24 years after a horrific tragedy, a family gets a chance to exhale

• Charles Thompson/PennLive
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Thompson has covered state government for The Patriot since 1999. Prior to that, he had covered various Cumberland County municipalities and school districts. Thompson lives in Carlisle with his wife, Beth, and their two children.

A scared, lonely teen mom who left Dauphin County via a Harrisburg courtroom 23 years ago has been granted the rare opportunity chance to come back now, a sadder-but-wiser 43-year-old who has said she is ready to make the most of a second chance at life.

Tina Brosius got that chance Thursday via commutation of the life sentence imposed in 1995, following her conviction for the abandonment death of a newborn daughter in Lower Paxton Township’s Brightbill park the year before.

The news simultaneously triggered a rush of painful memories, conflicting reactions and, in some corners, rejoicing, over the latest twist in a sad case that has lodged for 24 years in the collective conscience of the greater Harrisburg community for a laundry list of reasons.

Brosius, an inmate at the state prison for women in Muncy, had not spoken to her commutation attorney Stephen Grose as of Thursday afternoon. But Grose, in a telephone interview with PennLive, said he knew precisely what her mindset would be.

“She’s floating right now,” he said.

The family’s joy came through loud and clear in a Facebook post by Kerri Brosius, one of Tina’s two daughters and another resolute advocate for this day, so much so that she has been postponing her wedding for the hoped-for release of her mother.

Other advocates were just as happy, including columnist Nancy Eshelman, who had made Brosius’s case a regular topic of her work for the The Patriot-News and PennLive.

“So relieved, so happy. It’s been a long road,” Eshelman told us by email Thursday evening.

“A lot of people put a lot of time into seeing Tina set free, but nobody worked harder than she did. She’s been a model inmate, a leader and educated herself in the years since 1994.

“I’m thrilled for Tina, her daughters, her parents and everyone who worked toward this day. This is the best possible Christmas gift.”

The crime

Brosius was put away for a death that shocked the conscience of the midstate and laid bare a family fractured by the issue of teen pregnancy.

According to her defense attorney, Elizabeth Stone, Brosius went to the park on May 7, 1994 in a panic because she feared her parents would evict her from their house if she had a third child.

Ernest and Lorraine Brosius had earlier testified that they had threatened to kick Tina out when she had her first child at age 15, and told her she would have to leave when she had another baby 15 months later.

“I knew if I got pregnant again I’d be out on the streets with my two babies,” Tina Brosius testified in her own defense. “I didn’t want that. I was trying my hardest to keep them fed, to keep them clothed well. I didn’t want anything to happen to them.”

Brosius delivered her third daughter in a portable toilet, leaving her to die. Brosius, as part of her defense, stated that she thought the baby was stillborn, asserting that she hadn’t felt it move during the pregnancy and that it didn’t make a sound when it dropped into the toilet’s catch basin.

“Why didn’t you take the baby out of the toilet?” Stone asked her.

“Because I was scared,” Brosius answered.

The drowned baby was discovered the next day.

Prosecutor Ed Marsico, now a Dauphin County judge, told jurors he believed Brosius made a conscious decision to deliver the child in hiding and to leave it behind.

“She knew she was in labor, and she knew what she was doing,” Marsico said, according to reports at the time. “Tina Brosius had a problem and that was her third pregnancy. She had to make that baby disappear.”

Jurors took about three hours to convict her of first-degree murder, a crime that in Pennsylvania carries an automatic term of life in prison without parole.

That was 1995.

In the 23 years since, Brosius has attacked prison life, her supporters say, with a passion, taking multiple courses, developing an expertise in upholstering furniture, and generally serving as a positive role model to others who have followed her to SCI Muncy.

She has long since owned her mistake, telling Eshelman in a 2008 interview: “I made a mistake. And I own up to my mistake. It’s something I live with every day, but I can’t turn back the hands of time.”

She has also reconciled with her parents – who stepped up to raise Tina’s children – and grown into a caring, committed relationship with her daughters.

The family’s closure of ranks behind Tina was probably a big reason that she became one of the few lifers to win the unanimous recommendation for commutation from the five-member state Board of Pardons last year.

It also helped that the Dauphin County district attorney at the time, John Cherry, testified on her behalf.

At last year’s public hearing on commutation, Cherry, a Dauphin County judge now, laid out how negotiations over a plea to third-degree murder – which carried a maximum term of 20 to 40 years – collapsed when he and Stone were unable to agree to a specific recommendation for sentence.

Cherry said he simply wanted the court to be able to make that call.

But at this point, Cherry said last year, Brosius has served “well beyond” what she would have served under an open plea, adding that he saw no useful purpose in her continued incarceration.

Wolf signed the commutation order Thursday.

It was one of two issued by the governor. Wolf also commuted the life sentence of Raymond Jordan, 58, for a 1985 stabbing homicide in Philadelphia. The Brosius and Jordan cases are the third and fourth commutations granted by Wolf in his first term as governor.

Wolf’s press office did not respond Thursday evening to a request for the governor’s thoughts on these cases.

The road forward

There is no release date set for Brosius at the moment. A state Corrections Department spokeswoman said Thursday that may depend on bed-space availability at one of the community corrections centers – essentially halfway houses where a commuted prisoner must go for at least one year.

But Grose, Brosius’ attorney, said a Harrisburg-area employer that prides itself on giving ex-cons a chance has stepped up with an offer of employment for Brosius, and her family’s church – Calvary United Methodist in Lower Paxton – is working on helping her get a reliable used car.

The biggest question, of course, may be will the 43-year-old Brosius be comfortable resuming life on the outside in a community where the memory of her past crime is still palpable?

It was an issue Pardons Board members took up with her directly during their private interview with Brosius last year, Grose noted. She said that, buoyed by the forgiveness of her family, and a support network of friends and church members, she felt ready for whatever comes.

In addition, Grose said, a psychiatric evaluation supported her release.

“It’s not going to be easy by any means,” the attorney said Thursday evening. “But she’s got the right attitude, and she’s got a lot of help.”

Grose, who took on Brosius’s clemency application on a pro bono basis, said Brosius’s case should give everyone a chance to reflect on the need – at least in some cases – to allow the chance for redemption.

“Twenty-four years ago, I was not in her corner. I thought she got what she deserved,” Grose noted. “But she got more than she deserved. … If we could all just sit back a little bit, instead of just throwing out judgment right away, I think that would be good for everybody.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.