Cyntoia Brown: A Teen's Murder Sentence and Second Chances

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown went viral in 2018, Cyntoia Brown was the most popular inmate in the world. She's here to share her story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And our favorite stories to tell are just ordinary American
redemption stories, second chances, even third chances that this country
allows people to have and to pursue. It's a beautiful
part of our nature. Sintoia Brown served fifteen years of

(00:33):
a life sentence for killing a forty three year old
real estate agent when she was sixteen years old after
being forced into prostitution by a man called Cutthroat. The
now married brownlong has never denied her crime, but alleges
she acted out of self defense. Here's Sintoya to share

(00:54):
her story. So. I was born Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which
is a military base right on the line Kentucky, Tennessee.
And I was raised there in Clarksville by my adopted parents.
My father was military and my mother, she was a teacher.
I was really my dad's sidekick when I was younger.

(01:17):
I considered sidekick. I guess he would considered apprentice because
anytime he would build something, I always had to go
fetch him the tools. I guess it was pretty convenient
for him. But those were one of my favorite pastimes
with my dad is helping him build stuff, helping him
fix stuff around the house, and my mother it was
the same. Whenever my father retired from the military, he

(01:40):
actually started driving Chucks, so he would be gone for
long periods of time, so it would just be my
mom and me. And she was really into gardening. I wasn't,
but I did enjoy kind of just hanging outside with
her watching her plant. So up until the point that
I turned sixteen, I thought school was the worst possible

(02:01):
thing to have ever happened to me in my life.
I should have been really great in school. I was smart,
I was always getting good grades, but for some reason,
I was always founding myself in the principal's office. Whether
that was because I didn't want the teacher to help
me with work, I just wanted to figure it out
for myself, whether I had a smart remark for the teacher,

(02:22):
just any little thing would get me sent to the
principal's office and found myself getting suspended. I believe I
was eleven when I was first expelled from school. I
had brought a bottle of notos to class, which is
caffeine pills. I had found him at my sister's husband's truck.

(02:43):
He had left the truck there whenever he was deployed,
and they went to Hawaii, and I was just playing
around one day and found these caffeine pills. Took in
the school for show and tell, and next thing I know,
I was expelled for zero tolerance drug policies. I didn't
consider them to be a drug, didn't know they were
a drug, but that didn't matter. I was kicked out

(03:06):
of school and couldn't return to public school. It seemed
like they were just really looking for an excuse, so
part of me wasn't necessarily surprised, and it really just
added to that feeling that, you know, I just wasn't
wanted there and it wasn't a place for me. I
never really fit. I was kind of an outcast. Like

(03:26):
I said, when I was growing up, my dad would
always tell me all the stories about him, you know,
and war and what he did when Charlie was coming
at three o'clock and how they did. And so I thought, Okay, well,
this is a game that I want to play with
my friends, and so my neighbor, my friend from down
the street, and some other kids in the neighborhood. We

(03:47):
were all together playing random games, you know, bubblegum, bubble
gum in a dish and any minimightey mo. And I said, well,
how about this new game, Let's play war. And they
were like, well what is that? I said, well, we're
all going to get some wrong. You stand on that
side of the street, We're gonna stay on this side
of the street, and we're just going to throw them
at each other and see what happens. And that's what
we did. And I ended up picking up the biggest

(04:10):
rock that I could that I found. Why, I don't know,
but I threw it and it hit my neighbors square
in the forehead and that was the moment that I
knew I'm about to get in trouble, like this has
gone horribly wrong. And she just started bleeding and screaming,
and then everybody was like this is all your fault.

(04:32):
And I was like, wait a minute, you all wanted
to play. I thought we were having fun. So after that,
nobody's parents really wanted their kids playing with me, and
of course I got in trouble. My dad he kind
of understood, but it was just I think that was
that was like one of the turning points when I
kind of lost a lot of friends. So going to

(04:54):
alternative school was a completely different experience. These kids had
had been involved in the justice system already. Most of
them were on probation of some kind. Many of them
had already been to facilities, and they returned back from
the facilities to go to this school. They smoked freely,

(05:16):
some of them did drugs freely. I had never been
around that because I was raised in a military community.
A lot of the kids that I was around were
kids of military families that you just don't do that.
And what was different from me being this all trnary
school around these kids is these kids didn't judge me.

