Another perspective on the condemned Quintez Brown: A Response

Atlanta, GA - Ms. Emalee Morley recently wrote a column in the Courier-Journal about her harrowing experience when young Quintez Brown shot at then mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg in February 2022. It would be wrong for those of us who know and have supported Quintez to condemn her. Ms. Morley’s writing certainly seemed heartfelt and cathartic. She has every right to her pain, and I respect that. While this is not an attack, a few things in her article deserve a response.

I want to be clear at the outset that I, for one, am not an anti-Semite. That nasty label has been affixed by some to anyone who has sought a bit of grace for Quintez and a deeper understanding of what became of him. Nor am I anti-Craig Greenberg. I knew him and had love for him long before he entered politics. I voted for him, support him, and am willing to vote for him again. In fact, I was at a small dinner with him and his lovely wife Rachel just a few weeks ago. Our children know one another and are in the same friend circles. I still have love for the brother and always will.

I wrote a few pieces about my relationships with both Craig and Quintez a few years ago and will not bore you with repeating their content. Read them below if you are so inclined. But what does bear repeating in the wake of Ms. Morley’s piece is that no one, not one single soul that I know, has ever said what Quintez did was right or tried to justify it. He did it. We know he did it. We just wanted to understand why he did it, get him needed help, and not throw him away.   

Ricky L. Jones: What happened to the brilliant Quintez Brown?

Ricky L. Jones: Why Quintez Brown deserves my help.

I am sincerely happy that Ms. Morley and no one else in that room was physically harmed. God knows I and people like me have seen more violence, trauma, and death than anyone should and know how it changes people’s lives. Please understand that I wasn’t born with a Ph.D. or to a privileged family. I was raised in the housing projects of Atlanta. I’ve witnessed three people killed in my life, the first when I was 7 years old.

I stood with a close friend when we found the bloodied bodies of his two younger brothers who were shot to death in our neighborhood while I was in college. A dear cousin, Nekeba Turner, and her boyfriend were robbed, bound, and shot in their heads when I was in graduate school. I’ve have had guns pulled on me three times in my life, been in various places where shots were fired, witnessed stabbings and beatings, and have been shot at once myself. All those things are seared into my psyche.

So yes - I understand Ms. Morley’s pain, but elucidation is mandated here. Very importantly, she writes in a damning passage, “Brown swore under oath that he was not mentally ill during the shooting. He testified that he knew exactly what he was doing.” That’s actually inaccurate. Brown never admitted that. In fact, the record shows that the judge was careful to not address his mental health at the time of the shooting during the plea hearing. He simply asked Quintez, as he must under law, if he could understand what he was pleading to in his current mental state. I imagine it’s easy to misunderstand that legal nuance, but it’s incredibly important.

Ms. Morley also argues that “qualified medical professionals evaluated him and found he was totally in control of his faculties.” That’s not completely accurate, either. Actually, professionals were divided in their opinions. Experts who evaluated Quintez in the early aftermath of the shooting found that he was, indeed, mentally impaired. Court-ordered experts who evaluated him long after the incident were split in their diagnoses. While neither found him “insane” (which is an incredibly high bar), there were no uniform conclusions as to whether or not he suffered from a mental disorder.

Ms. Morley goes on to say she is happy that Quintez will be imprisoned but is “disappointed that members of the Louisville community won’t be held accountable for the part they played” in it all. She excoriates what she calls the “small — but significant — number of people who not only rushed to his defense, but, in their own ways, seemed to encourage the toxic environment that led to the shooting.” Confusingly, even after admitting the number of people, “friends even,” who showed Quintez any sympathy was “small” she writes, “The number of seemingly empathetic individuals who debased themselves to excuse the actions of a would-be political assassin was astounding.”

It's almost as if Ms. Morley felt any number of people who knew and loved Quintez and were concerned about what caused his mental break, no matter how small, was too many and they should be ashamed. That reasoning follows the path of those who blanketly cast him as a terroristic, calculating, radicalized “political assassin” undeserving of further inquiry, understanding, or humanization. They would seemingly have those of us close to Quintez believe we have been, knowingly or unknowingly, sitting in the presence of a dormant Lee Harvey Oswald for years and should accept that narrative without question.

I’m honestly not sure how our small band that cares about Quintez and openly expressed it should be “held accountable” as Ms. Morley desires. Should organizations and individuals who wanted a deeper exploration of his deterioration also be imprisoned, fired from our jobs, or shamed in mainstream media, X, or Tik-Tok? Since she feels we’ve “debased” ourselves, should we be further debased publicly somehow? Should we and his lawyers be stripped and flogged in the town square? It’s unclear. 

It is not popular, but those of us who have known young Quintez Brown for years know something broke in him and is still broken. I’m not sure it will ever be completely repaired. After all, like me, he is a child who has mental health issues in his family. I’ve known him since he was in high school and taught him in college. I have observed him through the visitors’ window of the Grayson County Jail, a place I’ve repeatedly taken the hour-long drive for short 15-minute visits. He is not the same young man I met years ago.

I am nearly brought to tears every time I see him.

I’m not arguing Quintez is insane in the conventional sense. Again, that’s a high bar. But one doesn’t have to be insane to suffer from a serious mental condition. Ms. Morley is right, I’m not a mental health expert but I’ve seen mental illness up close. I wouldn’t call my own mother or sister insane, but they struggle mightily with mental issues. For my mom, it’s bipolar disorder. For my sister, it’s clinical depression. My mother’s drifts in and out of reality and my sister’s inability to fend off sadness have caused indescribable struggles for our family over the years that continue to this day.

I remember Quintez’s initial mental break when he inexplicably disappeared in the summer of 2021. Some of us honestly thought he was dead. Thankfully he wasn’t, but he was noticeably different after he was found. It was bad. I saw him as he sat in court in a zombie-like state after the manic episode that led to the 2022 shooting. He was markedly worse. Yes, with time and medication, he is now better but he is not the same. His countenance and conversations are often fundamentally different. So, I’m sorry but I can’t agree with the argument that nothing is wrong with him.

Like me, Quintez was largely raised by his grandmother. I’ve remained in communication with her and his lawyers through all of this. Yes, he pled guilty. His lawyers advised him to do so, not because they felt he doesn’t have mental issues or that lies had been told about that fact. The reality is this case was tossed into federal court in the aftermath of comments made by Mitch McConnell when Quintez was granted bail.  

Ultimately, federal prosecutors offered a heartbreaking choice with which some communities are all too familiar - take a plea deal or suffer an even worse fate. For Quintez it was serve 15-to-18 years in prison or 25-to-life if he, his family, and attorneys deigned to fight it out in court. Quintez’s loved ones didn’t want to lose him for life if his attorneys lost a complicated and difficult case where public sentiment was squarely against him. It was just that simple.

So this phase of Quintez Brown’s odyssey has ended. A brilliant boy with a broken mind will now sit in prison for many years. He will serve more time than many convicts who have actually killed people. He will carry the scarlet brand of felon when he is released. He will have problems voting or receiving public housing assistance in many places. Some landlords will not rent to him at all. He will not be able to receive food stamps or student loans. He will probably never have the solid professional career which many thought he would. But on the bright side, he may be able to run for president. Such are America’s contradictions.  

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Morehouse Man Dr. Ricky L. Jones is the Baldwin-King Scholar-in-Residence at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Professor of Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville. He generally writes about race, politics, culture and democracy but touches on other interesting things as well.