Speaker 1: A warning for our listeners. This episode contains discussion of
Speaker 1: child sexual assault and of suicide. Please listen with caution
Speaker 1: and care. In February of nineteen ninety four, a six
Speaker 1: year old girl living in New Orleans complained of pain
Speaker 1: in her abdomen and pelvic region. When she was examined
Speaker 1: at the hospital, the doctor suspected she had been sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: and the police were alerted. The child was questioned by
Speaker 1: doctors and by the police without apparent present. According to
Speaker 1: the doctor, when he asked who had harmed her, the
Speaker 1: child named Patrick Brown, her mother's live in boyfriend. Patrick
Speaker 1: insisted that he was innocent. He would never hurt a child,
Speaker 1: let alone someone in his own family. Without any corroborating evidence,
Speaker 1: the prosecution relied solely on the notes taken by the doctor,
Speaker 1: and after just a day, an hour and half of trial,
Speaker 1: the doctor's word was enough to convince the jury to convict.
Speaker 1: But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: I'm Tiffany Reese, host of the podcast Something Was Wrong,
Speaker 1: sitting in for Jason flam. I am a documentarian, survivor,
Speaker 1: and advocate, and on my audio docuseries podcast I work
Speaker 1: with survivors of abuse and crime. Today's case tragically impacted
Speaker 1: the lives of two people, someone who was wrongfully convicted
Speaker 1: of a heinous crime and the victim of that crime
Speaker 1: who tried for decades to tell the truth that the
Speaker 1: wrong person was in prison and was not heard. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: there are two survivors in this story, and one of
Speaker 1: them is with us today, Patrick Brown. Patrick, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us and being willing to share
Speaker 1: your story and your experience with us today. I'd like
Speaker 1: to start by just saying how sorry I am for
Speaker 1: what you've experienced. It was incredibly heartbreaking coming across your
Speaker 1: story and the story of the survivor. It was clear
Speaker 1: to me that you're both victims and survivors of so
Speaker 1: much systemic and legal abuse within this story, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really brave that you're willing to share with
Speaker 1: us after everything that you've already experienced and overcome to
Speaker 1: be here today. So thank you so so much.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're welcome, You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. To your attorney, Kelly Orion's, who's
Speaker 1: also joining us today. Kelly, could you introduce yourself and
Speaker 1: give us a little bit about your background before we
Speaker 1: jump into Patrick's story.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, thank you so much for having both of
Speaker 3: us here today. So I am the director of the
Speaker 3: Decarceration and Commune to the re Entry Clinic at the
Speaker 3: University of Virginia School's Law. That is a mouthful in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Patrick, I'd love to go back a bit and talk
Speaker 1: a bit about you and where you were born, and
Speaker 1: a little bit about your background and who you were
Speaker 1: leading up to this horrific experience.
Speaker 4: I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, braised in a
Speaker 4: lay and I I come from a good family.
Speaker 2: We're a beautiful family.
Speaker 4: Family was full of love, so it wasn't broken at all,
Speaker 4: you know, to where my family the open arms of
Speaker 4: whoever welcome and feed.
Speaker 2: Them, help them out. Well.
Speaker 4: I wasn't no bad person, but I took a turn
Speaker 4: in my life as I was growing up. That's to
Speaker 4: become street hung out all night, hung with the fellas,
Speaker 4: doing this, doing that, to the point to where when
Speaker 4: I met my kid, mama a soldier.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody got to have a soldier.
Speaker 1: How did you meet Kathy? What was your reallyationship?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Oh, man, I met Cat. You know, I was just
Speaker 4: coming at the club and she was walking up and
Speaker 4: she was squiding me.
Speaker 2: So I stopped and I say, you know, saw my
Speaker 2: concerns because she's a nice looking woman.
Speaker 4: And when I talked to her, we had hooked up
Speaker 4: and we know, we dated having fun and you know,
Speaker 4: moved in with her like two weeks. Then the relationships
Speaker 4: stuff like that, and from there to where it was
Speaker 4: a beautiful relationship. She had my daughter, and the whole
Speaker 4: time she was pregnant, I was just soul protective of her.
