Shortly after Cynthia Luckey gave birth to Mauriceo MaShawn Brown, on July 3, 1975, in San Antonio, Texas, the single mother began to notice odd behavior in her second child.

He would often eat paint off the walls and the window frames of their home, she says, before digging into the walls and munching on whatever materials he could extract from them.

Then, when Brown was 2 years old, his biological father kidnapped him and brought him to California, where the two lived on the streets, scavenging for food and necessities, for nearly four years.

Mauriceo Brown attended Lincoln Elementary School in San Antonio

On Brown's sixth birthday, according to his mother, Brown's father brought him back to Texas, malnourished and suffering from nutritional deficits. Brown returned to his mother, an older sister and a younger brother.

According to his mother, Brown's early childhood experiences left him physically and mentally scarred, and he was subsequently diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder and severe depression.

For years, he struggled to follow directions or pay attention in special-education classes, even with the aid of Ritalin. Early on, Brown was labeled a problem child who was often in trouble at school for lying and stealing.

When Brown was 14, Luckey says, she found a noose hanging in his room with a chair underneath it. Brown admitted to his mother that he had attempted to kill himself.

It was also around this time, she says, he began to get in trouble with the law for petty theft and shoplifting.

"He always seemed to be stealing for others or to give away," his mother wrote in a court affidavit. "He was a follower and wanted to please others."

In his teen years, Brown told CourtTVnews.com that he found a social outlet in basketball. Encouraged by his success on the high school basketball team, he dreamed of becoming a professional NBA star. When he reached the 10th grade, he was finally transferred from special education to regular classes, a transition which he described as "painful" at times.

Ultimately, gang life on the streets of San Antonio, with its promise of fast money and respect from his peers, proved to be more appealing, and Brown had several brushes with the law before his 21^st birthday.

While he was still a high school student, Brown was arrested for numerous crimes, including shoplifting, theft of a vehicle, possession of an explosive weapon and criminal trespassing. 

Death row inmate Mauricio Brown spoke with CourtTVnews.com on July 12 at the Polunsky Prison Unit in Livingston, Texas.

In 1995, he served a 90-day jail sentence for the unlawful possession of a weapon. Also that year, he dropped out of school when he was 19 and in the 11th grade, after pleading guilty to selling a pipe bomb to an undercover officer at his school for $5.

He also received probation in 1995 for attempting to break into a BMW parked at a local mall.

In January 1996, Brown's girlfriend gave birth to the couple's son, at which point Brown says he was determined to turn his life around. Eight months later, however, he and three friends were arrested for murder after a confrontation with the son of a prominent San Antonio defense lawyer resulted in the young man's death.