The Innocence Files (2020) s01e08 Episode Script

[birds calling]
Where's the other bucket at?
I just see one.
I see it.
Really, these are the first horses
that we actually purchased,
and we just kinda fell in love with them.
We ride them every once in a while.
Not that often.
But we just come out here to ride them,
just to have a little fun.
He's Lazy Boy. He's the smooth rider.
He takes his time.
He's gentle. This one here
is the fastest out of the bunch.
But he's pretty old.
Nobody don't ride him 'cause he's so old.
So, he's just living his life.
Something I'm trying to do.
Texas is like a big, old wheel,
and it's a fast track to death
once you get on death row.
A lot go, and very few come home.
You can't win with Texas sometimes,
especially when you're innocent.
If they're out to get you,
they're out to get you.
And basically, they'll do
they'll break their own laws.
That's just the way Texas is.
It always has been like that,
and I'm pretty sure
it's not gonna change no time soon.
[opening theme music playing]
[man] In 2007,
I got a random call one day
from a senior partner,
one of the best lawyers in the firm,
and he said, "You were a public defender
once, right?" I was like, "Yeah."
He said, "Good,
because we've got a death penalty case,
pro bono, out of Houston, Texas.
Do you want it?"
And I said yes instantly.
- Hey. How's it going?
- [woman] Good.
By the time we got this case, Dewayne had
been on death row not quite two years.
One of the first things I did
was read the transcripts of the trial.
And I'm like, "Hmm. Nothing here."
All the hallmarks
of a traditionally strong case,
science, strong witness IDs,
none of that was here, none of it.
There was what's called a direct appeal,
and he already had that and he lost.
So, Dewayne figured he was going to die.
He didn't know there was a legal pleading
called a writ of habeas corpus,
which is what we were assigned to do.
A writ presents any new evidence
that wasn't available at trial.
In this case, the Harris County
DA's Office is my adversary.
They are trying to protect the conviction,
trying to hold the conviction.
For the six years we were fighting it,
they were fighting us.
As a prosecutor, when you have a writ,
you kind of start from the position
that the conviction is valid.
Twelve citizens made this decision.
I'm not going to undo it on a whim.
When this writ was filed, it was gigantic.
I had seen writs before,
and they were about 20 or 30 pages long,
and this one was almost 300 pages.
I remember sitting in front of my desk
and reading the transcript,
and it was the first time it ever happened
to me, and I literally started crying.
I had tried plenty of cases,
but there was something so tragic and sad
about this crime.
[phone rings out]
Houston Police, Woods.
May I help you?
Hi, I'm calling from an Ace location,
and one of our centers is in the process
of getting robbed right now.
Oh, one of your centers?
Yes. It's 5700 South Loop East.
Okay, you said 5700
South. Go ahead.
South, Code 1 robbery in progress.
5700 South Loop East
at the Ace Cash Express.
14N30 citation,
you can show me arriving on that.
10-30, step 'em up. They got guns.
14N20, have you headed that way?
It's robbery in progress.
Shots fired!
Yes, got shots fired.
Officer down! 14N30 is down!
Yes, I have an officer down.
5700 South Loop East.
They're going
eastbound on the loop. In a white
Pontiac.
Yes, suspect eastbound on the loop
in a white Pontiac.
I'm a wrecker driver.
Officer Clark's down, he's been shot.
Need to send an ambulance out here quick.
[indistinct radio chatter]
We have a female that's still breathing.
We have a female that's still breathing.
[female reporter]
Just before 10:00 this morning,
HPD officer Charles Clark
was on patrol in Southeast Houston
when he received what would be
the last call of his life.
When he arrived,
Clark was confronted by a gunman,
one of at least three men
robbing the business.
Officer Clark fired his gun
in self-defense,
but was shot by at least one of the men.
Also inside was
27-year-old cashier Alfredia Jones,
who'd been shot during the robbery.
[Inger Hampton Chandler] Alfredia
Jones was back from maternity leave.
She was a rotating clerk
for ACE Check Cashing.
That wasn't even her assigned store.
The men bum-rush her,
at least one or two of them,
get her inside,
tell her to open the safe.
[Inger] She had convinced the robbers
that she needed to call in
or else her supervisors would know
that she didn't make it to work on time
and that something was wrong.
And so she calls this number
and gives the code for robbery.
She was a hero.
Her children should know that.
[female reporter] Charlie Clark,
a 20-year veteran, was also gunned down.