Speaker 4: I don't want nobody to smoke around her. I don't
Speaker 4: want nobody doing that. And I always pop up at
Speaker 4: the house. She'll robot stomach, leaves back in the screels,
Speaker 4: didn't come back home. It was just like like no
Speaker 4: mo tea for me. And she was all the way
Speaker 4: one hundred with me. But what I was one hundred
Speaker 4: with her. I understand somewhat I wasn't. Somewhat I wasn't
Speaker 4: because I stood in the screech all night, hustling, try
Speaker 4: to provide for my family by the streets, and really
Speaker 4: I didn't have time for my family at home.
Speaker 1: Do you do you think like you did the best
Speaker 1: you could in the situation you were in at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean you were only twenty years.
Speaker 2: Old, right, right in nineteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that it's tough when you want to
Speaker 1: be able to provide for your family and you feel
Speaker 1: like you have limited options. I think sometimes on how.
Speaker 2: To do that right.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I really had no guidance on how
Speaker 4: to raise a family, how to keep up with the
Speaker 4: bills and make sure.
Speaker 2: That the family had med a care and I ain't
Speaker 2: know about all that.
Speaker 4: You know, ain't nobody really hold my hand and showed
Speaker 4: me how to become a man to provide for family
Speaker 4: like the man supposed to do. Because when I was
Speaker 4: really young, my dad had died. I really ain't had
Speaker 4: no fault to figure in my life. I just went
Speaker 4: on my own, try to learn from the streets.
Speaker 1: Did you have any previous run ins with the law?
Speaker 1: You mentioned, you know, the lifestyle, but did you have
Speaker 1: any like did they know who you were?
Speaker 2: When the system?
Speaker 4: The system, they did know who I was because during
Speaker 4: the time of my arresting, during the time my trial,
Speaker 4: they really gave me a figure how many times that
Speaker 4: I had been arrested and the thirty seven times that
Speaker 4: I've been arrested, was fighting and activated battery, disturbing the peace,
Speaker 4: stuff like that. It wasn't have really no major crime.
Speaker 4: It was like mostly missed the meanor childs.
Speaker 1: Yes, and nothing involving violence against children to be.
Speaker 2: Clear, no, no, nothing involved.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Patrick. We're going to talk about the events
Speaker 1: that led to your wrongful conviction. Now, I'd like to
Speaker 1: remind the listeners that we'll be discussing some triggering topics
Speaker 1: involving a minor child. To protect the privacy of the victim,
Speaker 1: we are not using her real name. Instead, we'll call
Speaker 1: her Sarah Kelly. Would you mind walking us through what
Speaker 1: we know of the case.
Speaker 3: All right, So, first, I think it's important to make
Speaker 3: clear that this is a case where someone was horrifically
Speaker 3: victimized and survived an awful assault, and then was revictimized
Speaker 3: for twenty years after while she tried to tell the
Speaker 3: people around her, including the district Attorney's office, that the
Speaker 3: wrong person was in prison. I think it's important to
Speaker 3: acknowledge the two ways that the victim in this case
Speaker 3: was and the survivor in this case was harmed. So
Speaker 3: the case starts in February of nineteen ninety four, when
Speaker 3: Sarah was six years old. It was the day after
Speaker 3: Marti Gras when she started complaining about discomfort and her
Speaker 3: abdomen and her pelvic region. So they attempted some home
Speaker 3: remedies and over the counter treatment, but that didn't work,
Speaker 3: and so then she was taken in to see doctor
Speaker 3: Ronald Wilcox. Doctor Wilcox immediately suspected that she had been
Speaker 3: raped and asked doctor Maria Menna, a pediatric specialist in
Speaker 3: child sex abuse, to evaluate Sarah, And so they start
Speaker 3: talking to Sarah about what happened to her. What's really
Speaker 3: critical to understand about what happens next is what is
Speaker 3: actually said in the doctor's office versus what then gets
Speaker 3: put onto paper and given to the police and given
Speaker 3: then to the district attorney's office. And what the difference
Speaker 3: is is you have in the doctor's office a lot
Speaker 3: of what we would call, you know, leading questions because
Speaker 3: you're dealing with a six year old girl. At the time,
Speaker 3: it was recorded in the doctor's notes that she's said,
Speaker 3: quote Patrick put his penis in me down there. Sarah
Speaker 3: maintains that is not what she said, and that at
Speaker 3: the hospital she was only asked who is Patrick to
Speaker 3: which she responded essentially that he was her family member.
