[Reporter's notes: This interview took place on the telephone. During the course of the interview, I rearranged various paragraphs so that things would appear more or less chronologically. I expect to meet with Mr. Brown in the near future to nail down additional details.]
Jim: When was the first press leak on Operation Lightning Strike?
Dale: 2 December 1993 was the first time a newsstory ran on Operation Lightning Strike.
Jim: When was their press conference?
Dale: 24 February 1994 was the press conference by US Attorney Gaynelle Griffin Jones and her folks.
Jim: Tell me about what happened the night you were shot at in your car.
Dale: Roughly in May of 1994 I was alone driving my Cadillac south on I-45 from downtown. It was directly midnight. I noticed this vehicle following me, I couldn't see his headlights he was so close. Subsequently, I was able to identify that the vehicle was a white Chevy pickup truck.
Because the vehicle was so close, I sped up to 90 mph, maximum speed for my vehicle. He rammed me, so I slammed on my brakes. He was pushing me, with my brakes on full. The road was curving, and I was being forced into one of the concrete construction barriers, and so I did a quick lane change to the right. This had the effect of getting me out of the way, and he was going so fast that he slammed into the barrier. His vehicle kept moving, and went onto the freeway feeder, then he came back onto the road. Then he tried to sideswipe me.
I had an unopened bottle of Corona, rolled down my window and smashed the bottle through his window and into him. He was bleeding. He put his left arm out, within 8 feet of me. He had a .38, and emptied all 6 rounds into my car. One went very close to my face. He went off the highway while shooting at me. Shortly after all this, a police car noticed us, and stopped the pickup truck. I continued on home.
Jim: Do you think the men in the truck were federal agents?
Dale: I don't know what to think. It sure would have been convenient for the government if I weren't alive to fight their charges. Several death threats on the phone followed this incident.
Jim: Tell me about what happened when the US Marshal came to your hospital room.
Dale: On or about 20 August 1994 I had major open heart surgery.
Jim: That was for the bacterial myocarditis.
Dale: Right. And, on the very same day, for some strange reason, I was indicted by the federal goverment on one felony count of bribery. I was aware of this forthcoming indictment for 15 months prior. I didn't expect to actually be indicted because the charge didn't hold any water.
I was indicted 15 months after first being approached in the warehouse by the FBI. Originally, they had threatened me with 21 separate charges. I was the only one resisting their claims.
The day I had open heart surgery was the same day they had the grand jury indict me. I think that was deliberate on the part of the government.
Four days after my heart surgery, a United States Marshal came to arrest me. I have seen him subsequently, and know that he works in the Federal Courthouse in Houston to this day. When I opened up my eyes, I could sense, partly from his body odor, that he wasn't a doctor. He had been out driving in the Summer heat, and sweating and so forth, whereas the doctors always smell very clean.
Anyway, I looked up, and this US Marshal was pulling equipment off me, and had shut off the IV computer. He had rolled me on my side. He was also shutting off the monitor equipment. As he did this, the hospital alarms went off alerting staff to equipment failure. He was a very large guy, in uniform.
The United States public defender's investigator was there to interview me. He had left for lunch, but when he returned and saw this Marshal, he grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Then two hospital orderlies held the Marshal against the wall. Casey Collins was the investigator for the public defender, and should be able to corroborate these events.
Collins asked whether the Marshal knew I had just had open heart surgery. The Marshal said that he didn't know about that. He said, "I was told by Abe Martinez to come and get him. It is my job to take him downtown right now. Mr. Brown is coming with me." Abram Martinez is a prosecutor in the US Attorney's office. Edward Gallagher III is the other prosecuting attorney for the US who was involved in my case.
Collins and the Marshal had a discussion in the hallway, and then my doctors showed up. The Marshal was escorted out of the hospital by a hospital security guard and a Texas Department of Corrections guard who had been on duty in the hospital.
Anyway, I had missed my day in front of the grand jury, because I was having my surgery. That was how they arranged to indict me, in my absence. I was assigned to a pretrial officer, who required that I meet with him downtown. I did meet with him one time.
There was a big deal made at this pretrial hearing about a courtesy I had paid on Karen Jackson. I went to her house to drop off some gifts for her children, to thank them for the gifts they gave me while in hospital. I had been ordered not to visit any of the other defendants, as part of the pretrial process. When I went to the Jackson residence, Neal Jackson, the only defendant in that family, was out of the country on a flying trip.
Martinez tried to get me put in a holding tank until trial, which would have been a year and half. Collins explained to the judge that the defendant Neal Jackson was not present when I visited his home. Martinez consistently lied to the judge.
My heart surgery had me in the hospital in August and September 1994. Then in November 1994, another clot got into my intestines. I had intestinal surgery to remove a section of my bowel. (Partial colectomy)
After missing a pretrial hearing for being in hospital for intestinal surgery, Martinez tried to get me held in contempt of court. I explained that I was in the hospital. He claimed that they had pictures of me out playing golf and fishing. This was a lie direct to the judge. Apparently, such lies are common.
Jim: So, they wanted to hold you in jail, where you wouldn't get access to very good medical treatment. Do you suppose they wanted you to die in jail?
Dale: I don't know. It would have solved a lot of their problems.
Jim: Were there any other threats to your life?
Dale: There was a bomb threat at my house in the summer of 1995. That's also when they blew up my wife's boat. That was at 2 a.m. one night. It was parked on a trailer near our house.
The next day, her pager went off. It was Hal Francis's voice on the voicemail. He stated that he was Abe Martinez, asking her to call so he could talk to her about the boat. The weird thing is, the Fire Department was still investigating and had not filed their initial report. So it was like, Hal Francis already knew about this bomb.
By this time, Hal Francis had been fired. Perhaps the message was intended to encourage my wife to testify against me.
Jim: Was that it with regard to threats to your life?
Dale: Pretty much. There were some issues when the public defenders were disqualified from working with me due to an arranged conflict of interest. It made it pretty hard for me to get legal counsel. Various other attorneys for indigents were assigned. One was a former FBI agent, who said that he was still loyal to the FBI. So he wasn't going to work.
Then my uncle came to town and helped me to hire Mike Deguerin. Due to an arranged conflict of interest, Mike Deguerin was disqualified. It was really wild to see Martinez and Gallagher when I first walked in with Mike Deguerin as my attorney. They were really surprised. Then, the next week, at the next hearing, they were up by the judge's bench, all smiles. That's when they announced that because Neal Jackson had dropped some paperwork off at Mike's office a year earlier, he had a conflict of interest and couldn't represent me. Mike explained to the judge that he had never represented Neal, or even looked at the papers, but the judge was relentless.
This was a week before the trial. So, Mike arranged for me to be represented by his brother, Dick Deguerin.
Jim: Tell me about the trial.
Dale: Well, there were 411 circumstances where our story differed from theirs, and we proved them wrong in 398 cases. They called us money launderers, bank robbers, said we had been involved with 10 other briberies. In his closing statement, Martinez called Scott [Satterwhite] and Tony [Hodgson] "The lowest type of filth here in Houston. They and their partner, the defendant will rip you off. They will clean you out." All these things were lies. But the prosecutors don't have to tell the truth.
Jim: And I guess they're immune from prosecution for slander?
Dale: I don't know. Probably.
[The interview ended at this point. It will be continued in the near future.]
