The Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case that Shook Texas Prisons

By Justin Toliver

            “A man gotta do what a man gotta do,” states Eroy Brown.  

Brown, a Black man, was accused of killing two high ranking prison officials, one of them being the warden of the prison. Brown says the reason why he did what he did was because he was threatened with his life by these two prison officials.

A very well-known journalist and professor at Texas Southern University, Michael Berryhill, has been real close with Brown and his case. Berryhill is working on his book about Brown called The Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case that Shook Texas Prisons. This book will be published in October 2011.

            “Eroy Brown is a replay of the Ruiz civil rights case,” Berryhill said.

 Brown was not perfect. He lost his mother at an early age and never saw his father at all growing up.  Brown really did not have a positive guidance growing up and at the age of 17 he went to jail for burglary.

Brown was in and out of prison for different crimes.  He tried to do positive things in his life but he was always surrounded by bad things that led him back to prison.

It seemed certain that Eroy Brown was supposed to die by lethal injection because he killed two White prison officials, but his lead attorney Craig Washington a graduate of Texas Southern University, thought differently about the situation that Brown was in.

“I hate a bully that has the states power behind him,” Berryhill said.

 Brown was threatened with his life by two White prison officials. Brown killed the two prison officials by reason of self-defense. To this day, prison officials believe that Brown’s acquittal was miscarriage of justice. But as Brown would say, “A man gotta do what a man gotta do.”

Toliver is a contributing writer for Regal Black Men's Magazine, a publication dedicated to the African American community.