TEXAS (USA): ALFRED DEWAYNE BROWN DECLARED ACTUALLY INNOCENT

March 6, 2019:

Death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown was declared “actually innocent” by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg on March 1, 2019, making Brown eligible for state compensation for the time he spent wrongfully imprisoned on Texas’ death row. “My obligation as an advocate is not to tell people what they want to hear but to tell them the truth,” Ogg said at a press conference. “Alfred Brown was wrongfully convicted through prosecutorial misconduct.” Brown was freed in 2015, ten years after he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of a Houston police officer and a store clerk during a robbery. Until the declaration by Ogg, Brown was ineligible for compensation because Texas law requires that, if a prisoner is exonerated by the dismissal of charges against them, they cannot receive compensation unless the prosecutor says in an affidavit that he or she “believes that the defendant is actually innocent of the crime for which the person was sentenced.” Brown’s exoneration gained momentum following the discovery of exculpatory phone records in the garage of a Houston police officer in 2013 that corroborated Brown’s claim that he was at his girlfriend’s apartment just minutes before the killings took place and could not possibly have been at murder scene at the time of the killings. Prosecutor Daniel Rizzo claimed that the records had been accidentally misplaced, rather than intentionally withheld. But in 2018, Ogg’s office discovered an email showing that Rizzo knew about the records well before Brown’s trial. A timeline of the case showed that Rizzo’s investigator had sought out the records in an attempt to rebut grand jury testimony by Brown’s girlfriend that he spoke to her by phone from her apartment shortly before the murders. Rizzo then threatened her with prosecution and jailed her until she changed her testimony. “It is impossible to examine the conviction of Alfred Dewayne Brown without confronting prosecutorial misconduct,” wrote special prosecutor John Raley, who conducted more than 1,000 hours of investigation into Brown’s case and produced the report that led to Ogg’s actual innocence declaration. “ADA Daniel Rizzo presided over a Grand Jury that abusively manipulated witnesses to supply evidence for a chosen narrative. He was provided notice of the existence and meaning of exculpatory evidence, failed to produce it to the defense and avoided it during trial. Further investigation of his conduct is warranted.” In his report, Raley concluded, “By clear and convincing evidence, no reasonable juror would fail to have a reasonable doubt about whether Brown is guilty of murder. Therefore his case meets the legal definition of ‘actual innocence.’” Lawyers who had worked on Brown’s appeals lauded the announcement. Attorney Casey Kaplan said, “The consonant bell of justice rings loudly today and shares what Alfred Brown’s family, supporters and attorneys have known for over a decade — that he is actually innocent. It is a good day.” Brian Stolarz, the lead attorney who secured Brown’s exoneration, said, “We are heartened that he found what we have known all along: Dewayne Brown is actually innocent and was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. We commend the District Attorney’s commitment to the truth and ensuring that miscarriages of justice like this never happen again in Harris County.” Houston’s police union expressed anger at the decision, holding a separate press conference immediately after Ogg’s. Union president Joe Gamaldi urged the police department to bring the case back to a grand jury.