Speaker 3: When NOPD detectives were called in, Sarah was also questioned
Speaker 3: without a family member present.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kelly. So now Patrick, could you tell us
Speaker 1: about what your experience was when you arrived at the
Speaker 1: hospital that day with Sarah's mother.
Speaker 2: Me and Kaji arrive at the hospital to get it.
Speaker 4: And when I got there, I passed the room the
Speaker 4: examination room, and I seen family members in the room
Speaker 4: with Sarah to the part to where when the detectives
Speaker 4: and then came out of another room and brought me
Speaker 4: into it. Was questioned me about it and basically questioned
Speaker 4: me about you know something that happened to the victim.
Speaker 2: And it was asked me a question.
Speaker 4: By do I know anything about it? And no, I
Speaker 4: don't know. That's why I'm here at the hospital try
Speaker 4: to find out what is the problem.
Speaker 3: At this At this time, mister Brown is completely cooperative
Speaker 3: with the police and wants to know who hurt this
Speaker 3: little girl that he loves and takes care of, and
Speaker 3: so he is not at all thinking like a suspect.
Speaker 3: He submits to various testing.
Speaker 2: He waived his.
Speaker 3: Rights to an attorney and his right to remain silent
Speaker 3: and spoke to detectives without an attorney, where he denied
Speaker 3: allegations that he had raped Sarah.
Speaker 4: I went out to the police station with him and
Speaker 4: was in a room where Raeric coroper with him as
Speaker 4: to answering a lot of questions to the part to
Speaker 4: where they asked me, did I actually do the crime?
Speaker 4: And I think I could just tell her this, lamb,
Speaker 4: I don't know nothing about it. The more I know
Speaker 4: about it is what y'all telling me right now. And
Speaker 4: I don't know nothing about it.
Speaker 2: None of that.
Speaker 3: However, based on the statements that Sarah made, or rather
Speaker 3: was alleged to have made two doctors that day, mister
Speaker 3: Brown was arrested on the charge of aggravated rape.
Speaker 5: It was something unspeakable, you know, it's really speakable to
Speaker 5: well get you off for something that you didn't do,
Speaker 5: that did actually putting this charge on me.
Speaker 4: But some kind of way that everything parted at me
Speaker 4: for some reason. I don't know why, because maybe I
Speaker 4: probably do know why, because the way I was through,
Speaker 4: the type of person I was, and that side of
Speaker 4: the family didn't really want me to.
Speaker 2: Be with their daughter. But like I said, she was
Speaker 2: my soldier. She was my everything.
Speaker 4: You know, I would protect car. I would lose my
Speaker 4: life to give hers and the kids. So I never
Speaker 4: talked to nobody while I was in jail about it,
Speaker 4: but I was going back and forth to court with
Speaker 4: it and doing a pretrial investigation and all that is
Speaker 4: really really kind of hurtful because it was like, this
Speaker 4: is really actually happened. You know, you're taking me to
Speaker 4: the trial behind something I did not do. And where
Speaker 4: is the evidence because I ain't seen evidence at all,
Speaker 4: because I know they're supposed to do a rape kit
Speaker 4: and all that, and didn't no rape kit, and didn't
Speaker 4: no joining the blood, and did nothing to take down evidence.
Speaker 2: DNA and did not that.
Speaker 3: After he was arrested, he was given a two hundred
Speaker 3: and if the thousand dollars bond. His family could not
Speaker 3: afford the roughly thirty thousand dollars that it would have
Speaker 3: cost him to pay a bail bondsman, so mister Brown
Speaker 3: spent more than nine months in jail waiting to go
Speaker 3: to trial. His family also could not afford an attorney,
Speaker 3: so Robert Jenkins, an attorney from the Orleans Parish Indigent
Speaker 3: Defender Panel, was appointed to represent mister Brown.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a rundown of the details of
Speaker 1: the trial? December thirteenth, nineteen ninety four. Who was the judge,
Speaker 1: the name of the prosecutor?
Speaker 3: Absolutely so. Mister Brown went to trial in Section A
Speaker 3: of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in front of Judge
Speaker 3: Morris Reid. The prosecutor on the case was David.
