Tyrone Brown

Tyrone Brown (born 1973) is an African-American man from Texas who, in 1990, was sentenced to a life term in a Texas maximum security prison and was kept incarcerated for 17 years after testing positive once for smoking marijuana while on probation for robbing a man of two dollars at the age of 17. He was released on March 16, 2007.

Early life Brown was a high-school dropout and had been a victim of child abuse by his father, who had reportedly beat him.

Original crime When he was 17 years old, Brown and another 17-year-old committed a robbery. Brown and his partner confronted a man with a pistol and demanded that he give them his wallet. The victim handed his wallet to Brown, and after removing the two dollars that it contained, Brown returned the wallet to him. Judge Keith Dean in Dallas, Texas originally sentenced Brown to 10 years of probation for the crime, before changing his sentence to life in prison after he tested positive once for marijuana use.

Press attention Brown's case was contrasted in the press with the case of an influential white defendant; both defendants were sentenced by the same judge, Keith Dean.

After Brown's case and the contrasting treatment of the other man became well known, in part due to a feature report on the ABC News television program 20/20, the judge involved in the two cases, Keith Dean, failed to win re-election to his position.