Lost papers keep man in prison for 19 years
He was to have been paroled no later than 1980

WARMINSTER, Pa. -- A man convicted of murder in 1965 spent an additional 19 years in prison because of some misplaced paperwork.

David Marshall Brown, 54, was freed after his lawyer discovered a copy of the missing seven-page plea agreement in the file of Brown's co-defendant, who was released in 1976 under the same deal Brown had with prosecutors. The agreement made Brown eligible for release no later than 1980.Brown, a Warminster native, was freed last Friday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this morning. His lawyer, Sharon Meisler, declined to comment on his whereabouts but said he was living in the area.

"It's hard to say exactly what went wrong in this case," Meisler said. "It looks like just a series of errors, premature motions and some legal gobbledygook that caused it to be disposed of the wrong way."

Brown was 19 when he was charged with two other men in the murder of Eugene T. Jordan, a 62-year-old delicatessen owner. He was accused of accompanying the shooter into the delicatessen; the third man allegedly drove the getaway car.

He and the driver of the car pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and robbery in exchange for a deal that stipulated that the District Attorney's Office would not dispute parole after 15 years -- despite their life sentences, Meisler said. The other man was freed under that deal. The shooter, not part of the plea deal, continues to serve a life sentence.

Edward D. Ohlbaum, a Temple University Law School professor and former Philadelphia public defender, called the failure to free Brown "incomprehensible."

"Certainly some people who were alive, that were part of this negotiation, should have known about this," Ohlbaum said. "This was not something that was recorded in the dark in Sanskrit."

From 1980 onward, a series of attorneys representing Brown filed motions seeking his release under the terms of the plea agreement. But no reference to the agreement had been entered into the court record, and the prosecutor at the time could not recall any deal. Brown's original lawyer is dead, Meisler said.