Speaker 1: Wolfe, and the district Attorney at the time was the
Speaker 1: notorious Harry Connick Senior, who headed up the Orleans Parish
Speaker 1: DA's office from nineteen seventy three to two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Jason's covered some of the many wrongful convictions that occurred
Speaker 1: under Connick's watch on this podcast. His office was known
Speaker 1: for withholding and suppressing evidence. In fact, the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: of New Orleans estimates that during his tenure, favorable evidence
Speaker 1: was withheld in the trials of one in four men
Speaker 1: sent to death row.
Speaker 3: The trial started that evening with opening statements and it
Speaker 3: concluded the next day. We don't actually know the full
Speaker 3: extent of what happened during the trial, because, as mister
Speaker 3: Brown learned over the nearly thirty years that he fought
Speaker 3: his conviction since his direct appeal no trial's transcript has
Speaker 3: actually been made available. When the case was reopened by
Speaker 3: the District Attorney's office in twenty twenty three, we still
Speaker 3: could not find a transcript despite many, many, many efforts. However,
Speaker 3: what we do know is that the whole trial lasted
Speaker 3: about a day and a half from the time of
Speaker 3: jury selection to the time a verdict was delivered, which,
Speaker 3: when you think about it, is deeply concerning considering the
Speaker 3: mandatory sentence for aggravated rape at the time and still today,
Speaker 3: is life without the possibility of parole Kelly.
Speaker 1: Who testified in the trial and whose behalf did they
Speaker 1: testify on.
Speaker 3: Zarah was twice brought into the court to testify, and
Speaker 3: twice her nose started to bleed as soon as she
Speaker 3: took the stand and questions began, which was something that
Speaker 3: was really common for her at the time whenever she
Speaker 3: was in a very stressful situation, and so she was dismissed.
Speaker 3: No accommodations were made for her to testify in private,
Speaker 3: and instead the state called doctor Wilcox to testify in
Speaker 3: her place, and recalled doctor Wilcox was the first physician
Speaker 3: to examine her.
Speaker 1: The child being questioned in front of the whole court
Speaker 1: instead of the judges chambers, Like, what is your opinion
Speaker 1: on that. I mean, it's obviously so traumatic and stressful
Speaker 1: to the child that they're having this physical reaction after
Speaker 1: being raped. It just seems that the victim wasn't being
Speaker 1: thought of.
Speaker 3: I completely agree. I think, you know, cases like this
Speaker 3: are really tough because we keep courtrooms public for really
Speaker 3: important reasons, to make sure that crucial decisions in our
Speaker 3: justice system that carry serious consequences that compromise people's liberty
Speaker 3: interests do not happen in private, and when witnesses testify
Speaker 3: juries are empowered to make a decision about that witness's credibility. So,
Speaker 3: to answer your question, I think there's a tension because
Speaker 3: we want to make sure that people are safe. We
Speaker 3: want to make sure that children who have been harmed
Speaker 3: are not re traumatized, but we also have to ensure
Speaker 3: that the Constitution is followed, that liberty interests are not
Speaker 3: compromised in private. That being said, I do believe that
Speaker 3: accommodations could have been made to make Sarah more comfortable
Speaker 3: and less stressed, and that is crucial here because as
Speaker 3: we know, as Sarah has told us in the decades
Speaker 3: since this happened. She did not say what doctor Wilcox
Speaker 3: alleged that she said, and so had she had the
Speaker 3: opportunity to testify, she would have been able to say
Speaker 3: the truth. She would have been able to testify that
Speaker 3: she did not accuse Patrick of rape, and that was
Speaker 3: a very crucial fact for the jury to have. Instead,
Speaker 3: adults testified for her.
Speaker 1: And instead, what did the jury hear from doctor Wilcox.
Speaker 3: Doctor Wilcox testified to what was in what was recorded
Speaker 3: in his notes that Sarah had told him that Patrick
Speaker 3: put his penis in me down there, a statement that
Speaker 3: we now know and knew at the time had the
Speaker 3: police disclosed it, that was not was what was actually
Speaker 3: said in the doctor's office. So they were able to
Speaker 3: introduce the doctor's report with no scrutinity with this statement
Speaker 3: that never got to be cross examined. So what happened
Speaker 3: then is she never got a chance to tell her story.
