HAMPTON, Va. - Former Second District Congressional candidate Shaun Brown and her attorney are filing to overturn her 2018 conviction.
In 2018, Brown was convicted of stealing from a program meant to feed needy children, but despite the verdict, she maintains her innocence.
The charges have to do with Brown’s work with the nonprofit JOBS Community Outreach Development Corporation. While leading JOBS with her mom, prosecutors say Brown stole from the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), a federally-funded program to feed children during the summer. Prosecutors say Brown grossly inflated the number of meals she served and overcharged the program.
As a result of Brown’s fraudulent activity, records say the USDA paid JOBS more than $800,000 in federal funds.
Now her attorney, Bradrick J. Collins, is representing her to overturn the conviction. He says she is innocent.
"She is not guilty of anything but being an educated woman of color, Native American and Black American, in the United States of America that refuses to "pay to play" and sell out poor people and people of color in her community. She is too legit to quit. Our position is outlined in the attached motion, Defendants's Reply To The Government's Response In Opposition To Motion To Vacate, Set Aside, or Correct Sentence Pursuant to 28 U.S. 2255," Collins states.
According to Brown's attorney, she believes that she is not just a political prisoner but a "political refugee." He says she believes she was wrongly and falsely accused, charged, and convicted. She has since completed her prison sentence.
Her attorney says she returned home with an autoimmune disease and a new untreated respiratory condition.
She is currently on supervised release and on house arrest until October 2022, in Hampton.
According to Collins, Brown believes she has been retaliated against as a result of filing a civil rights administrative action which she won against personnel running the Virginia Department of Health(VDH)/ United States Department of Agriculture Summer Food Service Program.
"This is but one of the continuing efforts to silence me, my mother and father from pointing to the level of "pay to play corruption" in the Virginia Department of health not unlike the Hampton Roads business forced "pay to play" experienced by my family' Shaun's Townhouse Restaurant, one small business that fought back at the cost of betrayal," Brown states.
She says Northam's Restoration Office denied her request in 2021 to have her voting rights restored as a result of the home confinement while serving supervised release. Brown says this is a further clear indication of the numerous violations of my 8th, 13th, and 14th Amendment Rights," says former Congressional candidate Brown.
In 2019, Brown filed for a new trial after it was found that three of the jurors in her case lived in Williamsburg, which is in Virginia’s Second Congressional District.
Brown was running as an Independent in the second congressional district, but a judge ordered her to be removed from the ballot due to questionable signatures on the petitions used to qualify her as a candidate.
To view Brown's motion, click here.