(05:37):
They didn't make me feel like an outcast. They didn't
make me feel like I wasn't wanted or I had
to be this or be that to fit in with him.
And so I really found that, oh, this is kind
of where I fit, like, this is a place for me.
So we all decided to skip school. And sometimes when
we skipped school, we would just ride the city bus

(05:59):
around town, walk around downtown, and just see whatever we
could get into. But this day, Samantha says, you know,
my mom, she's not home. We can go to my house.
And we could just hang out and we're like, okay, cool.
And when we get there, she's like, oh man, I
forgot my key, and she's like, no worries, no worries.

(06:21):
My bedroom window is open. So she opens the window
and I'm the smallest one there, so they pushed me
through the window and I unlocked the door. It is
her house, but when her mother came home, she didn't
feel that we were supposed to be in the house.
She was very upset. Some things she claimed we're missing
from the house that were stolen. And I mean, I

(06:44):
don't know if anybody stole it or not. I can't
be accountable for the other people that was with me.
But we all ended up being charged not only for
breaking and entering, but for a theft of property. And
you're listening to Sentia Brown, and she's the author of
Free Centoya, My Search for Redemption in the American prison System.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story here

(07:08):
on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great

(07:32):
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we're asking you to become a part of the Our
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Stories dot com now and go to the donate button

(07:53):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our
American Stories and with Centoia Brown's story. Let's pick up

(08:14):
where we last left off of Centoya being charged with
breaking and entering and theft of property after skipping school
with friends and then going to one of her girlfriend's
homes where her mother would end up filing charges. Here's Centoia.
So after I was charged with my other three cut offendants.

(08:36):
That's bad when you say cod offendants when you're talking
about a twelve year old. But I actually had to
go to juvenile court, and this is my first time
ever in a courtroom. My father he had to pay
for an attorney to represent me. So I spent some
time in juvenile detention and the attorney ended up getting
a deal where I got out and I was on probation.

(08:59):
So whenever I went to the court, one of the
first things they do is they send you for a
mental valuation, and so they're in this facility, which I
definitely didn't feel like I fit in because this was
like a real deal mental facility. You had people who
were struggling with autism, you had people who had down syndrome,

(09:19):
you had people with schizophrenia. It was kind of scary
to be in there, and again, couldn't be around my parents,
couldn't contact my parents. And what I found comforted me.
There was there was this woman who was teaching some
of the girls there how to crochet, and I started
learning and that was something that would call me. So

(09:42):
I just brought my crochet stuff to class and I
would sit there and crochet whenever I finished with my work. Well,
one day I went to lunch and I remember that
I have got my purse, and so I went back
into the classroom to get my person. I saw that
the teacher had been in my person. She was actually

(10:02):
going through it and she was pulling out the yarn,
saying you're not supposed to be doing this, and I said, well,
you're not supposed to be in my stuff. And I
said give me that, and I took it out of
her hand and all of a sudden, she started screaming
and hollering, calling for the s R. Next thing I know,
he's coming in and she's saying I've assaulted her, and

(10:23):
I said, I did an assault her. I took my
stuff out of her hand. They said, well, did you
snatch it? I said, well, yes, it's mine. They said, well,
that's assault, and so I ended up getting charged with
a salt. I had my probation violated and I was
returned back to the facility, but this time I was
put in state custody. So two months after I had

(10:44):
turned thirteen. And in state custody, you can have an
indetermined incentence or a determined inceence. I was indeterminate, meaning
whenever they felt like they wanted to let me go
back home to my parents, as when I would go.
So I it up spending a year and a half
in state custody, And to be honest with you, the

