JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Former Jacksonville City Council member Reggie Brown is asking a federal judge to delay government seizure of his house until appeals of his fraud conviction are exhausted.
“I will be homeless,” Brown told U.S. Magistrate Monte C. Richardson in a motion he wrote himself that mentions his release from prison this month. “This will create an additional hardship as I transition from prison back into the community. As a military veteran, I’m pleading with this court to assist me with the reentry process to reduce all possibilities of recidivism.”
U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard approved a preliminary order last week for Brown’s home on Ray Road in Northwest Jacksonville to be seized to help cover a $411,752 forfeiture Brown was told to pay when he and fellow former council member Katrina Brown were sentenced to prison in October 2020.
Brown, 59, was released this month from a minimum-security camp at Federal Correctional Institution, Jesup in southeast Georgia but he told Howard he’d still seek to appeal his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court if needed.
A three-judge panel from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said in November that arguments from both Brown and Katrina Brown “lack merit.”
But a court-appointed appellate lawyer has asked for an “en banc” rehearing by the entire court, and Brown argued it would be wrong “to force a sale before I exhaust the legal process.”
Brown argued that prosecutors seeking the seizure "misrepresented the facts" in telling Howard no payments had been made on the forfeiture. Brown wrote that he "was informed that my payment toward the forfeiture would begin February 2022" with $150 due each month.
"I am prepared to make all scheduled payments as established by the courts," he wrote.
Brown suggested the government could simply file a lien on the property to assert its claim on the property while the appeal continues.
In October 2019, a jury found Reggie Brown guilty of 33 counts, and Katrina Brown guilty of 37 counts that included mail and wire fraud and money laundering involving misleading a lender financing a project by Katrina Brown's family to open a barbecue sauce factory on Commonwealth Avenue.
None of the crimes involved their roles as council members. But the two, who are not related, were suspended from office soon after their May 2018 indictments.
Katrina Brown, who was sentenced to 33 months behind bars, is scheduled to remain in prison until June 2023, a federal Bureau of Prisons website said Tuesday.