Speaker 3: So the jury convicts mister Brown of aggravated rape in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: Age of the victim as an aggravating factor, and she
Speaker 3: was six years old at the time that she was raped,
Speaker 3: so he was sentenced to Manna's story life without the
Speaker 3: possibility of parole, and was sent to the Louisiana State
Speaker 3: Penitentiary at Angola.
Speaker 4: The hardest part being incarcerated is that you lose a
Speaker 4: family member while you're in now, and I lost several
Speaker 4: family members.
Speaker 2: My mom, she went to three open.
Speaker 4: House surgeries while I was incarcerated, and some people that
Speaker 4: really loved me, like my grandmother, my aunt's cousins, they
Speaker 4: passed away while I was incarcerated.
Speaker 2: And that's the hardest part to where.
Speaker 4: They didn't want let you go out, to go to
Speaker 4: any funerals or none of that, and with the type
Speaker 4: of charge that they placed me on, you know, kind
Speaker 4: of restrict me from everything to where at a certain
Speaker 4: age I had to see my daughter once she get older,
Speaker 4: and any one of my family members, they can't come
Speaker 4: in as a child.
Speaker 2: Those certain things I couldn't do.
Speaker 4: I couldn't go around certain people, certain jobs I can't
Speaker 4: have because of the charge.
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly sorry that you experienced that. That must have
Speaker 1: been so hard to be stigmatized like that, and for
Speaker 1: something you did not do.
Speaker 4: From the time my cuceration, you know, I had to
Speaker 4: try to make it work for me.
Speaker 2: I had to.
Speaker 4: Due to the times that and let the time do
Speaker 4: me so at the time I was in there, you know,
Speaker 4: I educated myself. I become a better person, becomes a mentor,
Speaker 4: and I'm becoming helping a lot of people out there
Speaker 4: at a GOOLA even down to from the Oufenity security staff.
Speaker 2: To where I got to know them and they got
Speaker 2: to know me, and they see that I'm not a
Speaker 2: really bad.
Speaker 4: Person, you know, from that part from being that goal
Speaker 4: of being it's separing criticism from a lot of dudes
Speaker 4: that's around now. Really nothing really came hurt me no
Speaker 4: more because I'm all crowd out from that and anything
Speaker 4: that's not positive, I just don't want to be around it.
Speaker 4: But on my coaster that you know, they had dues
Speaker 4: there and they were going through a lot of things
Speaker 4: that they need mentor that he talked to and especially
Speaker 4: that's what I did. At one point in time in
Speaker 4: my life, I did lost hope. I did lost I
Speaker 4: hope to where I wouldn't come home, I wasn't gonna
Speaker 4: be with my family again. And I had looted in
Speaker 4: my mind to not be a commodity to the system
Speaker 4: to where you're just holding me there and collecting money
Speaker 4: off of me, and I'm doing this and doing that
Speaker 4: to keep a prison function to where dang I ain't
Speaker 4: had them a hope because you know it ain't goal
Speaker 4: inside of prison. Contraband comes and goes in there, and
Speaker 4: the most dealy contraband that they had in there was
Speaker 4: that fit now, and that fit now into the prison
Speaker 4: to where I did wanted to take that just the
Speaker 4: end this life because I didn't want that type of
Speaker 4: life inside of a system behind something I did not do.
Speaker 4: And then you know, when I got there, dude, say
Speaker 4: life mean lock in forever. Man, I ain't no going home.
Speaker 4: The next place I would be was a party. Lookout,
Speaker 4: mister penitentious cemetery. That's what I was gonna be. Never
Speaker 4: still going to be incocerated.
Speaker 1: What kept you going? Patrick?
Speaker 2: What gave you hope?
Speaker 4: My family kept coming. It's fishing me talk to my
Speaker 4: daughter every day on the phone. My daughter was a
Speaker 4: month and eight days old when I got arrested. From
Speaker 4: that time, she was just a baby. She don't know
Speaker 4: nothing about the charge. And she fought for me too.
Speaker 4: She fought to keep me well, I keep hope going.
Speaker 4: She wanted her daddy. That kept me going down with
Speaker 4: my heart. She kept me going, she kept me fight,
Speaker 4: ca me find this to be with them, so she
Speaker 4: could have a fault in our life.