Charlie was a good guy,
and he was a good officer,
and this is just a tragedy
for him and his family.
Charles Clark, who was a police officer,
who was this close to retirement,
was actually out
patrolling a neighborhood
behind the ACE check cashing store,
looking for abandoned vehicles
that needed to be towed,
and he had a tow truck driver
that was kind of with him.
[male reporter] According to detectives,
the wrecker driver actually saw the gunman
coming out of the store
[Inger] And especially
once a police officer is down,
it was all men on deck.
I mean, all hands on deck.
One of their own
had been brutally murdered.
And so it was a non-stop, 48-hour push
until all three of those suspects
were in custody.
[reporter] Investigators have now
been able to put together
this sketch of the main suspect,
described as a 30-year-old black male,
6 ft. to 6 ft. 2 in. tall,
wearing a dark jacket with red stripes
and a baseball cap
[Alfred Dewayne Brown] My mom stayed
in Houston, my grandmother stayed here.
I did a lot of back and forth, I guess.
Fish burger.
- [woman] Everything on it?
- Uh, yeah.
I like the openness of being down here.
It's more peaceful.
In Houston, it's fast-paced,
more people is constantly going.
I never felt at home in Houston. This
It just wasn't for me.
[woman] Let me get through this,
and I'll call you back.
I don't want to hear nothing
she's got to say.
[chuckles]
I can be mean sometimes,
just a little bit.
Now I'm looking for the spoons.
He was born in Houston.
But after he grew up,
he came back to stay down here.
I think he stayed down here
while he was
I think he was 12, 13,
something like that.
My mom wanted him to come back here.
[Brian Stolarz] And those are the years,
11 through, I think, 15,
in which he was thriving and happy.
Not educationally thriving, mind you,
'cause he still was reading
on a kindergarten or first grade level.
And then when he went to Houston
when he was 15,
imagine going to a big public school
after being in sort of a country school
in Louisiana.
And he just didn't do well.
I knew some dudes, but I just didn't feel
comfortable with them
'cause they was doing things
that I wasn't doing, you know.
[Brian] Dewayne goes from
the beautiful rural areas in Louisiana,
to the Americana apartment complex
in South Houston,
which was a bad place.
[Inger] I mean,
every officer in town knows that place,
and it's not uncommon to have cases
that come in with people from that area.
[Cat Brown]
So I moved in a low-income apartment,
and I think that's the worst thing I did,
'cause he got hooked up
with them little
How would I call them?
Bad boys.
[male reporter]
Police say these are the guys who did it:
DaShan Glaspie,
followed by Elijah Joubert,
and then, tagging along behind them,
Alfred Brown.
I knew them
from just being in the apartments.
It was one of those things where
when you wake up, you get dressed
and it's the weekend, you go outside,
you're gonna see them.
Elijah's nickname was Ghetto T.
And Shan's nickname was P Real.
[Brian] They called him Doby.
And he was with them,
at least one or two of those guys,
the night before.
You know, drinking and gambling
and having fun at the VA.
[Inger] The three got associated together.
So, once the officers
have these three names,
the investigation just starts
naturally going in that direction.
[Dewayne]
The morning the crime took place,
I was watching a talk show
early that morning,
there was breaking news coming on.
I'm like, "Man, what's going on?"
Two days go by, and my mom called.
She was like, "Well, since they're saying
you had something to do with it,
let's just go and turn yourself in."
I'm like, "Okay."
So we leave the apartments.
We get maybe a block
from the outside gate of the apartments
and next thing you know the law just
started pulling up, swooping their cars.
They're on the microphone,
"Get out with your hands up!"
[Inger] DaShan Glaspie had been handled
a number of times
by the criminal justice system.
Elijah Joubert had pending cases
at the time
that this capital murder happened.
So, you have two that have
fairly extensive criminal histories.
You have Alfred Brown, who doesn't.
I think he had a misdemeanor.
[Brian] He was not involved
in the robberies they were doing
or the drug-dealing they were doing,
but he lived in the same sort of rough
apartment complex that they all did.
[Inger] And then once they were arrested,
that's where Alfred Brown
really gets labeled
as the shooter of Officer Charles Clark.
DaShan Glaspie and Elijah Joubert
are being interviewed
in homicide interview rooms
and they're pointing to each other
as to who shot Alfredia Jones,
but they're both saying Doby,
or Alfred Brown,
is the one who shot Officer Charles Clark.
