BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – And the hits just keep coming for Crosley Green, who learned this week that he will not be eligible for parole until 2054, according to News 6 partner Florida Today. Yes, you read that right.
If you’re doing the math, that means Green would be 97 years old. And incredibly, that is after the Florida Commission on Offender Review shaved five years off for good behavior.
Green’s lawyers argue that the state has made a mistake and the true date should be 2023.
The Titusville man convicted of murdering Charles “Chip” Flynn after kidnapping both Flynn and his girlfriend Kim Hallock in 1989, just can’t catch a break. We, along with many supporters, believe Green to be innocent of these crimes and wrongfully incarcerated for the better part of 33 years, including the first 20 on death row.
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We also believe, along with a group of state and federal prosecutors, state supreme court judges and law professors, that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal made a mistake last year. That court ruled against a 2018 U.S. District Court for the Middle District for Florida decision to vacate Green’s conviction and set him free or try him again because prosecutors withheld critical information from Green’s lawyers that would have likely resulted in a different outcome.
But the bottom line here is that Green’s attorneys with Crowell & Moring, who have worked on his case pro bono for 15 years, argued this week that the commission made two significant mistakes when calculating Green’s parole date back in 2015.
The first, attorney Vince Galluzzo argued, is that if the commission had properly calculated Green’s Presumptive Parole Release Date (PPRD) per the commission’s own rules and precedent, his tentative parole release date would be no later than June 2023. He argued that the felony murder conviction should be the only thing considered and not the lesser charges of robbery with a firearm and kidnapping.
The commission had erred, Galluzzo said, in adding 40 years to Green’s parole date for the kidnapping charges. The state correctly did not add time for the robbery convictions.
Galluzzo argued that the commission should, by precedent and their own guidelines, counted only the felony murder charge.
The second argument that fell on the commission’s deaf ears was that a Florida regulation requires that the PPRD must be vacated when an inmate leaves the Florida correctional system and then reset if an inmate is subsequently reincarcerated.
Green left the Department of Corrections in April 2021 when he was released to federal supervision. After the 11th Circuit Court ruled against him, Green then turned himself in to the Florida Department of Corrections this April, meaning his parole date should have been recalculated. It was not.
The commission voted to “take no action” on this issue, which may open the door for Green to appeal.
The only action the commission did take was to shave off 60 months before Green is eligible for parole because of his good behavior.
Good behavior is an understatement. Green has not one disciplinary report on his record. He just spent two years on house arrest where he held a job, was active in his church and complied with every stipulation of his release to federal probation custody. His warden signed a declaration citing Green as a model prisoner as did two corrections officers.
“Mr. Green was a model citizen,” attorney Vince Galluzzo said during Wednesday’s administrative hearing in Tallahassee, while also offering compelling information attesting to Green’s actual innocence. “There can be no better predictor that Mr. Green would remain the same model prisoner if given the opportunity.”
The commission will review Mr. Green’s case again in March 2026.
“This is a heartbreaking ruling for Crosley Green’s family and his fiancée. We will continue to fight for Crosley’s freedom and to reverse the injustice of continuing to imprison this innocent man,” said Keith Harrison, a partner at Crowell & Moring who has led the fight for Green’s freedom for the past 15 years. “We will keep fighting until Crosley walks out of prison a free man. We hope the commission will continue to consider the highly unique circumstances of Crosley’s case and the reasons he is an ideal candidate for parole. Crosley should be freed.”
This is a complicated case with 30 years of litigation and there is no easy way to write about it without getting into details.
About Crosley Green case
Crowell & Moring first got involved in Green’s case in 2008 on referral from the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project.
The firm was successful in getting Green removed from death row. Then, in 2018, a federal district court in Orlando vacated the conviction and ordered that Green be released or provided a new trial. The court found that Green had been wrongfully convicted and his constitutional rights were violated when prosecutors withheld witness interview notes that stated the first two responding law enforcement officers told the prosecutor that they concluded the victim’s ex-girlfriend committed the crime.
In April 2021, Green was released from prison on conditional release (house arrest) while his case was pending appeal. The state of Florida appealed the decision, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Green’s victory and the U.S. District Court for the Middle District for Florida ordered Green to return to custody of the Florida Department of Corrections to complete his sentence.
About the crime
Green was sent to death row after an all-white jury convicted him of murder in 1990. With no physical evidence tying Green to the crime, the case was built on the word of Flynn’s ex-girlfriend, Hallock, who said a Black man carjacked the couple from Holder Park and drove them to an orange field where she claimed a shootout ensued though there was no gunshot residue found on Flynn.
Hallock left a wounded Flynn in the orange grove and drove to get “help.” But, in doing so, she passed payphones, a hospital and her own home where she lived with her parents and instead drove to the home of Flynn’s friend who talked her into calling 911.
She did not give clear directions to the officers sent to the scene and more than an hour passed between the shooting and first responders reaching Flynn. When Brevard County Sheriff’s deputies Mark Rixey and Diane Clark arrived, Flynn ―who never mentioned an assailant nor asked if Hallock made it to safety ― simply told the deputies he wanted to go home.
Hallock never asked for Flynn, who died on the way to the hospital.
Rixey and Clark saw no evidence of the struggle and shootout that Hallock had claimed and in fact Flynn’s jacket and some clothes were laid out on the ground as if to create a makeshift blanket nearby. Homicide investigators, intent on finding the Black assailant from Hallock’s account, ignored what Rixey and Clark told them.
Hallock was given a highly suggestive photo lineup and told the killer was among the men pictured. She picked Green’s photo.
The two officers would eventually share their beliefs that Hallock was responsible with prosecutor Chris White, who took notes from their meeting. White never shared those notes with Green’s defense attorney, Rob Parker. This infringement of Green’s constitutional rights is known as a Brady violation and was the basis for Federal Judge Roy B. Dalton overturning Green’s conviction in 2018.
There are many other problems with the case including four state witnesses recanting their testimony, saying they were coerced or threatened into testifying by Chris White. All four were facing legal problems of their own at the time.
Other problems with the conviction included:
- Green, who did not know how to drive a stick-shift vehicle, somehow managed to drive Flynn’s truck while aiming a gun at his “prisoners.”
- Green left no fingerprints at the scene, despite supposedly being in the car and driving it.
- A junk science dog track was admitted during the trial even though the dog was supposed to have followed sneaker tracks in Holder Park that were a sneaker brand Green did not wear.
- Despite Hallock’s account of a shootout, there were no shell casings found at the scene. The only bullet recovered could have come from Flynn’s own gun.
- Numerous inconsistencies with Hallock’s story including her omission that she and Flynn had sex that night and it was her and not a Black assailant who tied Flynn’s hands behind his back.
Green’s attorneys said they were weighing options for their next move.
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