Email Shows Texas DA Had Phone Records Showing Alfred Brown Was Innocent, But Prosecuted Him Anyway

According to new­ly dis­closed records, the Harris County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney who pros­e­cut­ed Texas death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown was aware of phone records that cor­rob­o­rat­ed Brown’s asser­tion of inno­cence long before the case went to tri­al, but with­held the records from the defense and intim­i­dat­ed a wit­ness who orig­i­nal tes­ti­mo­ny was sup­port­ed by the records into false­ly tes­ti­fy­ing against Brown. 

Brown was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2005 for the mur­ders of a Houston police offi­cer and a store clerk dur­ing a 2003 rob­bery. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked him to the mur­ders and he con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that he had been at his girl­friend’s apart­ment when the murders occurred. 

Brown won a new tri­al in 2014 after police inves­ti­ga­tor Breck McDaniel dis­cov­ered copies of the phone records in his garage. At the time, pros­e­cu­tors said that the records had been inad­ver­tent­ly mis­placed. However, an email that was released by the Harris County dis­trict attor­ney’s office on March 2 in response to a civ­il suit filed by Brown shows that McDaniel alert­ed for­mer Harris County pros­e­cu­tor Dan Rizzo to the exis­tence of the records on April 22, 2003, the day after his girl­friend, Erica Dockery, had told the grand jury that Brown had called her from her apartment. 

McDaniel told Rizzo in the email that he had obtained Dockery’s phone records ​“hop­ing that it would clear­ly refute Erica’s claim that she received a call at work” from Brown. Instead, McDaniel said, ​“the call detail records from the apart­ment shows that the home phone dialed Erica’s place of employ­ment” twice on the morn­ing of the killing and that Dockery had called Brown back from work. 

A Pulitzer-Prize-win­ning Houston Chronicle inves­ti­ga­tion revealed in July 2014 that, after her tes­ti­mo­ny, a police offi­cer who served as the grand jury fore­man in the case threat­ened Dockery with per­jury for sup­port­ing Brown’s ali­bi. Then — after Rizzo had received the email con­firm­ing the truth­ful­ness of Dockery’s tes­ti­mo­ny — pros­e­cu­tors jailed Dockery for sev­en weeks until she changed her tes­ti­mo­ny to implicate Brown. 

After Brown was exon­er­at­ed, he applied for approx­i­mate­ly $1.9 mil­lion in cash and annu­ity pay­ments under Texas’ exon­er­a­tion com­pen­sa­tion law. Prosecutors claimed that the court pro­ceed­ings lead­ing to Brown’s release did not con­sti­tute a deter­mi­na­tion that he was ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent,” and his appli­ca­tion was reject­ed in April 2016. 

Cate Edwards, Brown’s lawyer in the civ­il case, called the email rev­e­la­tions ​“hor­ri­fy­ing.” Brian Stolarz, who rep­re­sent­ed Brown in the appeals lead­ing to his exon­er­a­tion, called the dis­clo­sures “[v]indication.” He said he was ​“sick­ened and dis­heart­ened” that “[o]nly now, after a civ­il law­suit, does the whole truth final­ly come out.’ But he said he was ​“encour­aged that Dewayne is vin­di­cat­ed and his long jour­ney to jus­tice is near the end.” 

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who took office in November 2016 on a plat­form of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, issued a state­ment say­ing that ​“The Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct require that ​‘the appro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary author­i­ty’ shall be informed when a lawyer becomes aware that anoth­er lawyer has com­mit­ted a vio­la­tion of applic­a­ble rules of pro­fes­sion­al con­duct that rais­es a sub­stan­tial ques­tion as to the lawyer’s hon­esty, trust­wor­thi­ness or fit­ness as a lawyer in all oth­er respects.” The state­ment said ​“the Harris County District Attorney’s Office will noti­fy the State Bar of Texas of the new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence so that it may inves­ti­gate the prosecutor’s pro­fes­sion­al con­duct while han­dling the Brown case.”