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Manslaughter defendant jailed for probation violation
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
It appears Paul Brown’s lengthy legal odyssey that spans two court systems is still not finished.
Brown, 40, pleaded guilty in December in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to a 2009 murder. He was sentenced to the nine years he served behind bars, and was given credit for time served awaiting trial.
He was arrested Friday, however, for violating terms of his parole in federal court. Brown is now behind bars again, and he is awaiting a hearing on whether his parole should be revoked.
If it is, it will be the second time it is revoked in a case that stretches back to 2004. He was placed in federal detention in the county jail Monday, where he will stay while awaiting his hearing.
A federal arrest warrant said Brown is in violation of his release because he has used drugs multiple times and missed several mandatory drug tests, as well as violated curfew.
The warrant also said he was staying at a homeless shelter and several different area hotels.
In December 2018, Brown pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for the May 2009 shooting death of Ashten Jackson, 17, on the East Side. Prosecutors said they offered the plea and the credit for time served after a witness they needed to testify was murdered in October. That murder was not connected to Brown’s case.
In common pleas court, Brown’s case was declared a mistrial three times. In 2012, a judge declared a mistrial because of a police report and a video that defense counsel did not have.
In 2013, the murder charge was briefly dismissed when Brown’s first attorney, Tony Meranto, claimed police tampered with Brown’s cellphone. A judge reinstated the charge, however, because testimony at a hearing showed there was no tampering.
In June 2015, a judge again declared a mistrial because of a video prosecutors wanted to play that Meranto said he had never seen before the trial.
Meranto had asked the 7th District Court of Appeals in 2015 to have the charges against Brown dropped because he claimed the two mistrials violated Brown’s rights under the constitution that he could not be tried twice for the same offense, but the appeals court ruled against him.
In September 2018, a third mistrial was declared when Brown, who had already dropped Meranto as his lawyer, asked for another lawyer during jury selection.
All told, in common pleas court, Brown had three juries seated and three court-appointed lawyers.
Brown was charged in 2004 in federal court with being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison. The arrest on the murder charge was a violation of his parole in the federal jurisdiction, but he was not sentenced until 2015, when he was given a two-year prison sentence.