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Stolarz: My client could have been No. 127 executed from Harris County

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Alfred Dewayne Brown was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in October 2005. After 12 years imprisoned, his conviction was overturned after the discovery of evidence substantiating his alibi. (Chronicle file photo)
Alfred Dewayne Brown was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in October 2005. After 12 years imprisoned, his conviction was overturned after the discovery of evidence substantiating his alibi. (Chronicle file photo)Marie D. De Jesus/Staff

Harris County has sent 126 men and women to be executed since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1974 - more than any other county or state, aside from Texas itself. My client, Alfred Dewayne Brown, could have been No. 127. Fortunately, after spending 12 years and 62 days in prison, including nearly 10 years on death row, a heroic legal team was able to prove his innocence. Instead of being executed, he became the 154th person nationwide to be released from death row, and the 13th from Texas.

Dewayne was sentenced to die in Harris County in 2005 for a robbery and double murder committed by three men that resulted in the death of a Houston police officer and a store clerk. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime and he had an alibi. Dewayne called his girlfriend's workplace from her landline phone at the time of the murders. Dewayne's girlfriend, Ericka Dockery, gave a statement to the police and provided testimony before the grand jury confirming the alibi.

The trial prosecutor did not believe her testimony, and charged her with perjury and asked for a high bail to make sure she would remain in jail. She spent seven weeks in jail, and authorities threatened to take away her children and charge her with more serious crimes. Eventually she succumbed to that pressure and recanted her statement establishing Dewayne's alibi.

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At the time of Dewayne's trial, prosecutors claimed they didn't have the phone records that would have proven his alibi. Three years ago, however, these phone records were found in the home garage of a Houston police detective who worked on the case, along with something more troubling. The trial prosecutor issued a subpoena to the phone company the day after Ms. Dockery testified in the grand jury about the phone call. We've still never been given an explanation about why these records weren't given to Dewayne's trial lawyer, or how they ended up in that garage.

As a result of this evidence and the state's withholding of it, Dewayne's conviction was overturned, and all charges were dismissed in June 2015. On the day of his release, Dewayne said "[I] went in an innocent man and I came out an innocent man." He also said that he had no hate in his heart for what the state did to him and he encouraged everyone to love and forgive each other. His words of forgiveness are words we can all learn from.

A recent report by Harvard's Fair Punishment Project found that Harris County is one of just 16 counties in the country - out of more than 3,100 - that sentenced five or more people to death between 2010 and 2015. The report noted that approximately 1 in 20 death penalty cases from that period had a finding of prosecutorial misconduct, and that there were three death row exonerations from Harris County, including Dewayne's. The report also found that all 18 men who have been sentenced to death in Harris County since November 2004 have been men of color.

Former Governor Rick Perry said it best in a recent speech: "When ambitious prosecutors go overboard, the true victims aren't people like you or me: they're people like Ericka and Alfred who don't have the means to fight back."

Dewayne was fortunate to have a team of dedicated lawyers to fight back. Others have not been so lucky. Texas Defender Service recently released a report demonstrating "multiple and severe deficits in the provision of capital direct appeal representation...includ[ing] inadequate resources, excessive attorney caseloads, [and] inadequate briefing."

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Unfortunately, overzealous prosecutors who engage in misconduct and a pattern of racial bias make for a lethal combination in Harris County. Eighty-five people who were convicted in Harris County remain on death row - more than one-third of the state's death row population.

Even in Texas, however, things are changing. Death sentencing rates are declining in Harris County and only seven Texas defendants were executed this year. It is time to abolish the death penalty.

Stolarz is author of "Grace and Justice on Death Row - The Race Against Time and Texas to Free an Innocent Man." He represented Alfred Dewayne Brown on appeal.

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