v Anthony D'Amato>blessed with the fact that so many judges, the Illinois Supreme Court judges, <v Anthony D'Amato>all the federal judges have looked at his case so that he's had more due process <v Anthony D'Amato>of law than most prisoners could ever ask for. <v Anthony D'Amato>The strange thing is, why didn't one of these judges, just one of them say, <v Anthony D'Amato>it's clear to me that um that he's innocent? <v Anthony D'Amato>How could they all have read the same thing I read and the same thing any-any person can <v Anthony D'Amato>read and-and not come to that conclusion? <v Anthony D'Amato>I mean, it's-it's-it's like two and two equals four, it's provable. <v Anthony D'Amato>And it's extremely strange and upsetting to me that all of <v Anthony D'Amato>those judges and out of all of those judges, not even one of them, much less
<v Anthony D'Amato>all of them said, hey, this-this guy, this is a clear miscarriage <v Anthony D'Amato>of justice. <v Interviewer>What would you have said to the jury? <v Interviewer>You're up there. You're allowed to finally speak to- <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I would have told them what happened that day. I would have told them everything that <v Dr. John Branion Jr>happened to me that day. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And um <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I wish I would have convinced them by telling them that <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I couldn't have done it. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>There was no way for me to do it. How can I do it with my son there? <v Dr. John Branion Jr>You know, things like that. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>How can you-how could you where when I could have had time to do it otherwise? <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Everyone knew where I was from 9:30 until 11:57 <v Dr. John Branion Jr>that morning, everyone, well, many people did. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>20 people knew I was at the hospital. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>The nursing school attendant knew I was at the nursing school at 11:45. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>The call went in at 11:57.
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>It took 15 minutes at least for the scars to fall on my wife's neck. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>That would exclude me automatically. <v Interviewer>Because he'd have to time-. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I'd have to have been there with her 15 minutes, sometime between 11:30 and <v Dr. John Branion Jr>11:57, strangling her, and then kill her, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>shoot her. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>It's impossible. <v Interviewer>Patrick Tuite ?sums? those likes to say that you paid someone to commit the crime, did <v Interviewer>you pay someone? <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Yes, I heard that. No, of course not. I did. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>First of all, I love my wife. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I-we have been married 24 years and <v Dr. John Branion Jr>she was the mother of my children. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And Donna and John were just always together. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Secondly, I don't think I could even do <v Dr. John Branion Jr>that, I couldn't ask anyone to do something like that. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And no, it would never come to my mind, never <v Dr. John Branion Jr>came to my mind.
<v Narrator>This was the block John Branion lived on in 1967. <v Narrator>The police testified they could drive the route in six minutes, never exceeding 30 <v Narrator>miles an hour, stopping for all traffic signals. <v Narrator>The six minute drive time was key to the morning timetable that could put <v Narrator>John Branion at the scene of the crime. <v Narrator>One of the many facts that would eventually lead to his conviction. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>All of my children have grown up without me. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>All of my children, with the exception of Jan, I left Jan <v Dr. John Branion Jr>when she was 14. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Your child needs a father at that time. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>?Jobi?. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I left at the age of 7. Jeff, <v Dr. John Branion Jr>it was an intermittent period, and when I saw him in time and I didn't. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Which didn't add up to more than six years of his life. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>So Jade, poor Jade, I love Jade. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>There's very little that I can leave her,
<v Dr. John Branion Jr>I hope she remains a little African princess that I call her. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I indict this society. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>I indict all the people that have me in this position because not only have they <v Dr. John Branion Jr>destroyed me, they've destroyed my family. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>One by one by one. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>My wife. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>She hardly functions without functioning for me. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>And she's a great, talented woman. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>But she can't get herself together because she's trying to get her husband out of prison. <v Dr. John Branion Jr>Jade. [Credits roll]
Program
Circle Of Plenty
Producing Organization
KCTS (Television station : Seattle, Wash.)
Contributing Organization
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
KCTS 9 (Seattle, Washington)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip-283-451g1t6q
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Description
Program Description
"Circle of Plenty is a half-hour documentary focusing on an approach to agriculture that may produce at least a partial answer to the problem of feeding the world's hungry. The program takes viewers to Willits, California, for a close-up look at the 'biointensive' gardening techniques developed there by master gardener John Jeavons and his associates. The production also visits Tula, a village in arid northern Mexico, to illustrate how this 'low-tech,' high yield agricultural method can successfully be applied in developing nations. "This production merits Peabody consideration because it does not simply report on a problem, but examines a possible solution to that problem. In this respect, CIRCLE OF PLENTY uses a different approach from what is generally seen in television journalism. The documentary functions as a visual essay, a work of literary journalism that contributes to the public good by examining a global problem and exploring a solution."--1987 Peabody Awards entry form.
Broadcast Date
1987-07-22
Asset type
Program
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:28:11.557
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: KCTS (Television station : Seattle, Wash.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia
Identifier: cpb-aacip-44354ea3f81 (Filename)
Format: U-matic
Duration: 0:28:00
KCTS 9
Identifier: cpb-aacip-cd8276300c6 (Filename)
Format: Betacam
Generation: Master
Duration: 30:00:00
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Citations
Chicago: “Circle Of Plenty,” 1987-07-22, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, KCTS 9, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-283-451g1t6q.
MLA: “Circle Of Plenty.” 1987-07-22. The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, KCTS 9, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-283-451g1t6q>.
APA: Circle Of Plenty. Boston, MA: The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, KCTS 9, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-283-451g1t6q