[Brian]
Dewayne was picked on purpose
because he was not hard, as it were,
because he was an easy guy to set up.
[Dewayne]
Next thing you know, officers come in,
"You have the right to remain silent"
And I'm like,
"What am I getting arrested for?"
And he never said,
he just read me my rights.
Once he put them handcuffs
on me that time
I stayed gone for 12 years and 30 days.
[Brian] This is an incredibly
high-profile crime in Houston
because this is
a police officer shooting case.
And Dan Rizzo was the prosecuting attorney
assigned in Dewayne's case.
He has to get justice quickly,
affirmatively, and put a villain out there
for everyone to see.
And that was Dewayne.
Once a prosecutor gets tunnel vision,
everything else kind of fades away.
If they want a conviction,
they're going to get it.
Driving trucks
has always been a passion of mine.
My daddy did it.
My uncles, they all did it.
So I've always been around it.
Before I went to jail, the farthest I'd go
was Texas and Louisiana.
And that was that,
I didn't do no traveling.
With the last two years,
I done been all over the United States.
Once you get behind this wheel,
it's like
You know, you see the open road,
and it's comfortable, man.
You enjoy everything.
I guess being locked up for ten years
on death row, man, it's like,
"I don't need to be in the house.
I want to stay outside."
[woman] This case was assigned to me
because very, very, very few people
can afford
to hire someone to represent them
on a capital murder case
because they're so expensive.
And at that time in Texas,
the death penalty
was a very real probability.
[Inger] What was difficult about this case
for the state
is that the case was entirely based
on statements and identifications.
This case does not have any forensic
or scientific evidence associated with it.
No DNA, no fingerprints.
No gunshot residue.
[Loretta Muldrow] There were
two different calibers of firearms.
And so they knew
that one had killed Miss Jones.
[Inger] The second gun,
the gun that was responsible for the death
of Officer Clark, was never found.
It's a bit of a hole in the story.
The gun that was responsible
for the death of Alfredia Jones
was Glaspie's gun,
but Glaspie ended up
cutting a deal with Dan Rizzo
and in exchange for his testimony
against Elijah Joubert
and Alfred Dewayne Brown,
he was convicted of aggravated robbery
and given a sentence of 30 years.
[Brian]
They decided to go with Glaspie, I think,
because he seemed to be
more believable than Joubert.
And they gave him the prize.
And what's the prize?
30 years instead of death.
[Inger] The theory that the state chose
when they tried Elijah Joubert
was that Joubert had used
Glaspie's gun to kill the clerk.
[male reporter]
Joubert is the first to be tried.
Today at the courthouse,
his friends said he's innocent.
[indistinct speech]
[reporter]
But the jury heard evidence
out of Joubert's own mouth
that he was involved.
In a videotaped police interview,
Joubert said he was there,
but he was not responsible
for the shootings.
[Elijah Joubert]
In order to understand me,
you have to understand
the world I come from.
All of my childhood friends, we grew up,
our mamas on drugs,
our daddies ain't around,
our fathers ain't around.
We're basically raising ourselves in a
in a poverty-stricken project.
People that's living in poverty
go through the judicial system
and get railroaded
because you don't have
the financial resources
to fight these people.
Those prosecutors have the power,
and it's about wins and losses.
DaShan Glaspie
when he got arrested,
he was talking from the get-go.
DETECTIVE: So we're gonna
record the interview, OK?
So we can do the right thing here.
You know what I mean?
How'd she get shot, Shan?
Make it right with your soul, Shan.
What happened, Shan?
[Elijah Joubert]
They played an audio tape for me
and let me hear him telling on me.
DASHAN 'SHAN' GLASPIE:
He hit her with the gun on top
and she knelt down on the bench,
and she was down like this
and she get hit with the gun
and it goes off
DETECTIVE: When?
When did he bop her in the head?
SHAN: When she was down.
When she got down
[Elijah]
So, now, I gotta save myself
because I can't let this man
shift the whole blame on me.
ELIJAH 'GHETTO' JOUBERT: Then when, um
Doby got right there by the door.
The officer
tried to sneak back like was gonna
sneak peek around the window,
but Doby was already outside the door
and shot him Boom!
- [man] And Doby shoots him?
- [DaShan] He hit him. Boom.
[Elijah] I knew it wasn't true,
but I've gotta save myself.
Once they realized
that I wouldn't testify,
they have to give Glaspie a deal
because they have to have him testify
that I was the shooter of the clerk
and Brown was the shooter
of the officer.
