Sherwood Brown Exonerated in Mississippi, 186^th Death-Row Exoneration Since 1973

Sherwood Brown has been exon­er­at­ed of the charges that sent him to death row in Mississippi in 1995 for a triple mur­der he did not com­mit. On August 24, 2021, DeSoto County Circuit Court Judge Jimmy McClure grant­ed a pros­e­cu­tion motion to dis­miss charges against Brown (pic­tured after his release), who was released lat­er that day after hav­ing spent 26 years on the state’s death row or fac­ing the prospects of a capital retrial.

“We are extreme­ly thank­ful to see Sherwood walk out of prison a free man,” said John R. Lane, a prin­ci­pal at the law firm, Fish & Richardson, which rep­re­sent­ed Brown pro bono. ​“After all of this time, we nev­er lost hope, and are grat­i­fied jus­tice has final­ly been served.” Brown also was rep­re­sent­ed pro bono by co-coun­sel from the Mississippi Innocence Project and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Brown was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of 13-year-old Evangela Boyd and received two life sen­tences for the mur­ders of her moth­er and grand­moth­er. His con­vic­tions and death sen­tence rest­ed in sub­stan­tial part on false expert foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny, as well as and the per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny of an jail­house infor­mant who was a pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed felon fac­ing addi­tion­al, seri­ous charges for car theft, and who claimed that Brown had con­fessed to the mur­ders. Prosecutors had argued that blood that was found on the sole of one of Brown’s shoes came from the vic­tims and two foren­sic bitemark ana­lysts false­ly claimed that a cut on Brown’s wrist was a bitemark that matched the girl’s bite pattern. 

DNA evi­dence lat­er showed that bloody foot­prints in and around the mur­der scene con­tained only female DNA and the blood spot on Brown’s shoe con­tained only male DNA. DNA test­ing on a swab of Boyd’s sali­va did not con­tain Brown’s DNA, refut­ing the claim that she had bit­ten Brown. DNA tests on the sex­u­al assault kit col­lect­ed dur­ing the autop­sy found no DNA from Brown but showed that Evangelista Boyd’s pubic hair and her bra con­tained DNA from uniden­ti­fied males. A foren­sic sci­en­tist from the Mississippi Crime Laboratory found that none of the hair evi­dence recov­ered from the cloth­ing and bod­ies of the vic­tims had any micro­scop­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics sim­i­lar to Brown’s hair and a crime lab fin­ger­print ana­lyst found that none of the fin­ger­prints found at the scene belonged to Brown. 

Brown is the 100^th African-American in the U.S. since 1973 to be exon­er­at­ed from a wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. According to data main­tained by the Death Penalty Information Center, 186 men and women who had been sen­tenced to death pur­suant to wrong­ful con­vic­tions have now been exon­er­at­ed, sev­en in Mississippi. Brown is the third for­mer Mississippi death-row pris­on­er exon­er­at­ed in the past year. Curtis Flowers was exon­er­at­ed on September 4, 2020, and Eddie Lee Howard was exon­er­at­ed January 8, 2021

Junk sci­ence — and in par­tic­u­lar false bitemark tes­ti­mo­ny — has con­tributed to numer­ous death-row exon­er­a­tions. Dr. Michael West, a noto­ri­ous pros­e­cu­tion expert wit­ness whose false bitemark tes­ti­mo­ny has con­tributed to at least five wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions, includ­ing three wrong­ful death sen­tences, pro­vid­ed a let­ter to the pros­e­cu­tion that “[t]he wound on the left wrist of Sherwood Brown is a human bitemark. It is a bitemark of great sever­i­ty and is con­sis­tant [sic] with the time of the attack. The bitemark pat­tern is high­ly con­sis­tant [sic] with the den­ti­tion of Evanlie [sic] Boyd.” 

West ulti­mate­ly did not tes­ti­fy in Brown’s case because he had a sched­ul­ing con­flict — he was pro­vid­ing false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny against anoth­er Mississippi death-row exoneree, Kennedy Brewer. However, Dr. Harry Mincer tes­ti­fied ​“that the [upper] teeth of Evangela Boyd high­ly prob­a­bly had made the bitemark on … the left wrist of Sherwood Brown.”

Bitemark-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion claims such as those made by West were the sub­ject of blis­ter­ing crit­i­cism by the National Academies of Science in their land­mark 2009 report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. In 2011, West sub­se­quent­ly admit­ted in a depo­si­tion in the case of death-row exoneree Eddie Lee Howard that he ​“no longer believe[s] in bite-mark analy­sis. I don’t think it should be used in court. I think you should use DNA. Throw bite marks out.”

In 2012, the Mississippi Supreme Court grant­ed Brown’s motion for DNA test­ing, lead­ing to the evi­dence that debunked the blood and bitemark cor­ner­stones of the prosecution’s case. In their motion for a new tri­al, Brown’s lawyers argued that ​“the two pieces of phys­i­cal evi­dence that the state alleged at the 1995 tri­al, linked peti­tion­er to the crime scene — and upon which the state relied to gain a con­vic­tion and sen­tence in this mat­ter — do not in fact link the peti­tion­er to the crime scene, and are not what the state pur­port­ed them to be.” 

The Mississippi Supreme Court over­turned Brown’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in October 2017. Despite the excul­pa­to­ry DNA evi­dence, Brown remained in cus­tody as pros­e­cu­tors tried to build anoth­er case against him. Over the course of three years, four more lab­o­ra­to­ries test­ed the DNA evi­dence and came back with the same results while Brown remained in coun­ty prison fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal retri­al. ​“Every time, there was noth­ing incrim­i­nat­ing Sherwood,” Lane said of the state’s actions. ​“The state was try­ing to find some­thing to incrim­i­nate Sherwood, but every time they did, it kind of stumped them deeper.”

Finally, after the years of extra DNA test­ing, the pros­e­cu­tion indi­cat­ed that it had no intent to repros­e­cute Brown and moved to dis­miss the charges against him.