Tyler

By CASEY KNAUPP
Staff Writer

Johnathan “Greasy Greg” Brown was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday for his role in a conspiracy to commit capital murder.

The 33-year-old Tyler man admitted to his involvement in the plan to kill a confidential informant who had been working undercover for police to buy crack cocaine.

Brown entered into a plea agreement with attorneys and received a sentence of eight years in prison from 241st District Judge Jack Skeen Jr. The defendant, who was represented by defense attorney Tonda Curry, will have to serve two years before he is eligible for parole.

Johnathan “Bisco” Toliver, 37, whom prosecutors say was the mastermind in the capital murder conspiracy, was convicted by a Smith County jury and sentenced to life in prison.

Jessie James Jackson, 53, Tyler, has pleaded guilty and was sentenced by the judge to 40 years in prison.

Assistant Smith County District Attorney Joe Murphy said Brown testified in Toliver’s trial and was truthful about his role, as well as the role of the co-defendants in the case. He said Brown has one federal felony conviction and four misdemeanors. His criminal history compared to his co-defendant’s, as well as his cooperation, led Murphy to believe the eight-year sentence was ample punishment for Brown, he said.

Murphy said earlier that because Jackson knew the CI, his former roommate, he was hired to help locate him so he could be killed by another man hired by Toliver.

Jackson and Brown drove around Tyler looking for the CI so he could be killed, he said.

Aldener Dunning, Toliver’s mother, was sentenced in a plea agreement to five years in prison. Murphy said Ms. Dunning got a five-year sentence because she had no criminal history and she only bonded Jackson out of jail and allowed him to use her car to try and locate the CI.

Former Smith County jailer Kenya Bush, 26, Longview, who allegedly provided information about the CI and a picture of the planned victim to Toliver, has also been charged with conspiracy to commit capital murder.

After the CI bought drugs from Toliver on several occasions, Toliver came up with the plan to murder the man so he couldn’t testify against him in trial, prosecutors said.

On June 25, 2006, when the CI wasn't working for the police, he was arrested in Smith County on a burglary charge and placed back in jail. On Sept. 26, 2006, undercover Tyler police investigators learned of Toliver's plot to kill the CI. At 9 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2006, an investigator received a call from the CI, asking him if he had bonded him out of the Smith County Jail. He said he and two other investigators armed themselves with rifles and bulletproof vests and went to get the CI, whom he had told to go back inside the jail until they arrived. The three armed investigators stood watch over the man for three days until they could get him out of the county.

Before Toliver’s conspiracy to commit capital murder trial, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison for selling crack cocaine to the CI, who testified during both of his trials.