CONCORD, MASS. (WHDH) - Timothy Brown looks around his prison cell every day and wonders why he’s still at MCI-Concord.
“It’s surreal, like you can’t really believe that it’s happening,” Brown said. “Waking up in a place when you know you’re not supposed to be in there and then having to fight for that is a battle in and of itself.”
The 36-year-old from Lowell has spent the last 15 years serving a life sentence for murders of Hector and Luis “Toni” Delgado. But, Brown wasn’t the gunman. He wasn’t even in the house where the brothers were shot.
“To be labeled a murderer, and never having left your house, it’s hard for the mind to comprehend,” Brown said.
Back in 2009, brown was hanging out with friends in his Lowell apartment. They asked him for some hoodies and a gun, and he gave them what they wanted. Brown claims he had no idea they were planning to rob the Delgado brothers.
“I didn’t think that it was my business to know what was going on around me, as long as it wasn’t affecting me in that moment or unless I was invited,” Brown said. “I would take responsibility for that because if I could’ve intervened, that would’ve been my obligation to try to intervene.”
But, he said nothing and the robbery turned deadly. Even though Brown was home asleep when the brothers were shot and killed, state law at the time allowed prosecutors to charge Brown with murder because he supplied a gun.
“I don’t want to minimize the fact that this is a tragic thing. There were lives that were lost, but we have to make sure that the punishment fits the crime,” Brown said.
Prosecutors convinced jurors that the crime couldn’t have happened without Brown’s help.
“Trust me, I’ve been over this, I’ve played that trial a lot in my head so many times over 15 years and I still can’t see how,” he said.
When asked if he felt like he was innocent of everything that happened, Brown said he wasn’t saying that he shouldn’t have been punished.
“But what I can say is that not to the degree to what I was sentenced to,” he said.
Brown fought his life sentence all the way to the state’s highest court in 2017.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided that the felony murder law that allowed Brown to be sentenced to life was unfair. Now, prosecutors must prove malice to seek such a high punishment.
“You have to intend to either kill or cause great bodily harm,” legal expert Edward Molari said.
Although Brown’s case prompted the SJC to change the law, it came too late to impact him.
“When we change the law, why aren’t we applying it to all those that are affected by it past and present,” Brown said.
7 Investigates reached out to a relative of the Delgado brothers, but she would not talk about the case.
Brown says he has never had a chance to apologize to them until now.
“First thing I would say is, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for your loss and the hurt you went through and I know that it doesn’t ever go away. There’s constant reminders — everyday life, memories, birthdays, holidays, it doesn’t go away and it comes back up all the time and I apologize for that,'” Brown said.
Brown is currently appealing to get all of the charges against him dropped.
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