The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s high­est crim­i­nal court, vacat­ed the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Alfred Brown, who has been on death row for mur­der since 2005. Brown has main­tained his inno­cence and has said that a land­line phone call he made from his girl­friend’s apart­ment the morn­ing of the mur­der would prove it. At his tri­al, Brown’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed no evi­dence of his ali­bi, and his girl­friend changed her tes­ti­mo­ny after she was threat­ened with pros­e­cu­tion. In 2013, a homi­cide detec­tive found a box of records in his garage con­tain­ing phone records that indi­cat­ed Brown made a call exact­ly when he claimed. The file was nev­er shared with Brown’s defense team at his orig­i­nal tri­al. District Attorney Devon Anderson said, ​“As a result of this review, our office agreed that Mr. Brown should receive relief in his case so that jus­tice could be served. Following our office’s agree­ment that relief should be grant­ed, today the Court of Criminal Appeals sent Mr. Brown’s case back to the tri­al court for a new tri­al.” Anderson said she will now review the case to deter­mine whether to retry Brown or drop the charges.

(L. Falkenberg, ​“Appeals court resets mur­der tri­al after find­ing evi­dence with­held,” Houston Chronicle, November 5, 2014). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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