Speaker 1: So if you could, Kelly, speak to uh, if you
Speaker 1: recall when you first heard about mister Brown's case, what
Speaker 1: stood out to you like as a human and what
Speaker 1: drew you to essentially work on the case and kind
Speaker 1: of like how your relationship started those early days.
Speaker 3: So I got a call on March twenty fourth of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three from the District Attorney's office, Jason William's office.
Speaker 3: It was specifically from Assistant District Attorney Emily maw who
Speaker 3: is the head of the civil rights division in the office.
Speaker 3: And I was asked if I was available to come
Speaker 3: in immediately, and I was told that a young woman
Speaker 3: had just come into their office and had essentially said
Speaker 3: that the wrong person was in prison for raping her.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty extraordinary call to get. You don't often
Speaker 3: say no when a district attorney's office calls you as
Speaker 3: a defense attorney and says we think we have someone
Speaker 3: in prison who shouldn't be there. I didn't need much
Speaker 3: more information than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, So what did they tell you when you
Speaker 1: got to their office.
Speaker 3: On that day. What we knew is that in two
Speaker 3: thousand and two, when Sarah was fourteen years old, was
Speaker 3: when she first attempted to get the District Attorney's office
Speaker 3: to listen to her about the fact that the wrong
Speaker 3: man was in prison for raping her. She explained that
Speaker 3: she estimated that she had written at least one hundred
Speaker 3: letters to the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 1: And the DA at that time was still Harry Connick Senior.
Speaker 3: In twenty fifteen, she submitted an affidavit to the District
Speaker 3: Attorney's office at this time led by Leon Canazero, declaring
Speaker 3: that mister Brown was not the person who raped her
Speaker 3: and identifying by name the man who did. She remembers
Speaker 3: going to the DA's office at least four times, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't until the fourth time, on March twenty fourth,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, that someone in that office actually decided
Speaker 3: to listen to her.
Speaker 1: And that was, of course, after Leon Connazaro had been
Speaker 1: succeeded as a district attorney by Jason Williams, who was
Speaker 1: elected in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: And they immediately began reinvestigating her case. And I think
Speaker 3: what was most important to the investigators and to myself
Speaker 3: was Sarah's incredible credibility, her ability to recall in detail
Speaker 3: the efforts that she had made over more than two
Speaker 3: decades to undo this injustice and for the truth to
Speaker 3: be accepted by the DA's office. And part of what
Speaker 3: also bolstered her credibility was how deeply deeply harmed she
Speaker 3: was by having this truth ignored.
Speaker 1: What drew me to this story or this you know,
Speaker 1: hearing about mister Brown's experiences and Sarah's experience is that
Speaker 1: it really highlights how important it is to listen to
Speaker 1: survivors and for their voices to be heard. And you know,
Speaker 1: on the other side of that, the detriment that can
Speaker 1: happen to us when we're not heard. Two and a
Speaker 1: half perpetrators out of one hundred that rape actually end
Speaker 1: up in prison. That's the current statistics. And I mean,
Speaker 1: working with survivors every day, I know that, like the
Speaker 1: trust just isn't there that the effort will be meaningful
Speaker 1: and it won't just do more harm. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a really sad reality and a place to be,
Speaker 1: but it's one that we need to sit with because
Speaker 1: it's so important that we address it because it's absolutely
Speaker 1: not okay. It's absolutely not okay, and it's just a
Speaker 1: very heartbreaking, very heartbreaking example of the many cracks within
Speaker 1: the system. Kelly, What was the post conviction process like
Speaker 1: that led you from taking this case on to ultimately
Speaker 1: mister Brown's release.
Speaker 3: One thing that I think is very important and I
Speaker 3: want to throw it in there, is that mister Brown
Speaker 3: litigated his case himself for two decades. In fact, the
Speaker 3: petition that was granted on May eighth was actually the
Speaker 3: one that mister Brown filed himself pro see over a
Speaker 3: year before this hearing. In it, he argued factual innocence
Speaker 3: under a very new law in Louisiana that allows you
Speaker 3: to plead factual innocence. So the DA's office actually filed
Speaker 3: their response to mister Brown's pro say petition, and before
Speaker 3: they did this, they reviewed all of the available records.
