JACKSONVILLE, Fla. _ Former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown is taking the appeal of her fraud conviction a step beyond the panel that upheld her conviction last month.
A lawyer for the 12-term Democratic congresswoman, now serving a five-year prison sentence, asked last week to challenge her conviction in front of the entire 21-judge 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A three-judge panel rejected the appeal last month, but attorney William Mallory Kent argued that decision conflicted with precedents and that "consideration by the full court is necessary to secure and maintain uniformity of decisions."
Kent had argued Brown deserved a new trial because U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan removed a juror who said the "Holy Spirit" had told him Brown was innocent.
He said the three-judge panel was "overly deferential" to Corrigan, and that the ruling "effectively determines that groups believing in the Holy Spirit's guidance, such as evangelical Christians, are incapable of serving on a jury."
After Corrigan removed the juror, an alternate replaced him and Brown was found guilty of wire and mail fraud and several related charges involving a children's charity, One Door for Education, that prosecutors described as a sham.
Brown, now 73, entered prison in 2018 and is scheduled to compete her sentence in May 2022.