(11:07):
only reason I got out is because my mother had
got fed up and she had threatened to actually follow
a suit against the state whenever they had allowed for
my my picture to be placed in a newspaper. So
I was fifteen when I finally got a state custody
and it was on the ride home back from Nashville

(11:27):
to Clarksville that my mom tells me that they had
been divorced. And the whole time she had been telling me,
you know, he's gone to the store, he's had his
friend's house, he's in the backyard working on the pool.
It was all I like, he had been gone that
whole entire time. But she didn't want it to affect

(11:48):
my progress in the program. She didn't want it to
overwhelm me or distract me from doing what I needed
to do to come home. So that that was a
pretty big bomb that was dropped, told me first thing.
Then all of a sudden, here's this man that I
know absolutely nothing about, who apparently they had been friends

(12:09):
from when she used to live in New York, and
now they were talking on the phone for hours and
hours and hours, and he came to visit there at
the house. And when he came to visit, it's not
like he was being a visitor. He was telling me
what I needed to do and trying to order me around.
And I was just like, hold up, wait a minute,

(12:30):
wait a minute. And so I said, well, you know what,
that fine, I'll just go back and hang out with
my friends that I met when I was on the
run from Steacus City, and that's when I ran away.
So I called up some friends that I had met
while I was on the run in Nashville. And when
I say friends, these are older women. These women are

(12:51):
in their mid twenties and I was just fifteen years old.
And they came and they got me, they welcome me back,
and there I was back living the life that I
had lived on the run before. And that meant having
sex with adult men, and that being normalized, that being

(13:13):
permitted and even encouraged by the adults that I was around,
which is something completely completely different from what I had
been raised with, but I mean it had become the
norm for me. That also meant that I was getting
high every day. I was smoking weed every single day.

(13:34):
And that was the time that I had actually met
my trafficker. Is during that time when I was sixteen
years old. So I met Cut at a gas station
here in Nashville, and I actually met him. I was
riding with friends who were looking for another man who

(13:55):
had just raped me, and they were gonna, you know,
take out some on him and confront him about what
he'd done. And we stopped at the gas station and
I wanted some some new ports, and so we walked up.
I walked up to this guy and was like, do
you have a Newport And he was like no, And

(14:17):
he offered to give me five dollars to get a
pack if I would give him my number, so I did.
After that, you know, we started talking on the phone.
He started coming to pick me up and hang out
with me, and I just pretty much just fell head
over heels within a matter of days for this stranger,

(14:37):
this older guy who did not have good intentions for
me at all. But all that I saw when I
was with him was that he listened to me, you know,
my mind. At that time, it was like wow, like
he's really interested in me. No one really pays me
this level of attention. No one really cares about, you know,

(14:58):
my life story, my thought, my feelings, what I'm into.
But here he's just like completely absorbed into it. Now
I understand that he was looking, you know, for things
that he could manipulate, he was looking for things that
he could exploit. He was listening because he needed to
find out how he could really get into my head

(15:20):
and play me. So when you're on the run. You know,
you can't necessarily just go get a job. I didn't
have an idea or a license or anything like that.
I didn't have my birth certificate, couldn't really make money
by any kind of legal means. But one of the

(15:40):
women that I was staying with, her boyfriend was actually
a drug dealer, And so there I was selling drugs
and this project in North Nashville the age of sixteen.
But really just dove headfirst into it. So whenever I
would go out and Cut would send me out to

(16:00):
go get money, he'd always sent me with his gun.
I had never shot a gun, didn't really anticipate ever
having to use it. It was just something where you
know I had it. I knew I had it. It
was just a safety measure, but he always had it.
The safety was off, there was a bullet in the chamber.