If they don't have that,
they can't even take Brown to trial.
But I don't understand how the jury
even allowed Glaspie to get up there
and say that he gave me his gun
in the robbery.
Who gives their gun to somebody else
and gives up his protection
so somebody else could protect his back?
It don't make sense.
[man]
Number three, go to the red circle.
[Inger] Other than Joubert and Glaspie,
there wasn't anyone that put Alfred Brown
at the ACE check cashing store.
[Loretta]
The tow truck driver could not identify,
he could only give descriptions.
[Inger] Every civilian witness
that testified in this case had problems.
It seemed like
everybody had a criminal history.
Everybody had told
a slightly different story before,
if not
a completely different story before.
[Loretta] It was suspicious
how the witnesses have slowly progressed
from not saying Alfred Brown
to saying him.
And so I went back to the state
and that's when they offer 40 years.
And I'm telling you,
I'm almost 65 years old,
that never happens
on a police officer murder.
It was that tenuous.
[Dewayne] So she was like,
"Instead of taking this to trial,
and taking the chance
of going to death row,
why don't you sign for this 40 years
and go to jail?
That way you'll be looking for parole."
And that's when I told her, I said,
"If you was charged with a crime
that you didn't commit,
would you sign for that time?"
She said yes.
I told her, I said,
"Well, here go the pen, here go the paper.
Why don't you sign for that time
and you come and do it then?"
I can appreciate
the position that he's in,
but it's so much better
than being on death row.
[piano music plays]
[woman] When I was picked for this jury,
I felt very honored
because I heard the story
about the police officer being killed
and my uncle is a police officer
was, in Bayonne, New Jersey.
So I had a heart for police officers.
This is my actual letter.
"Trial of the State of Texas
vs. Alfred Brown.
Scheduled 9.30 a.m.
on Monday, October 10th, 2005."
What bothered me the most
was Brown is only 23 years old
and I related him to my four sons
as a loving mother.
Look at his facial expression.
Ain't that something?
I wonder what he's thinking.
The minute I walked into the courtroom,
I just looked at him, and he was so sad.
I can see he was withdrawn,
and it broke my heart to see him.
Normally,
somebody would show some feelings,
but when his girlfriend came up,
when Ericka came up
and said he was there and actually did
the act of shooting the police officer,
that was powerful for me.
[woman]
When I met Dewayne, he was sweet as pie.
He was a calm guy
and I think that was the yin to my yang
'cause I'm rambunctious,
and he's so reserved.
You know, I think that's why we worked.
My second apartment was Plum Creek.
I'll never forget it.
I fell in love with it
when I first saw the apartment.
I had just got my Section 8.
So, you know young girls,
that's a big deal,
that's to help you get on your feet
so you can work and you can move up.
[man]
Ericka, she basically held us all together
after my sister passed.
So, when my sister passed,
we all went to her house,
and that was our comfort.
There was just something about Ericka
that everybody just wanted to be around.
Reggie cooked, I didn't have to cook.
I went out and I made the money,
Reggie cooked.
That was our deal.
[Reginald Jones]
Her work ethic is crazy.
She's going to work to make sure
her kids have whatever they need.
They're very close.
Three little girls and their ma.
It's always been like that.
I didn't move in with her,
but I had clothes there,
I'ma put it that way. You know?
But she
I would go there and spend the night.
[Ericka] My girls loved him.
You know, we was happy And then, boom!
This happened,
and I was like, "Damn."
That took away the happy place.
[Dewayne]
The day before the crime took place,
I left the house,
went to the VA.
[Ericka]
We had a big argument the night before
because the same guys
they locked him up with
was the same guys I didn't like,
and I'm like,
"Where are you going? It's 11 o'clock
at night. You're supposed to be at home."
He'd be like,
"I'm finna go hang out with"
"The hell you is!"
Him and Ericka had gotten into it.
He wanted me to drop him off.
[Dewayne]
There was a bunch of people out there,
just gambling and shooting dice.
I don't know what it was,
but my stomach started messing with me.
So I left there,
went back to Ericka's house
And we went our separate ways.
I went upstairs, never came back down.
He stayed on the couch.
That's where he was
when I saw him that morning.
[Dewayne] When I wake up and everything,
the house is just going wild,
just kids running around
getting ready for school.
Ericka, she's getting ready.
"Girls, get up! Time to get dressed!
