Who Will Speak For Karen Brown?

November 6, 2024

As the pendulum swings back from the peak of Mass Incarceration, we as a country have finally begun to take action to right some of the wrongs that have incurred. We don’t have to look far to hear about folks convicted on ‘junk science’, those who are overly sentenced, wrongfully convicted and even lethally injected in the name of justice.

More recently in the news fueled by the attention of Kim Kardashian has been the case of the Menendez brothers. I have seriously mixed feelings, yet it saddens me to feel this way. Honestly, it stings every time I hear it. I do applaud the work Ms. Kardashian is doing by giving these cases the attention they deserve. As I hear these cases highlighted and measured against what we all take for granted today, I can’t help but ask…..who will speak for Karen Brown? The similarities with the Menendez brothers can be seen as striking.

Karen Brown has been incarcerated since 1986 when she was 21 years old. Karen received a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. In 2021, her third time in front of the parole board she was unjustly given a serve-out, to spend the rest of her natural life in prison for a murder that she was present for but did not commit. Brenda Beers-Reineke, Ky Parole Board Member at the time stated that she had many letters of support that focus on the fact that she is not a threat to the public anymore and has redeemed herself but that it’s the Parole Board’s job to balance what she did for herself against what she did to others.

Karen has been an exemplary role model to her peers with no major institutional rule violations in her nearly 40 years of being locked up. It was a tragedy that continues to traumatize her to this day. A young person, also a victim to the physical violence induced by the killer, she continued to fear for her own life, as the threat of violence continued until she herself was able to go to the police.

The Lexington, Kentucky case was touted as a murder-for-hire by the murder victim’s wife, alleged lover/drag performer (Karen) and another co-worker for the insurance money. In reality, Karen had become the unbeknownst target of an opportunity by the victim’s wife, as the fall guy of her sinister plan. The plan? To have her husband killed for his life insurance money. Karen had known the ‘wife’ for only 2 months from work as they and several other employees would ‘party’ together. Karen admittedly enjoyed the attention she received from this young woman who was considered attractive at the time. Although they ‘partied’ together they had never been a ‘couple’. It was this small moment in time that would change the course of many lives for years to come.

Fueled by booze and drugs under misleading accusations, Karen went to the victim’s apartment with the killer. Karen, having heard repeatedly the ‘wife’s’ accusations of physical and emotional abuse, was under the belief she was saving a damsel in distress, that in all actuality turned out to be the devil in disguise!

Her trial, with the wife as a co-defendant with different attorneys, was one of the most sensationalized trials in the state of Kentucky, being played out in the media prior, gaining national attention, to a final gag order. In 1986, it was a quick turn-around from the arraignment to trial by today’s standards. It was 7 months, and during that 7-month period there had been a mass killing spree in Lexington executed by two women, also members of the LGBTQ community which cast an additional negative spotlight on her case. The Prosecuting DA referred to her as a ‘homosexual’ and/or ‘lesbian’, over 200 times throughout the trial! Both cases became eligible for the death penalty.

The case has been the subject of a book that sold over 100,000 copies, numerous sensationalized crime shows, and podcasts that have regurgitated some of the same false narratives on a continuous basis, that continue to pop up all these years later. The DA had admitted publicly, years later that Karen was least culpable and duped by the ‘wife’.

The media has done her no favors, never having heard her account of events. Karen’s own attorney at the time would not allow her to testify for fear that some of her adverse childhood events might change his portrayal of her to a 1986 jury. As ineffective counsel, he decided to roll the dice, and Karen lost.

This past year marked Karen Brown’s 60^th birthday, having spent nearly her entire adult life behind bars. Her defense attorney from that time, nearly 90-years-old reached out a couple years ago to admit his culpability that he withheld that she was in fact offered a plea deal of 15 years to testify against the actual killer. The same attorney also would not permit her to take the stand in her own defense or tell her side of what occurred that night. She was granted an evidentiary hearing around 2002 and granted a new trial which another judge reversed and then “retired” the next day.