(16:22):
He said, if something ever happens, just squeeze the trigger.
So that time, this guy had picked me up in
this little white chuck, he had got me something to eat.
While we're sitting there waiting on the food to come,
that's when he had asked me, you know it was
I up for any action. So I ended up going

(16:42):
back to his house with him. And while we was there,
you know, I kept trying to like Stall because he
started acting weird, Like he started showing me guns. On
the drive there, he was telling me how he used
to be a sharpshooter and the military. And it's like,
why is why does he feel the need to tell
me all of these days? And you're listening to Sintoia

(17:02):
Brown's story and one bad choice after another, and just
some really bad choices by the system too, and by authorities,
and bad rulemaking and enforcement that almost makes no sense.
And you combine all that with a girl who finds
out dad's gone and then she's gone, and then income

(17:23):
the predators and one named cut short for cutthroat, And
she loved that he listened to her. But of course
he was listening for a reason. He was getting into
her mind. He was looking for things he could manipulate,
things he could exploit. That's why he listened, said Sintoia.
When we come back more of this story, a remarkable

(17:45):
redemption story, Sintoia Brown's story. Here on our American stories,

(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and Centoia Brown's story.
Let's pick up when we last left off with sixteen
year old Centoya at the home of a man who
had picked her up for as he called it action.
She said, he was acting weird and showing her his
guns and talking about how he was a sharpshooter. Here's Centoya,

(18:30):
why does he feel the need to tell me all
of these things? He tried to tell me that he
wrote the song by Lee Greenwood Proud to Be an American,
which obviously I ended that was a lie. Like it
was really strange. It was really uncomfortable, and like with
him talking about this gun. Then when we got to
the house, you know, showing me this gun, it's like

(18:51):
I felt that, I felt that he was trying to
intimidate me, and at that point I just wanted to leave,
so I kept trying to stall. So I said, well,
you know what, I'm just gonna go up and I'm
just gonna pretend like I'm asleep. I'm gonna ask him
if I can have a nap real quick. And so
that's what I did. And while I was laying there

(19:12):
pretending like I was asleep, he kept getting up and
going into the next room then coming back just like
staring at me, like looking over at me, going into
the bathroom, going to the next room, and like this
whole time, like I'm just freaking out. I'm like, what
is he doing? Like what's really going on? There was

(19:33):
a moment when he had got into the bed and
he had reached over and grabbed me, and I was
like ah, and I was, you know, it was a
little bit more emphatic then, just like you know somebody
who is really sleeping that may just kind of shrug away.
And I'm like, oh, he knows I'm pretending. Now. Now
he's gonna be pissed off. And he rolls over and

(19:55):
I'm thinking he's reaching for something, and all this is happening,
like all these thoughts are happening like within the space
of like two seconds, and that's just just a small
fraction of the thoughts. Like I can't even explain like
how my mom was just racing at that time, and
just panic was just really setting in. And he goes

(20:17):
and I see his body turn and that's when I
had grabbed the gun out of the nightstand, out of
the purse that was on the nightstand, and I shot him.
It was like this pop, and then it was like quiet.
So I went back to the hotel room and cut
was there at the room and I came in and

(20:39):
I was like, I think I just killed somebody, and
he was like what, like he thought I was playing.
I was like, I'm so serious, I just shot someone,
and like he didn't believe me, but he just told
me to go wipe down the car, right down the
truck and park it in the Walmut parking lot. So
that's what I did. So we were laying down and

(21:04):
the cops knock on the door, and so they come
in with these shotguns and like these big old guns
pointed at me, like cocking these guns. So I was
tried there in the juvenile court. They had a transfer
hearing about November. So I actually sat there and you know,
told the judge everything that had happened, you know, in

(21:24):
the hopes that she would see, Okay, well, this isn't like,
this wasn't a malicious situation, this isn't something that she
should be prosecuted for murder for. I'll just keep her
in the juvenile system and treat her. But then you
have the district attorney who was saying, no, like she's incourageable,
there's there's nothing else that you can do for her.

