JACKSON – A Pike County woman charged with killing her boyfriend nine years ago is asking for a new trial. Clara Brown, 53, is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of her live-in boyfriend Charlie Tate in 2001. Brown was convicted of stabbing Tate to death while the two argued.
Brown is asking for a new trial because she said she involuntarily pleaded guilty to a murder charge in 2002, but was under the impression from her attorney, that she was pleading to the lesser charge of manslaughter which carried a possible 20-year sentence.
In 2004, Brown filed a motion for post-conviction relief claiming her guilty plea was involuntary and that she received ineffective assistance of counsel.
The circuit court denied her motion for post-conviction relief.
The court, in fact said: “Brown provided no evidence to support her claim that her plea was involuntary” and she “did not produce any evidence of what statements her counsel made that caused her to believe that she was pleading guilty to manslaughter. The record clearly contradicts her claim.”
In 2008, U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate dismissed Browns’ appeal.
Brown was scheduled to appear at a hearing in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on her new request.
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