by Carrington Brown
My life would have been a lot simpler had I not met Dustin Turner almost five years ago. Dustin has been in prison for 18 years for a crime he did not commit — a crime to which his SEAL swim partner has admitted. Unless Governor Bob McDonnell accepts a recently filed clemency petition, the Commonwealth will hold Dustin in prison for 82 years … with no parole.
As a mother of five sons, I have never been involved in politics or the judicial system. But I was so confused and perturbed by the injustice I saw that I could not sleep at night. This was not how our justice system was supposed to work.
The more I studied the case, the more I became convinced that Dustin deserved his freedom. Dustin, who comes from a Midwestern family with strong values, was only a few weeks away from his dream of graduating as one of the youngest U.S. Navy SEALS in the country. On the night of June 19th, 18 years ago, when he and college student Jennifer Evans were sitting in a car in the lit parking lot of a bar, his SEAL swim buddy, a very drunk Billy Joe Brown, showed up at the car needing a ride home. Jennifer let him into the car in the seat behind her. After she smacked his hand away from her hair, he killed her in a drunken rage.
The media circus that surrounded the case in Virginia Beach clouded the truth. The citizens of Virginia need to learn the facts of this case.
I feel so strongly that our justice system in Virginia has failed that I have gathered a group of citizens — lawyers, business people, a rehab consultant, a grandmother, a PR person, and many others — to gain clemency for Dustin from Gov. McDonnell. All legal avenues have been exhausted, so clemency is his only hope to spend the second half of his life free.
Clemency was created for cases where the law failed. Dustin and his swim buddy were tried separately and convicted with different versions of the same crime from the prosecutor. In Virginia, if someone is killed during the course of a crime, all participants can be charged with murder. According to the Commonwealth, Dustin and Brown abducted Jennifer with an intent to defile, so Dustin was as guilty of murder as the man who actually killed her. But there was no abduction. The prosecutor and appellate court judges invented the theory contrary to all evidence. As as a SEAL who was indoctrinated to protect his swim buddy at all costs and as an impulsive teenage male, a panicked Dustin helped hide Jennifer’s body — a misdemeanor calling for 12 months in prison, not 18 years. He later led police to the body and told them the truth after his superiors told him he could protect his swim buddy no longer. Read more.
Carrington Brown is a painter, landscape designer, wife and mother who lives in Goochland County.