(21:45):
She needs to be tried as an adult, and as
a matter of fact, I believe all of this was premeditated.
Two weeks after the hearing, I was called down to
the visitation area and I was told by my public
defender that I was tried as an adult, that I
was going to be transferred. And I felt like the

(22:06):
world just like fell from beneath me, because now I
went from Okay, maybe I'll spend three years and the
treatment facility here going through DCS again, to know I
may end up spending the rest of my life in prison.
So I was taken to the adult jail to CCA.

(22:26):
I had to be housed in segregation, just basically stuck
in a box until my child. And my child didn't
happen until two years after I first went to the
adult jail. Very difficult because you can't like talk to
people on a regular basis, You can't have visitation with

(22:49):
your family, phone calls, anything like that. So the child
lasted several days and I think it was like six
hours they took to deliberate and then came back in.
I started looking like looking at them each and everyone
as they came in because I'm like, I need any

(23:10):
kind of sign I need to know what are they
about to tell me? And like none of them will
look at me. And this one guy that the only
black guy who was on the jury, like he just
like kind of just shook his head and hung his head.
And that's when I knew. I was like, yeah, yep,
it's not good. And they convicted me a first degree

(23:33):
murder and sentenced me to life in prison on the spot,
automatical life sentence. I didn't cry, I didn't hold my
head down or anything. And then when I got into
my cell, I just broke down. It was nighttime by
that time, and I just remember crying and praying, and
I said, God, if you get me out of here,
I'll tell the world about you, like, you know, just

(23:55):
letting him know. I'll do anything if you just get
me out of here. Please don't let me spend the
rest of my life in prison. And so there was
about two weeks between the time that I was convicted
and sentenced until I was actually transported to the prison.
And during that time, some of the women who had
already been to prison and who were back in the county,
they were trying to coach me and tell me, well,

(24:16):
this is how you need to carry yourself and you
need to walk around like this when you walk on
the compound and make sure your head's held high. And
let me show you how to throw a punch. And
so they were going through all this and I'm thinking, oh, man,
like it's gonna be rough. Like I'm thinking visions of
you know, the show OZ and every prison movie that
I've ever watched. It's like, man, like this this is

(24:37):
no joke. And you know, I start stuffing my face
with pop tarts and pretzel pieces, thinking I gotta buff
up because you know, I'm headed to the big house.
And I get there and it's like a college campus,
like you know, and I'm like, well, this is not
what I expected. I mean, it was more psychological or

(25:00):
fair and psychological oppression, more psychological attacks than there was
like the physical attacks. But I actually found that like
that was worse. So you know, my attorney had told
me before I had ever got to the prison. He
was like, you know, you can go in there. You
can start acting all crazy and I mean you can

(25:20):
do that life sentence, or you can go in there.
You can take every program that they accept you into.
You can act like you have some sense, and you
can have a chance at getting out of prison someday.
And by the grace of God, I ended up getting
into the college course came out of prison with not
one but two degrees. So missus Seabrooks was the principle

(25:42):
there at the prison. But what I will always appreciate
most about Miss Seabrooks is that she was the person,
the first person that told me God's not going to
let you out of here until you come to Him.
You will not be free until you to Christ. And
at that time I had just like fallen into this

(26:05):
state where I didn't even believe anymore. At least I
said I didn't believe. Really, I was just angry because
I felt that, you know, I did what I was
told in Sunday School and God he didn't hold up
his end of the bargain, and so I just can't
be true. But really I was just upset. And at
the time I just brushed it off. I was like, nah, I,

(26:27):
Miss Seabrooks, that's not how the law works. I'll get
it out with my attorneys argue before the appellate court,
and the appellate court overturned my sentence, and she said,
all right, I'm telling you what I know, and you're
listening to Cintoia Brown talking about her sentence, the mindset
that she had to adopt, and some people who started

(26:47):
to care about her. He talked about the psychological attacks, which,
as she put it, were worse than any potential physical attacks.
And this one lady, miss Seabrooks, who kept telling her
that God had the answers for her. She was putting
her faith in law and lawyers. When we return more
of Centoia Brown's remarkable life story, a great redemption story

