Impossible Mission
On April 3, 1989, 22-year-old Chip Flynn was shot to death in a Central Florida orange grove. Soon after, police arrested Crosley Green, a black man recently released from prison on drug charges.
On Sept. 5, 1990, all all-white jury convicted Green, then 32, of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death. Ever since, he has been on death row.
Last year five prominent private detectives got together to try to exonerate Green. They believe he is innocent. 48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriarty followed them as they revisited crime scenes, reinterviewed witnesses and reinterpreted evidence, in an effort to save Green's life.
At trial in 1990, Green was offered a plea bargain. Had he accepted it, he'd be a free man today. But he didn't take it.
"I didn't kill that young man," Green says. "So why should I have taken that plea bargain?"
The fight to clear Green began in 1996, when he began corresponding with Nan Webb, a 57-year-old white Floridian. Webb, a part-time computer instructor who is also an anti-death penalty activist, became convinced of Green's innocence.
 After corresponding with Green, Nan Webb persuaded Ciolino to look into the case. |
And Ciolino has experience with this kind of case. In 1999, he made headlines when he succeeded in having wrongfully convicted Anthony Porter released from Illinois' death row.
Ciolino believes that men with criminal records - like Green - are often railroaded by investigators pressured to solve cases.
"We're not a bunch of left-wing, silly liberals running around screaming, 'The poor man is on death row, and we shouldn't kill him,'" he says of the five-man "dream team" of investigators, all working without pay on the Green case.
"Quite the contrary, most of us are in favor of the death penalty when it's properly administered," he says.
Webb, though, says that Ciolino has a heart of gold. "He looks like a big old Irish Chicago cop, but inside there is [a] very humble man," she says. "I told Paul that he's an angel."
"Crosley Green is systematic of the problem we have with the death penalty with this country," Ciolino says. "We're in a rush to judgment to convict people and punish them to make ourselves feel good."
"This is a feel-good conviction to ease the tension in the community: 'Let's et them off the street. Let's kill them.' And we can all get back to normal," he says.
One of the main witnesses in the case was Kim Hallock. She and Flynn, her ex-boyfriend, had gone to Holder Park in Mims, Fla., a little after 11 p.m. to talk.
 Chip Flynn was shot to death in 1989. |
Then, she said, the man grabbed her and forced her out of the truck and onto the ground. Then, according to Hallock, Flynn, who was still in the truck, got his own gun, which Hallock had hidden on the car seat earlier.
And although his hands were tied behind his back, Flynn came out of the truck shooting, Hallock said.
Hallock told police that she then got into the truck, drove to a friend's house, and called 911. Within hours, Flynn was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police began investigating that night. By morning, they had a suspect: Green, who had watched a baseball game at Holder Park the night before.
Although Ciolino and his four counterparts are sure that Green is innocent, they have a difficult task. In trying to reconstruct a crime that happened in 1989, they have to run down scores of leads and interview witnesses who have changed addresses many, many times.
Dead ends are just part of the game, says one of the group, Joe Moura, who runs one of the largest detective agencies in the country. "That's what it is; just keep hitting it, keep on hitting it, just like baseball: You strike out here, you strike out there. But every once in a while, you get a single, a double."
The first break came when they got a witness, Alan "Moon" Murray, to admit that he had lied at Green's trial.
In 1990, Murray had told the jury that Green had told him that he had killed someone. Now Murray says he lied, because at the time he had been on parole, and he felt pressured by detectives to come up with a story about Green.
"Man told me if I don't say what they want me to say, I go right back to the slammer," Murray says. The detectives videotaped Murray's confession, but that was not enough to reopen the case.
To find out what happened next on the case, read Dream Team Gathers Evidence.
Produced by David Kohn;