Man will be paid for his wrongful conviction
HOUSTON — Alfred Dewayne Brown spent a decade in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, and the next five years fighting for compensation for his years behind bars.
On Friday, Texas’ highest court ruled he indeed is eligible to be paid for wrongful incarceration, overturning a denial by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
In an 18-page opinion, the Texas Supreme Court found the comptroller exceeded his authority and ordered him to withdraw his 2019 denial of Brown’s application for compensation and pay him for the time he was wrongfully imprisoned as required by the Tim Cole Act.
The ruling is the latest in a grinding saga that began in 2003, with a brazen murder of Houston Police Officer Charles Clark and clerk Alfredia Jones at a check-cashing store in southeast Houston.
Brown was convicted of capital murder in Clark’s death in 2005 and sent to death row, then spent years in prison.
The state’s highest criminal court overturned his conviction in 2014, when evidence not turned over at trial — phone records that seemed to confirm his alibi — finally surfaced after a police officer discovered the material in his home garage.
Hearst Newspaper’s Lisa Falkenberg spent years investigating Brown’s case and whether he had been wrongly sent to prison.
Neal Manne, one of the attorneys who represented Brown in his effort to win compensation, said he was “thrilled” to learn of the decision.
“We were confident our position on the law was correct, but there was enormous improper political interference by the attorney general, who has no role (in these matters), and who put political
pressure on the comptroller to deny compensation. We were confident the Texas Supreme Court would follow the rule of law and not give in to political pressure, and today's unanimous opinion shows exactly that.”
While the Texas attorney general's office had asked the comptroller to deny the claim for $2 million in compensation, the comptroller officially reasoned he did so because it was unclear whether the Harris County trial court had the jurisdiction to dismiss Brown's case.
In the Friday ruling, the Texas Supreme Court made it clear: Jurisdictional issues aren't the comptroller's decisions to make.
“Alfred Dewayne Brown's application checked all the statutory boxes, and as a purely ministerial matter, he is eligible for compensation under the Tim Cole Act,” the opinion reads. “Having met the high actualinnocence bar as determined by the district attorney and trial judge, the statute leaves to the comptroller the limited and nondiscretionary task of ensuring the verified application documents facially comport with the statute.”
“By considering matters beyond the verified documents to make a de novo jurisdictional determination, the comptroller exceeded his authority.”
Chris Bryan, director of communications for the comptroller, said in a statement that the office would begin the process of compensating Brown.
“The comptroller's office makes determinations in these claims based on the documentation provided,” he said. “This claim was no exception, and the claim followed a process that ensures the law is executed properly, including Mr. Brown's right under the law to appeal his claim to the Supreme Court. The agency acknowledges the court's guidance on this issue.”
Brown was freed from prison in 2015, when the Harris County district attorney's office decided there wasn't enough credible evidence to try the case again, and dismissed the charges against him. After Brown was released from prison, he asked for compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
Brown's effort to be compensated for his time behind bars, however, was a lengthy one.
Former District Attorney Devon Anderson dismissed charges against him in 2015, but Comptroller Glenn Hegar argued in 2016 that Brown wasn't eligible for compensation because he had not been declared “actually innocent” of the crime for which he'd been convicted.
Brown's attorneys responded by suing Harris County for “constitutional violations” a year later, and asked newly elected District Attorney Kim Ogg to resolve the matter.
Ogg reviewed the case, and in 2018 announced a former prosecutor withheld a key email that helped establish a clear alibi for Brown.
The DA's office hired a special prosecutor to re-investigate the case, and last year, special prosecutor John Raley released a 179page report that found that Brown was “actually innocent.”
Months later, District Judge George Powell concurred, and issued an amended order declaring Brown innocent.
But just a month after Powell's decision, Hegar again denied a request from Brown and his lawyers to receive compensation for wrongful incarceration.
Last fall, Hearst Newspaper's reported that Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote to Hegar and asked him to deny Brown compensation because he still had questions about Brown's innocence and arguing that a codefendant may have been bribed to change his story, records obtained by Hearst Newspapers showed.
The attorney general's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Until recently, a former prisoner being found actually innocent meant they would almost always be entitled to compensation, said Charlie Press, clinical professor and director of the University of Texas School of Law's Actual Innocence Clinic.
Reasons behind denials in other cases aren't entirely clear, but in Brown's case, politics played a significant role, he said.
“Texas is one of the few states that has (compensation) set up to prevent politics from coming into play,” he said. “Where it does come into play, clearly, is this case.”
With this ruling, that issue now will be put to bed in future claims, he said.
“There's no uncertainty anymore about what the comptroller's duty is in terms of compensation,” he said. “What the Texas Supreme Court is doing here is saying … that judges do judicial work and no one else can do that except for the courts that review those judges. In that essence, they're not doing anything out of the ordinary. What was extraordinary is what the comptroller did in this case.”
Mike Ware, executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas, said he felt the Supreme Court reached the right decision.
“I am very happy for Mr. Brown and his family,” Ware said. “This was an excellent opinion from the Texas Supreme Court. It reached the absolutely right result for all of the right reasons. I also have a lot of respect for the way in which Kim Ogg handled this case. It takes real courage to do the right thing in the face of such strong political opposition.”
District Attorney Kim Ogg on Friday issued a statement applauding the decision while condemning police's opposition of the innocence case.
“A district attorney must seek justice, not just convictions,” Ogg said in a statement. “I declared Alfred Brown innocent under Texas law when a special prosecutor proved Brown wrongfully convicted and when I was sure that no jury hearing all the evidence would have ever convicted. Brown is due his damages for the years he spent on death row and it is fitting that the Supreme Court upheld the finding of innocence in spite of a misinformation campaign by the Houston Police Officer's Union against Brown.”
As the case progressed through the courts, Houston police officers remained confident Brown indeed was responsible for the crimes for which he'd been accused. In April 2019, Chief Art Acevedo argued that Brown should not receive an actual innocence declaration.
On Friday, Houston Police Officers' Union President Doug Griffith said he was “livid” at the court's ruling.
“I'm extremely disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling to give a convicted murderer money from our state,” he said, “and that we're going to allow our citizens' tax dollars to go to him. Where's the justice for Alfredia Jones and Charlie Clark?”