Actual Innocence and Alfred Brown

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced yesterday that she was asking attorney John Raley to lead an independent investigation into the "actual innocence" of former-Death Row prisoner Alfred Dewayne Brown.  It was a wise move for a couple of reasons.

For starters, Raley is a highly respected attorney who has dealt with claims of factual innocence on previous occasions, most notably, the case of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife, Christine. As most of you know, Raley's work on that case led to the exoneration of Mr. Morton, which, in turn, brought Christine Morton's actual killer to justice.

More importantly, it keeps the Ogg Administration from potentially being boxed into a decision that would not be well received by the Harris County Defense Bar.  As I've noted before, Ogg is in a tight spot with this.  If Ogg declines to declare Brown factually innocent, it isn't going to sit well with the Defense Bar. Ogg would be put in the awkward position of acknowledging that Brown is legally not guilty but not deserving of the money paid out to those proven factually not guilty.

Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg characterized the Raley investigation as an unnecessary delay to Brown's desired compensation, asserting her belief that Brown has already been proven factually innocent . . . more or less.

That standard [for a legal finding of actual innocence] is roughly similar to the one that led the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to toss Brown’s conviction due to constitutional error. An inmate must show that the constitutional error at trial “probably” resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent and that no reasonable juror would have voted to convict in light of the new evidence.

Um, maybe in the same sense that Sesame Street is "roughly similar" to The Wire.  Both deal with life on the streets in an urban area, right?

Brown's case was overturned based on a Brady violation when the D.A.'s Office realized that the defense had not been provided with a copy of telephone records that supported Brown's alibi by his girlfriend, Ericka Dockery.  The D.A.'s Office agreed that Brown deserved a new trial and the Court of Criminal Appeals signed off on a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

I'm not sure why Lisa is insinuating that the Court of Criminal Appeals practically made a finding that there was a constitutional error at trial that "'probably' resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent."  That is not the case.

In fact, whether or not Alfred Dewayne Brown is factual guilty is very much up for debate.

I've spoken with a couple of the prosecutors who handled the Brown case after it came back from the Court of Criminal Appeals.  Without hesitation, they will gladly state unequivocally that he deserved a new trial.  There is no debate that the evidence withheld by Rizzo was exculpatory and should have been turned over to Brown's defense counsel during trial.

But they will also tell you that they fully believe that Brown is factually guilty.  So will every HPD Homicide investigator that worked on the case.  I don't know enough about the details of the case to form my own opinion on Brown's guilt or innocence, but I will say that there can be a tremendous difference between legal innocence and factual innocence.

There can also be a tremendous variance in the strength of alibi evidence.  Some alibis can unequivocally exonerate somebody.  Others are less definitive.  The people who I've spoken to about the phone records that supported Ericka Dockery's story acknowledge that they were evidence of an alibi, but they were far from definitive.  They say if Rizzo had just turned over the phone records, he could have easily explained them away at trial.

Despite Brown and Falkenberg's protestations to the contrary, Brown's factual innocence isn't quite the no-brainer they portray it to be.

I'm going to hazard a guess that D.A. Ogg was a little concerned about Brown's innocence herself.  Having watched how she has handled this case, as well as others, I believe that she would have loved nothing more than to declare Brown factually innocent while lambasting the "toxic culture" of previous administrations.  She certainly had no problem notifying the press of other shocking developments on the case.

But I found this paragraph in Falkenberg's column to be very interesting:

But if Raley does not find Brown “actually innocent,” Ogg said she may have decide whether to charge him again in Clark’s murder. She chose Raley, she said, not to pass the buck, but because she felt the case needed an independent, fair review by someone outside the DA’s office.

Ogg leaving the door open to the idea of re-prosecuting Brown is shocking to me. There's no chance in hell that Ogg doesn't know the facts of the case.  She may not have the time to delve into it as deeply as she feels necessary, but I guarantee you that she has more than a passing familiarity with it. I have no doubt that she has formed an opinion on what needs to be done.

I'm not accusing her of "passing the buck;"  to the contrary, my guess is that she wanted a credible voice such as Raley's to support whatever decision is ultimately made.

That's just smart politics.

Tunnel Vision & The Falkenberg Articles

If you pay attention to the goings on at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center with any regularity, you are probably already aware of Lisa Falkenberg's two outstanding articles on the Harris County Grand Jury that indicted Alfred Dewayne Brown for the Capital Murders of Houston Police Officer Charles R. Clark and store clerk Alfredia Jones.

Part One of the column ran on Thursday.  Part Two ran Friday.  As of this writing, we are still waiting on Part Three.   NOTE:  If the Chronicle's "premium content" website is blocking your access, the Washington Post did a pretty decent synopsis you can read by clicking here.  My friend, Scott Greenfield, has also weighed in on the columns here.  The attention these articles are garnering is just beginning, in my opinion.

The very condensed version of events are as follows:  Alfred Brown was suspected of being part of a group of males that robbed a check-cashing business and murdered the clerk and a police officer in the process.  Brown stated as his alibi that he was on the phone (landline, not cell) with his girlfriend, Ericka Jean Dockery, at the time of the offense and when Ms. Dockery tried to confirm that to a Grand Jury, they threatened her with financial, legal and even child custody repercussions.  She ultimately changed her story, but Harris County prosecutor Dan Rizzo filed Aggravated Perjury charges on her anyway.

