Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center

The Houston Chronicle  is reporting today that former Death Row inmate, Alfred Dewayne Brown, is suing Houston and Harris County for damages regarding his reversed conviction in a Capital Murder case.  Brown's case, as you probably remember, was the subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning articles written by the Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg in 2014.  Although he was initially sentenced to death for the murders of police officer Charles Clark and clerk Alfredia Jones, his case was ultimately reversed. The short version of why Brown's case was reversed is that exculpatory evidence (in the form of cell phone records that corroborated Brown's alibi) had not been turned over to the defense nor admitted in trial.  When the issue was raised, there was no dispute that Brown deserved a new trial.  If I recall correctly, the D.A.'s Office was not opposed to him being granted a new trial. After the new trial was granted, however, the District Attorney's Office ultimatel

Like most of you who read this blog, I have seen the video of Terry Thompson choking John Hernandez to death on the floor of a Denny's restaurant , and like you, I had some pretty immediate reactions to it.  My gut reaction was that this was a disproportionate response to an incident that allegedly started with Thompson being offended by Hernandez urinating in public.  It also seemed to me that the Thompson was continuing to choke out Hernandez long past the time that Hernandez was a threat to him. It also seemed to me that at least two other people in the video were assisting Thompson in what he was doing by trying to stop the video recording of what was happening. As in most murder cases (or any criminal cases, for that matter), a brief video doesn't always tell the full story of an incident, and I'm completely open to the possibility that there are a multitude of facts that the general public may not be privy to.  That being said, however, the video, coupled with the