Karen has stated both on record and in private that she continues to pay for that crime every day for Michael. It’s what Karen has done with her life since first incarcerated and has continued to do since receiving her serve-out, that stands out and has been consistently documented in her institutional record from day one.  She has numerous letters of support from lives she has touched, former staff/parole board members, additional pillars of the community, certificates of program completions, accomplishments, volunteer work, working with kids, illustrating a children’s book, dog trainer program, painting murals, providing tours to college students, speaking with newcomers to the institution, served on panels, 7 post-secondary degrees, including a master’s in Christian counseling and with only one institutional ticket in 38+ years for kissing a peer who had just received a pardon from the governor, an institutional ticket that also sent her to the “hole”.

Karen continues to lead the prison music ministry program, works in the chapel as a clerk, and volunteers in the prison hospice where she fears she herself will die one day. Arrested at a time when mass incarceration was taking off, she entered KCIW when there were merely 130 women, which today tops over 600. I believe the harsh sentencing in the case against Karen Brown was a sign of the times on both national & local levels.

The Kentucky Department of Corrections states that “the mission of the Kentucky Parole Board is to make decisions that maintain a delicate balance between public safety, victim rights, reintegration of the offender and recidivism”, further stating that “the goal is to utilize research and evidence-based practices in order to keep Kentucky on the cutting edge with advances in the field’. The Ky Parole Board is mandated to consider both rehabilitation & safety for citizens upon release.

Karen is clearly rehabilitated and does not pose any safety concerns to the citizens of the Commonwealth or anywhere else for that matter! She has now been given a new sentence by the Kentucky Parole Board, of death, based on a static risk factor that will never change, the crime she was present for. Like many, she has never carried white, cis-male privilege, she did not grow up with financial wealth or influential parents. Karen has never wavered, has remained humbled and continues to serve others and maintain her integrity even though she will never be scheduled before the Parole Board again.

Karen is 60 years old, having lived 38+ years with only Ky Prison healthcare which has been failing even as I write this. It has been recently reported that every year a person is incarcerated it takes two years off one’s life. She has only 2 immediate family members surviving but has a solid re-entry plan also supported by friends whose lives she’s touched and continues to touch. Her mom is in her 80’s. Karen, so desperately wants to be able to care & spend time with her mom.

Karen does not want to die in prison-a death sentence she truly does not deserve. Second Look laws and research on emerging adults have begun to take effect for some folks but many of the elderly in prison may not live to see the day when their state “catches up”. We all know how bureaucracy can be a slow process to endure. Despite receiving a ‘serve-out’ Karen has continued to live her life as her faith dictates. She has touched the lives of countless.

Who will speak for Karen Brown? Me that’s who! Why? Any one of us could’ve been Karen Brown…as an emerging adult in the mid-1980’s trying to find a place in the world, or at least our part of the world-in central Kentucky. Much has changed in regard to acceptance & inclusion with the LGBTQ population from that era. In ‘1985-Kentucky’, Lexington was a bit of a safe haven for the LGBTQ population, rich with the University of Kentucky, a vibrant arts community, women’s community and horse industry.

I knew Karen back then, and even though we were only acquaintances, we were all ‘family’, drawn to Lexington under similar circumstances. These were the circumstances of the time, both "butch" young lesbians recently dropped out of college in search of community & family where we felt acceptance & belonging being our true authentic selves. Any one of us could’ve been Karen Brown, a fall guy to the likes of a sinister plan orchestrated by a histrionic, narcissistic sociopath!

Who will speak for Karen Brown? Me, a social justice advocate for decades in the fields of addiction and higher education in carceral settings. Who will speak for Karen Brown? Someone who’s freedom was spared because of Karen Brown. Who will speak for Karen Brown? We should all speak for Karen Brown, locked in a tragically failed parole system in Kentucky.

Clemency is a cornerstone of our criminal legal system. Governor Beshear, we need governor’s to lead with justice & mercy. We need to streamline and prioritize with transparency. Each person that falls through the cracks is someone’s loved one…if they are lucky to have any family left at all. Who will speak for Karen Brown? I do and we need Clemency now!

Cheryl Goodall-Martin MS, LICDC-GAMB. Social Justice Advocate        

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