Judge denies Corrine Brown stall; Sentencing on for November

Corrine Brown’s post-prison future may be in concert promotion.

Former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown filed a motion on Tuesday to delay her sentencing past mid-November, citing impacts from Hurricane Irma.

Federal prosecutors didn’t take long to file a response in opposition, saying Brown’s “bare bones” motion is “without merit and should be denied.”

And on Thursday, the court sided with the prosecution.

“Defendant has not articulated why a continuance of “at least four months” is justified. While the Court is sympathetic to Ms. Brown’s circumstances following the hurricane, it is in the interest of justice for the sentencing to go forward as scheduled. If defendant can demonstrate at the sentencing hearing that there is some document or information that she was unable to obtain, the Court will consider at that time whether to allow her additional time to produce it,” Judge Timothy Corrigan asserted.

Brown, a Congresswoman representing Jacksonville and other areas mapped into the district from 1993 to 2016, was convicted of 18 counts in a federal fraud trial regarding “One Door for Education,” a sham educational charity Brown and her cohorts raised money for and extracted money from between 2012 and 2015.

Brown has already failed in petitions for a new trial and for an acquittal in this case.

Brown’s fate will be known Nov. 16. That is one day after sentencing for One Door co-conspirators Ronnie Simmons and Carla Wiley.

Judge Corrigan, as has been the case throughout the trial, sympathized with Brown, but essentially sided with the prosecution logic.

“Brown’s bare bones motion—filed two days before she is required to submit objections to the initial Pre-Sentence Report (PSR)— cites her loss of “personal papers and effects” during Hurricane Irma as a basis to justify a four-month continuance without any explanation as to how such loss renders her incapable of preparing for her sentencing on November 16,” the prosecution noted Wednesday, adding that no other criminal case with sentencing scheduled nine weeks after the storm has been delayed four months.