Texas Denies Exoneration Funds to Alfred Dewayne Brown, Subject of Pulitzer Prize Winning Articles
A piece in the Houston Chronicle touches upon an issue that I discussed in the Labor Day Minisode of the Undisclosed Podcast. In many jurisdictions, exoneration funds are only available to defendants who have proven their actual innocence. This means that, understandably, an actually innocent defendant is entitled to compensation even if he was convicted after a by-the-book prosecution. Conversely, there could be a case in which a defendant is convicted after all sorts of misconduct by the police and the prosecution and yet not entitled to compensation because he can’t quite prove his actual innocence (perhaps in part because of evidence that was withheld at the time of his initial prosecution). Such is currently the case for Alfred Dewayne Brown.
Last year, Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle won a Pulitzer Prize for her 12 part series on Brown’s case: Dead Man Waiting. Brown was initially convicted of an armed robbery that resulted in the death of a police officer and spent 10 years on death row. Brown’s claim was that he was staying at his girlfriend’s apartment at the time of the robbery.
But after a browbeating from a Houston cop who inexplicably served as foreman on the grand jury that indicted Brown, the woman changed her testimony. Grand jury transcripts would later show that during her testimony, the cop/foreman threatened to indict Brown’s girlfriend for perjury and threatened to take away her children. She was eventually jailed for seven weeks, then released when she changed her testimony to contradict Brown’s alibi. Without his girlfriend’s testimony, Brown was convicted and sentenced to death.
Subsequently, however,
Brown’s attorneys got word from Lynn Hardaway, chief of the DA’s post-conviction writs division, that a homicide investigator in the case had found some old records while cleaning out his garage.
In the stack was a phone log apparently provided by the U.S. Marshal’s Service in April 2003 that showed a call from the girlfriend’s home number was made to her work at about the time Brown said it was – 10:08 a.m.
Accordingly, Brown sought a new trial, claiming that this was a Brady violation, and “[t]he State conceded that material exculpatory evidence was withheld from applicant.” As a result, Brown was awarded a new trial, one that will not take place because “[t]he Harris County District Attorney’s Office decided there was not enough credible evidence to try the case again.”
As a result, Brown sought almost $2 million in compensation for his wrongful conviction. That claim, however, was rejected by the
State Comptroller Glenn Hegar said Brown’s claim does not meet the mandatory requirements under Texas law because he has never been formally determined to be “actually innocent” in the shooting death of a Houston police officer.
“Our office is purely ministerial in nature and we have to look at the documents,” Hegar said. “This is one of those situations that does not have the required, necessary information to be approved.”
Brown’s attorneys contest this conclusion, and “[t]he case likely will end up back in court for a ruling on the legal definition of ‘actual innocence.'” For those wondering, according to the Texas courts,
to succeed in an actual innocence claim the applicant must show “by clear and convincing evidence that, despite the evidence of guilt that supports the conviction, noreasonable juror could have found the applicant guilty in light of the new evidence.”
Does Brown meet this standard, and should he have to meet this standard? We’ll see.
-CM