very nervous. because of the corruption. and i just felt like something could happen to him, you know. and he said, mommy, i m not afraid to die for what i believe in. remember martin luther king? he took out what he believed in. and i said to him, i said, well, that s martin luther king. i m your mother. with only a few months until his inauguration, brown wasted no time preparing to clean house in the sheriff s department. he made a long list of everyone he was going to fire. he felt that no matter how deep the corruption went, he was man enough to handle it and get it cleaned up. when derwin was elected, i immediately sat down with him and said you need to know some things that we have uncovered in getting ready to start your administration. but brown also had sources inside the department that had given him information about incumbent sheriff sidney
dorsey now says that right after the election, he wrote a note to patrick cuffy saying he should assassinate sheriff-elect, derwin brown. apparently, i guess, the only thing to say is he had the same he had the same evil within in his heart as i did. dorsey told the prosecutor that cuffy replied, quote, we are way ahead of you, and ate the note. he thinks he made a mistake and wanted someone to say whether his mistake made him a murderer. to me that s not really a confession. it s not the bearing of the soul. it s, well, i did have something to do with it but not really as much as i really want to admit to. attorneys say dorsey s confession does nothing to reduce his life sentence. meanwhile, walker and ramsey plan to appeal their life sentences to the u.s. supreme court. some members of the brown family are satisfied, even though they called this partial justice. three out of five, i ll take it. three out of five. and they re away for good.
now, the irony of all of this is that there s a shootout at cuffy s house and cuffy is being prosecuted for something totally unrelated to the murder and that s when he wants to come talk to us. j. tom morgan went in the back room. cuffy went into the back room. cuffy s attorney went into the back room. and the hearing was delayed. and several hours later, cuffy flipped. prosecutors agreed not to charge cuffy and another former deputy sheriff, paul skyers, in return for their testimony against dorsey and two others. mr. dorsey, did you have anything to do with this? the day after cuffy flipped, former sheriff sidney dorsey was handcuffed and taken by officers armed with machine guns to this same jail he once ran. did you do it? did you do it? sidney dorsey was now charged with masterminding and directing four of his deputies to murder sheriff-elect, derwin brown. i m innocent. what to you say to the charges?
i don t know. i ve never been in this position before. corruption testimony ended. then came the case for murder. one of dorsey s friends testified dorsey told him that derwin brown would never assume the office of sheriff. he made the statement, words to the effect that derwin brown would never assume the office of sheriff, that there would be a special election. first there would be an interim sheriff appointed. there would be a special election. he would enter the race and he would win. co-conspirator paul skyers described the murder weapon which he said was dismantled and thrown in a drain. and patrick cuffy once again described being ordered by dorsey to strangle brown. he insisted on that method. it was not convenient for us because four of us had decided that we did not want to wrestle
outgoing sheriff sidney dorsey was arrested and charged with ordering the ambush and assassination of brown. the man that defeated dorsey in the sheriff s race and with promising promotions to four of his deputies in return for the killing. did you do it? did you do it? innocent. innocent. two of those deputies, melvin walker and david ramsey, were also arrested. unable to crack the case for nearly a year, prosecutors agreed not to charge the other two admitted co-conspirators, patrick cuffy and paul skyers, with any crime related to brown s murder in return for their agreement to tell the whole story. we needed their testimony. as much as i hated it. but this was the type of crime that had no one come forward we would have never solved it. d.a., j. tom morgan first asked brown s widow, phyllis, if she could live with cuffy going free. she said as long as he wasn t