(27:10):
here on our American stories, and we continue here with

(27:38):
our American stories and with Centoia Brown's story. Let's pick
up where we last left off. It's two thousand and
six and Cinoia Brown has just been convicted of aggravated
robbery and first degree murder for killing forty three year
old real estate agent Johnny Allen. While in president she
began going to college. We had just heard her principle

(28:00):
had once told Centoia that she needed to know Christ
if she ever expected to leave, but Centoia put her
faith in the law and the process. Here's Centoia with
the rest of the story. So, when I was first arrested.
All over the news, I was painted as this horrible person,
like the news just vilified me out was this dangerous individual.

(28:23):
The streets were safer without me. But my attorney had
actually met a documentary filmmaker through one of her other
cases and had invited him to come in and start
filming my process to the court system and interviewing me.
And he took all those interviews and he created a
documentary and you know a lot of people started writing

(28:46):
me from that and just like being really supportive. And
I started noticing like even within the media, like kind
of like that tie I was changing, there was some
support for me. All of a sudden, I get this
letter from I'm handed Texas. So I read the letter.
I opened it up, and immediately the thing that stood
out was that the edges of the letter was burned.

(29:10):
And okay, that was the second thing I noticed. The
first thing I noticed is that he was really fine
because he had sent these two pictures of himself. And
so I ended up writing him because something was like
i'mna write him back. I need to write him back.
And from that one letter, we started writing several letters.
We started talking on the phone. He started telling me

(29:33):
about Christ, which you have to know that everyone else
who would try to tell me about Jesus I brushed
it off. I dismissed it. I didn't want to hear it.
But there was something about when Jamie was talking to
me about him. So we continued writing. Not long after that,

(29:55):
I won him over and we just decided that no
matter what happened, no matter what the court said, God said,
I was gonna get out and we were gonna walk
in that faith, and we were going to trust in that,
and we weren't going to focus on the appeals because
my very last appeal had been denied. We weren't going
to focus on what the lawyer said. We were just

(30:16):
going to focus on the Lord. We were going to
focus on building a relationship with him. And when we
kept our focus there, all of a sudden, things started
picking up on the outside. Things started picking up with
the appeal, the appeal that was closed, and the federal court.
It all of a sudden opened back up. Six months
after he first wrote me and told me what he said.

(30:38):
I look on the news and it's a trending topic.
I look on the news and people all over the world,
from all walks of life are now talking about free
Centoia And Jamie said, are you surprised? And I'm like,
well yeah, and he said, what did I tell you
about my God? I was like, well, I know what,

(30:59):
I know what you said, and I believe it. But
it's like it's happening. He said, I told you what
he said, like he doesn't lie, and it's like it
just it just gave me goosebumps. And that was just
that was just one thing. Months after that, Jamie and
our pastor, Minister Tim McGee, he said that I was

(31:24):
going to get a date in March. He said he
didn't know what kind of date it was. He didn't
know if it was an outdate or what day, but
it was something that was going to lead to me
getting out, something it was necessary to me getting out.
And we said, okay, so March comes by first week,
goes by second week, till March goes by. Nothing, no word,

(31:48):
no anything. And then in that third week of March,
Jamie had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and I
remember calling him and he just said, you're coming home
and hear to crying and my husband like he doesn't cry,
like he's a man's man. Like, you know, jiu jitsu champion,
Like he's not sitting here crying on the phone with

(32:08):
no one, but he just broke down. He said, God
is bringing my wife home. I was like, okay, did
the lawyer call you? He's like no. I said, oh,
did you see something on news? He said no. I said, WHOA, Okay, yeah, baby,
I'm coming home. He says, no, You're coming home. God

(32:29):
told me. I heard the clearest day. The next week comes,
It's the last week of March, getting down to the wire,
and all of a sudden, March thirtieth, my attorneys called
Jamie and say we got a date for a hearing.
And the hearing that they're talking about is one that

