In 2005, Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured left) was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Houston, Texas police officer based on false testimony Harris County prosecutors obtained through coercion and threats. After spending a decade on death row for a crime he did not commit, Brown was finally released with the help of his attorney Brian Stolarz (pictured right), who is the guest on DPIC’s latest podcast and author of Grace and Justice on Death Row, a book about Brown’s case. Stolarz, who represented Brown in post-conviction proceedings, tells the story of his “decade-plus long journey to help out this one man.” In the discussion, Stolarz describes how he and his team realized upon investigation that every witness had been “pressured and frightened” by the prosecutor—who used tactics such as threatening to charge witnesses with crimes—in order to secure Brown’s conviction. Stolarz calls this Harris County’s “culture of conviction.” Brown’s girlfriend, Erica Dockery, who had initially testified before the grand jury that Brown was at her apartment at the time of the crime, became a critical witness against Brown. As Stolarz explains, Dockery’s choice to “abandon the truth,” commit perjury, and testify against Brown came only after the prosecutor brought a baseless perjury charge against her for her truthful grand jury testimony and jailed her with a bond so high she couldn’t pay it. In what Stolarz describes as “luck,” the retired case detective found a box from the case while “spring cleaning his garage,” and the box contained phone records that supported Dockery’s initial testimony and consequently Brown’s alibi. This evidence, along with other witness recantations, helped win Brown’s release in June 2015. Although Brown has been free for almost three years, Stolarz explains that his fight for justice is still ongoing, as he seeks compensation for his unjust conviction. Before Brown can be compensated under Texas state law, the District Attorney must sign a formal declaration finding him innocent and prosecutors had opposed such a declaration. The podcast was recorded in April 2018, several weeks after recent revelations that Dan Rizzo, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Brown, had received an email informing him that the phone records proved Dockery was telling the truth about Brown’s alibi before he charged her with perjury and prosecuted Brown for murder based on false testimony. Since the time of podcast recording, the current Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Brown’s innocence. Ogg said the recent discovery of the email showing Rizzo knew years before trial that Brown’s alibi checked out “brought clarity to a very hotly contested allegation as to whether or not [suppressing that evidence from the defense] was intentionally done, whether it was done to obtain a guilty verdict at any cost.” Ogg said she believed the email “tended to show Brown’s innocence, and not just his lack of guilt.”
(Posted by DPIC, April 30, 2018.) Listen to the Discussions With DPIC podcast, Culture of Conviction: A Discussion with Attorney Brian Stolarz on How Houston Prosecutors Sent His Innocent Client, Alfred Dewayne Brown, to Death Row and How Hidden Evidence Set Brown Free, here. (Lisa Faulkenberg, Alfred Dewayne Brown deserves final bit of justice for 12 years he lost behind bars, Houston Chronicle, May 2, 2018; Lisa Falkenberg, Alfred Dewayne Brown has more time than he thought, Houston Chronicle, May 3, 2018.) See Podcasts, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Innocence.
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