Speaker 3: They reinterviewed witnesses, consulted with law enforcement, and spent a
Speaker 3: considerable amount of time listening to Sarah and assessing her
Speaker 3: credibility as well as verifying the details in the story
Speaker 3: that she told them. After reviewing all available records, they
Speaker 3: found clear and convincing evidence that mister Brown was factually innocent,
Speaker 3: and based on their filing their response to mister Brown's
Speaker 3: pro say petition, they found a few things. Most compelling
Speaker 3: those were the fact that Sarah stated unequivocally and on
Speaker 3: multiple occasions that mister Brown was not the man who
Speaker 3: raped her. Also that in twenty fifteen, she submitted a
Speaker 3: sworn affidavit to the DA's office, in it stating that
Speaker 3: mister Brown was not the person who raped her and
Speaker 3: naming the person that did. They also considered testimony and
Speaker 3: statements from the time the case was pre trial that
Speaker 3: indicated that during a fight with the victim's mother, a
Speaker 3: man gloated about raping Sarah and about the fact that
Speaker 3: mister Brown was doing time for the crime.
Speaker 1: That sounds like it would have been a pretty major
Speaker 1: incident for the defense to explore, but somehow the jury
Speaker 1: never heard about it. Can you tell us more about
Speaker 1: that exchange and why it was not brought up a trial?
Speaker 3: So this fight occurred well before the child, near the
Speaker 3: time that mister Brown was indicted on the charge of
Speaker 3: aggravated rape. The prosecution was aware of this fight. It
Speaker 3: is not entirely clear how accurately that evidence was provided
Speaker 3: to the defense. We know definitively that the fact that
Speaker 3: there were witnesses to this fight and witnesses to this
Speaker 3: admission that was not disclosed to the defense.
Speaker 1: And what was said during the fight that was significant.
Speaker 4: He stated, I know that your daughter has got rape
Speaker 4: and I ain't gonna be the one to do the time.
Speaker 3: For and I believe he also said, you know that
Speaker 3: mister Brown is doing time for somebody else's crime. And
Speaker 3: it's just it's almost irrefutable, right, Like that's a very
Speaker 3: relevant fact for a jury to hear and understand. This
Speaker 3: is the same man that Sarah stated raped her in
Speaker 3: the affidavit that she gave to the DA's office in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. They submitted this information to the court and
Speaker 3: on May eighth, an evidentiary hearing was held. And so
Speaker 3: when Sarah took the stand to testify, she was able
Speaker 3: to look at mister Brown, who was sitting at the
Speaker 3: table next to me, and she told the court about
Speaker 3: her twenty year effort to be able to sit where
Speaker 3: she was that day and tell the truth of what
Speaker 3: happened to her. At the end of that hearing, Judge
Speaker 3: Calvin Johnson delivered his ruling and before he did, he
Speaker 3: addressed Sarah and mister Brown directly, and I'll never forget
Speaker 3: what he said, and I want to repeat it verbatim.
Speaker 3: He said the state was complicit in the harm and
Speaker 3: horror that Sarah endured. He then vacated mister Brown's conviction
Speaker 3: and granted mister Brown a new trial, and Emily maw
Speaker 3: the Chief of the Civil Rights Division, immediately revised the
Speaker 3: bill of information that was filed against him in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four and immediately dismissed the charges. That day, he
Speaker 3: was able to hug Sarah, he was able to hug
Speaker 3: his family, and he was able to walk out of
Speaker 3: the front steps and not have to go back to Angola.
Speaker 1: Patrick, I can't imagine what it must have felt like
Speaker 1: to be in that courtroom with Sarah and to hear
Speaker 1: her testimony, and for both of you, after almost thirty years,
Speaker 1: to finally be heard.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: Unbelievable. It was beautiful. I know that this person came
Speaker 4: out and being hurd you know what kind of helped
Speaker 4: heal me. Heal me a whole lot so well. Once
Speaker 4: she gave a test, moment she finished gaving a TESTI
Speaker 4: moment she came up and she hugged me. And once
Speaker 4: she hugged me in the court room, I felt her pain,
Speaker 4: she felt mine. She told me that she was sorry
Speaker 4: that I have to go through it. I told her
Speaker 4: that I was sorry too, that I wouldn't death for
Speaker 4: I got supposed to. She said that she loved me.