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less than one percent of people get for clemency petitions.
It's next to impossible to get a hearing with the
pro board. And I got one, and we got that
date March thirtieth. At the conclusion of the hearing, I
ended up getting four votes for me to be granted
clemency and then two votes for me not to be

(33:10):
granted clemency. So, at this time, the governor of Tennessee
was Bill Haslam, and so it was up to him
to make the decision, and you know, I think God
that I had Jamie there was like, you need to
remember that he is not the one making the decision.
God has made the decision and he's already said what's

(33:33):
going to happen, and you need to make sure that
your faith is in Him, not in the process, not
in what anybody else down here on this earth is doing.
They're saying, you need to trust what God has said,
and I said, you're right. And when I tell you
like that is so much easier said than done. So
it was a struggle. It was a struggle for Jamie

(33:54):
as well. It was a true test of faith. At
one point, you know, Jamie was like, there has to
be something, like something more, you know that we need
to be doing, you know, with our faith. There's something
more with our relationship, you know with Christ that we're
not doing, because like, why is that there's nothing? Why

(34:14):
is it We're going through this wilderness period? And so
Jamie decided I've got to step out on faith. He
sold everything that he owned in Texas. And when I
tell you everything, I mean everything. All in the space
of one day. He had gotten rid of his Mercedes,

(34:36):
he had gotten rid of his Bentley, which was his
dream car. He had gotten rid of every stitch of
furniture and his condo and I remember just boo hoo
and crying. I said, you don't have a bed to
sleep on. What are you going to sleep on? He said,
you don't get it. He said, you don't understand. He said,

(34:58):
I am going to get my wife. I'm going to
move to Tennessee and get my wife because God says
you're coming out, and I believe him, so I'm going
to act accordingly. So he sold everything and he moved
up to Tennessee, and a couple of weeks after that,
it's one of my attorney's got the call from the
Governor's office from the Lieutenant governor that the governor wanted

(35:19):
to meet with him, and he met with him. He
let them know that he was going to grant me clemency.
So one of the things that I've learned, you know,
even from me sitting in prison, seeing people come back
and forth, back and forth and out those doors, is
the thing that made the people who stayed out different

(35:42):
from the people who came back and forth then, is
was these are the people who understood what really went
in to that action. What really went into that night
that ended up with me getting charged? What are the
real impacts of what I've done? And you know, by
going through that thought process, you really understand, like how

(36:05):
your actions affect other people. And until you understand that
your actions do affect other people, until you understand, you know,
we live in community with one another. We have to
be accountable, not just for all in actions, but we
have to be accountable to each other. Like you're not
going to learn how to live in the free world.

(36:26):
You're not going to learn how to be successful as
a citizen. You're not going to be successful as a person,
Like how can you have any healthy relationships? How can
you have any kind of healthy dealings, whether it be personal,
business or otherwise if you don't get that basic concept.
So we actually got married while I was still incarcerated.

(36:51):
Unbeknownst to me, he had already picked out a ring
with my mom. My mom had went to Texas. He
flew out to Texas for Cowboys or his Texans game.
They you know, him and her, like they had already
had this planned out where Tim was going to pick
me up in the van with Jamie and then Tim
was going to do the ceremony right there on the spot,

(37:13):
all this, that and the other. But when you know,
they came with the news to say that I was
getting out of prison. That's when he told me all
about that. And I was like, oh, how sweet. We
don't have to wait. So he was like, what do
you mean we don't have to wait? I said, oh,
we don't have to wait. We can do this now.

(37:34):
He said, how are we going to do it now?
I said, not to worry. Don't worry. I'll take care
of it. And what a laugh. And that is Sintoia
Brown telling her story. And what a love story, folks.
Yet just you can't imagine someone doing that kind of
thing for you. Free Sintoia is the book My Search
for Redemption in the American prison System. I urge you
to get it. And if you have anybody in your

(37:55):
family struggling with the law, struggling with drugs, struggling with life,
it's helf. This is a book worth reading. Cintoria Brown's
story here on our American Stories