Exoneree lawsuit moves forward
Ex-death row inmate suing for compensation
A former death row inmate’s sweeping lawsuit against the city, county, district attorney and Houston police is moving forward even after a federal judge on Tuesday tossed claims against the prosecutor behind Alfred Brown’s wrongful conviction.
“It is absolutely a win,” said attorney Cate Edwards, who is representing Brown in his quest to get compensation for the years he spent in prison. “It gets us through the first gate. A lot of these cases get dismissed at the outset.”
The 35-year-old Brown launched a federal suit in June accusing prosecutors and police of both concealing and fabricating evidence and violating constitutional rights to
due process and a fair trial. Those violations landed Brown behind bars for 12 years, many of which were spent on death row.
When he was finally released in 2015 — after a Houston police investigator found exculpatory evidence sitting in his home garage — the state comptroller denied Brown’s request for compensation because former district attorney Devon Anderson never dubbed him “actually innocent” when the charges were tossed.
Deadline disputed
After taking office in January, freshly elected District Attorney Kim Ogg also failed to declare Brown’s innocence, prompting his lawyers to file a federal suit in an effort to find compensation through a different venue. The defendants pushed back with a series of motions to dismiss.
“We look forward to presenting the facts,” said Seth Hopkins with the Harris County Attorney’s Office. “We appreciate the time and attention the court gave our motions.”
The ruling came after oral arguments held in Houston just over three weeks earlier.
One of the points of dispute was whether Brown had simply filed his claim too late. Although both sides agreed there would be a two-year statute of limitations, Brown’s lawyers argued that it would have started when he was released after prosecutors dismissed his charges in June 2015, while the defendants argued that it would have started seven months earlier when an appeals court vacated his conviction.
“Harris County believes he waited too long to bring suit and that under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure and Texas Government Code, his claim should have been filed against the state — rather than the county,” Hopkins said Wednesday.
But Brown’s attorneys argued the county allowed the “long-standing policies of a conviction culture” underlying the specific misdeeds alleged in the suit.
“Their culture over there is a breeding ground for constitutional violation,” Edwards said Wednesday.
Specifically, the legal filing accuses prosecutor Dan Rizzo of allegedly pressuring multiple witnesses to falsely finger Brown as one of three men behind the slaying.
‘Ready to move forward’
Although Judge Lee Rosenthal said Brown’s attorneys managed to overcome the qualified immunity applied to police targeted in the suit, she tossed the claims against Rizzo, who is covered by a higher standard of prosecutorial immunity.
Many of the claims against the city and county are still in, and now Brown and his attorneys have till the end of March to file an amended petition, which could possibly bring Rizzo back into the case.
“I am very hopeful that we can have an open, honest exchange of information with the defendants and find out more about their role in sending an innocent man to death row,” Edwards said. “We’re ready to move forward with the discovery process.”
Brown was originally convicted of capital murder in the 2003 shooting death of HPD Officer Charles Clark, but his conviction was overturned by an appeals court after one of the defendants in the suit discovered phone records in his garage that corroborated Brown’s alibi. The Houston Chronicle previously delved into the case when columnist Lisa Falkenberg won a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for a commentary series in the months leading up to his release.
The city and police union did not respond to requests for comment.