Lisa's column is very much on point about the secrecy of the Grand Jury -- a fact that seems to have given several Pat Lykos/Rachel Palmer supporters new life in their never-ending war against the 185th Grand Jury Investigation of 2012.  Politics really do make strange bedfellows when you've got Lykos supporters rooting for a person accused of killing a police officer.

The bigger issue that Lisa's column covers is the extreme lengths that some people in the Criminal Justice System are willing to go to when they are suffering from Tunnel Vision.

As a former prosecutor, I can attest to the fact that Assistant District Attorneys are inclined to believe the version of events that are initially presented to them by police officers.  There is nothing wrong with that -- the System would come to a screeching halt otherwise.  Can you imagine if all calls from the police went like this:

OFFICER:  I stopped a vehicle for speeding and running a stop sign . . .

PROSECUTOR:  Oh really?  Are you really a police officer?  Was your radar calibrated?  Where was this stop sign?  Did anybody else see this?  Why don't you put this person that you are accusing on the phone and let me ask him what really happened.

 I can't fault prosecutors for believing the initial version of events presented to them by an investigating agency.  Where things become troubling is when they believe those events so strongly solely because they came from the police officer.

I think that if you ask any practicing criminal defense attorney if they know any prosecutors that suffer from Tunnel Vision, you will be in for a very lengthy conversation.  I'm not naming any names of prosecutors, but I was once told by a prosecutor that he was "insulted" that I would tell him I believed a client I was representing was factually innocent.

Insulted.  Not only were they not interested in examining my reasons for believing my client was not guilty, they were insulted that I would even dare approach them with it.

We used to joke about a prosecutor that was so determined to NOT dismiss a case that if you provided her with video footage of your client sitting behind the President during the State of the Union Address at the time of the alleged offense, she would only offer you a better plea offer on a lesser charge.

Of course, the prosecutorial counterpoint to my argument would be, "You have no idea how many B.S. stories we hear on a daily basis."  Yes, I do know.  I did that job for nine years.  I once had to call a very -- shall we say "country" -- gentleman and ask him if he had, in fact, "donated" his pride Dually pick-up truck to the very crack-addicted felon who was charged with stealing it.  My eardrum still twitches at the angry yelling I had to listen to in response.

But I made the call because that's what the defense attorney told me his client was claiming.  Sometimes you have to look down a lot of rabbit trails to avoid Tunnel Vision and unfortunately, that's part of the job of being a prosecutor.  You have to rule out Reasonable Doubt -- even if it doesn't seem that "reasonable" to you.

The prosecutor who believes an investigator's version of events so much that they shut down even the mere possibility of a contradiction becomes the most dangerous person in the courthouse.

Charles Sebesta shut down the possibility that Anthony Graves wasn't involved in the murder of six people in Somerville.  Ken Anderson shut down the possibility that Michael Morton didn't kill his wife.  Now, Dan Rizzo, with the backing of a Grand Jury, is on the hot seat.

To be fair, there are several people within the Harris County District Attorney's Office who have told me that although they agree Alfred Dewayne Brown deserves a new trial, they still believe he is factually guilty.  That was District Attorney Mike Anderson's position when the Office agreed that Brown deserved a new trial.

What is so frightening about Ericka Jean Dockery's case is that Rizzo filed Aggravated Perjury charges against her because he and the Grand Jury didn't believe her.  There wasn't a concrete piece of evidence that contradicted her.  There wasn't a change of story that had come from her own volition (change of stories based on extreme coercion doesn't count).  At the end of the day, the decision to file felony charges (of moral turpitude) against Ms. Dockery flowed from Rizzo and the Grand Jury's opinion that she wasn't being truthful.

Put yourself in the shoes of a person accused of something for a moment.  You have an alibi witness.  That witness is willing to testify and clear you.  However, that witness is told by prosecutors, in no uncertain terms, that not only do they not believe her testimony,  they will file felony charges against her for daring to back you up.

Take a moment and ponder how truly frightening that is.

Anthony Graves and Charles Sebesta

Most people who follow criminal law are familiar with the names Michael Morton and Anthony Graves.

Michael Morton was the man who was wrongfully convicted of Murder based on prosecutorial misconduct of then-prosecutor Ken Anderson.  He served 25 years in prison.

Anthony Graves was the man who was wrongfully convicted of Capital Murder based on prosecutorial misconduct by then-District Attorney Charles Sebesta.  He served almost 20 years in prison, awaiting his execution date.

In the wake of Michael Morton's exoneration, the Rules of Discovery in Criminal Law have been drastically changed and Prosecutor Anderson was (insufficiently) punished with (minimal) jail time and the loss of his law license.

Charles Sebesta, however, has remained unscathed.  

For reasons unbeknownst to the rest of us, Sebesta never had to face any consequences for his prosecutorial misconduct that almost resulted in the execution of an innocent man.  He has remained defiant over his behavior, attacking both Anthony Graves and Special Prosecutor Kelly Siegler (who ultimately dismissed the charges against Graves) in full page newspaper ads.

Hopefully, Mr. Sebesta's date with Justice is coming soon.

Today, January 20th, at 3 p.m. on the Texas Southern University campus, Anthony Graves will be holding a press conference, announcing the filing of a grievance against former Burleson County Prosecutor Charles Sebesta.  

Mr. Graves will be joined by Senators Rodney Ellis and John Whitmire, as well as State Representative Senfronia Thompson.  The event is also being supported by Kathryn Kase of the Texas Defender Services, as well as attorneys Bob Bennett and Neal Manne.

In my opinion, the actions of Charles Sebesta were even worse than those of Ken Anderson.  I'm hopeful that today is the first step in making him accountable for his actions.