() — A Florida man who served three decades behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit is due to return to prison Monday after spending the past two years building a life outside those walls.
Since his conditional release in 2021 amid appeals, Crosley Green, 65, has worked at a machine grafting facility, attended church and spent time with his grandchildren. He even fell in love.
“I’ve been with this man for two years,” his fiancee Kathy Spikes told . “Not being able to have a 5 o’clock phone call to say, ‘I’m home,’ for me to say, ‘What do you want for dinner,’ that’s what worries me.”
His return to prison comes about two weeks after US District Judge Roy Dalton ruled that he must turn himself in to authorities by April 17 to resume his life sentence.
Green was released from prison on parole in 2021, about three years after a federal court in Orlando vacated his conviction. The state of Florida appealed that decision and won last year, and Green’s conviction was reinstated. Dalton allowed Green to remain free while he exhausted his legal options. Green’s legal team petitioned the US Supreme Court, but in late February the court refused to hear his case.
“I can’t be mad at anybody,” Green told . “I don’t want anyone else to get mad at anyone. Anger will get you nowhere. It’s not going to do (anything) but hurt you. I’m happy. I’m not happy to go back. I have my future wife, I have my friends who came here with me. I have my family.”
Green was convicted of the 1989 shooting death of 21-year-old Charles Flynn. Green, who is black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury, then was sentenced again to life in prison in 2009 on a technicality related to the sentencing phase of his trial.
In 2018, Judge Dalton ruled that prosecutors improperly withheld evidence that police at one point suspected someone else as the shooter. But late last year, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and reinstated Green’s conviction, saying the hidden evidence was not relevant to the case.
Green’s only options to stay out of prison now are clemency or probation, according to his legal team.
“We believe he is a leading candidate for parole,” said Green’s attorney, Jeane Thomas. “He has shown that in the last two years he has been under supervised release. He has been an incredibly successful person abroad with his work, his church and his family.”
Thomas pointed out that leniency is not the same as exoneration. She says it’s just a mechanism through which the state decides someone has served enough time behind bars to be released.
Since his release, Green has worn an ankle monitor and has been “a model citizen,” according to Thomas.
“For 15 years, we have believed wholeheartedly, 100 percent, in our client’s innocence,” Thomas said. “As lawyers, we have to believe that the justice system will get it right. We are going to keep fighting. This is a grave injustice. And we think we’ll eventually get it right.”
Despite the latest ruling, Green remains upbeat as he fights to prove his innocence. In a statement shared by his lawyers with , he said: “For me, it’s just another part of what I’m going through now to get my freedom. That’s all it is”.
In addition, he attributed his perseverance to his faith in comments to .
“If everyone can believe in themselves the same way that I believe in myself, with the Lord, then you can understand and say the things that I can say by not allowing anything to come between you and your faith,” he said.
Eliott C. McLaughlin contributed to this report