Speaker 4: I told her that I love her back.
Speaker 2: Sae say, you never go back there. I know you
Speaker 2: never go back. I told her that I'll never leave again.
Speaker 2: Only way that I leave from this place.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Oh my goodness, thank you so
Speaker 1: so much for your time and your willingness. It is
Speaker 1: incredibly brave to be this vulnerable in such a public way,
Speaker 1: and I just want to hold space and acknowledge that
Speaker 1: what you did today is an incredibly big thing. And
Speaker 1: I wish you and your family all of the best
Speaker 1: in the future. And yeah, thank you so so much.
Speaker 1: We also want to let our listeners know that there's
Speaker 1: a GoFundMe page to help you get back on your feet.
Speaker 1: So listeners, if you want to show your support for
Speaker 1: Patrick as he starts this new chapter in his life,
Speaker 1: please look for Patrick Brown on GoFundMe dot com or
Speaker 1: go to the link in our episode Bio. Now, this
Speaker 1: is the part of the show that we call closing arguments.
Speaker 1: We'd like to hear your final thoughts, anything at all
Speaker 1: that you want to share with listeners or that you
Speaker 1: hope listeners will take away from hearing this story. Kelly,
Speaker 1: can we hear you're closing arguments first, and then we'll
Speaker 1: hear from Patrick.
Speaker 3: This is the first exoneration that I have ever been
Speaker 3: involved in, and I am horrified by what I have
Speaker 3: learned through this process. I also think it's really important
Speaker 3: to remember that what happened to mister Brown is a
Speaker 3: symptom of a diseased system that puts not only people
Speaker 3: who are factually innocent in prison, but puts people in
Speaker 3: prison who should not be there in the first place,
Speaker 3: people who have caused harm, but who also have a
Speaker 3: larger story, who have a story that is often rarely
Speaker 3: ever heard, usually until decades later. And so I hope
Speaker 3: that mister Brown's story will inspire us not just to
Speaker 3: look at the cases of people who are actually innocent,
Speaker 3: but the cases of all people who are in prison,
Speaker 3: to question and continue questioning is prison really an answer
Speaker 3: and an effective answer to the harm that's occurring in
Speaker 3: our community. It has been, in my experience, a one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty year experiment that has failed. It has
Speaker 3: not served people that have been harmed. It has not
Speaker 3: brought justice to victims and survivors. I know that we
Speaker 3: can do better. I believe that we can do better,
Speaker 3: and I hope that all of us will be inspired
Speaker 3: to take a second look at this system that we
Speaker 3: have become so dependent on and taken for granted, and
Speaker 3: challenge ourselves to radically reimagine what justice and safety and
Speaker 3: health look like in our communities and try to do
Speaker 3: so much better than we have done.
Speaker 4: To allur listeners, Adele, be mindful what should do because
Speaker 4: just saying I heard that person they hurt out of
Speaker 4: people's be truthful to yourself and others to the point
Speaker 4: to where we need to stop all the nonsense and
Speaker 4: be straightforward with ourselves. That's not putting an instant person
Speaker 4: in jail. Let's stop the folence. Let's just stop all
Speaker 4: that because it ain't worth it. We all just come together,
Speaker 4: no matter and I we love no color race. Get along.
Speaker 4: It's time for us people to get along and enjoy
Speaker 4: life and George's beautiful world that God gave us because
Speaker 4: we don't have nothing. You know, who else can we
Speaker 4: depend on? We basically depend on the people that's around us.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't know nobody until we open our
Speaker 4: mouth and start communicate. I want to start communicating, we
Speaker 4: start learning people.
Speaker 6: We have a better world. And I really appreciate you
Speaker 6: all listening and have a good heart of your heart
Speaker 6: to life itself. Hope y'all have a good heart.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
Speaker 1: early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wardis for inviting me to sit in today,
Speaker 1: and thanks to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea,
Speaker 1: Leila Robinson, and Kathleen Fink. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: follow me Tiffany Reese at Lookiboo and listen to my
Speaker 1: podcast Something Was Wrong. Wherever you get your podcasts. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one