I gotta leave out the house!"
And we shoots out the house.
I get up, Doby was on the couch.
Next thing, I'm like, "Man, I'm finna
go upstairs and go to sleep."
He gets up, he goes upstairs.
I start playing a video game.
I'm playing the game for a little while,
I don't know how long,
but I cut the game off,
and breaking news, it was a shooting.
[man] The call came down
at 9:45 on Thursday morning
as a robbery in progress
I see it on the TV,
and that's when I call Ericka.
The lady she's working for,
she answered the phone.
It came across that caller ID
and it said "Ericka Dockery,"
so that's my house.
And she was like, "This is for you."
It was Dewayne.
I say,
"Man, did you see that on the news?"
She was like, "See what?"
I turned on the news.
I'm like, "What the hell?"
[female reporter] A 20-year veteran
of the Houston Police Department
on the brink of retirement
when a single bullet shatters it all.
[Brian] That phone call that he makes
was Dewayne's alibi.
because if he was at Ericka's home,
like he said,
he couldn't have been at the murder scene.
Ericka also gave that same statement
to the police.
It's in a signed, written statement.
But there's a moment in this case
where everything turns.
[woman] In 2014,
a friend of mine at Texas Monthly,
she says,
"Lisa, there's this case in Houston.
It sounds interesting.
Guy on death row for years
has always said he was innocent."
And so I was interested,
and I looked into it.
I did a column.
It was supposed to be one column.
I wanted to write that one column
and just kind of move on,
but I couldn't. Something bothered me.
In the beginning, Brown's girlfriend
was his strongest alibi witness.
She pretty much had the same
version of events as Brown said.
Then she ends up testifying against him
and helping him get the death penalty.
How do you get from here to here?
And so I went to the courthouse one day,
and I asked for the file,
and I put it down on the table,
and I start
just reading through everything.
One of the last things I laid my hands on
was something that said,
"Grand Jury Transcript."
I had always known that
grand jury proceedings were secret,
and so the idea that there's a transcript
of this thing was shocking to me.
And then I kind of opened it
and just started reading,
and what I read was appalling,
it was shocking,
and, you know, for a journalist,
it's certainly motivating.
[Ericka] I was sitting behind a desk,
the stenographer was over here,
it was Rizzo and one of the detectives
in the corner,
and, you know,
the grand jury, it's like this.
[Lisa Falkenberg] In the beginning,
she said, "He was on my couch at this time
when y'all have him off
with the murderers, supposedly.
I remember being at work
and getting a call at my workplace"
But this jury seemed to be hell-bent
on getting this person
to change her story.
Some of the transcripts are shocking.
For example,
one of the grand jurors said to Ericka,
"If we find out you're lying under oath,
you'll be in serious trouble,
and you won't be able to get a job
flipping burgers."
[Ericka]
You know, I'm telling you what I saw,
but you wanted the outcome
that you wanted.
The foreperson says, "If the evidence
shows you're perjuring yourself,
then, you know, the kids are going to be
taken by Child Protective Services
and you won't see your kids
for a long time."
So you're gonna take my children away
from me?
That's my heart. They're my babies.
Foreperson: "We're as much concerned
about your kids as you are,
so tell the truth."
[Ericka]
You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip.
If they don't know anything,
they just don't fucking know anything.
One of the grand jurors called her,
"Girl, you just a big mistake."
They're not trying to find facts,
they are badgering this person.
My question after I read this was,
"Who are these people?"
I can't tell one grand juror
in the transcript from another,
so I don't know who's talking,
except for when the foreman talks.
[Brian] Foreperson says,
"Hey, Dan," which is the first clue.
Why the hell does he know his first name,
and why does he call him
by his first name?
[Lisa] Dan Rizzo is in the room.
He's not part of the group
that's threatening her,
but he's not stopping it either.
But he says, "Hey, Dan
what are the punishments for perjury
and aggravated perjury?"
And Dan Rizzo says,
"It's up to ten years in prison."
And the foreperson says,
"In prison? Okay!"
[Lisa]
The judge who appointed the grand jury,
she gave me the foreman's name,
and the first thing I did was Google it,
and the first thing that came up
was a contribution that he had given
to a retired police officers association.
[chuckles]
I thought, "No way.
No way would they put a police officer
as the head of a grand jury
investigating a police officer's murder."
These are supposed to be impartial people,
not members of the public who have
a vested interest in what happens.
[Lisa] And then I started
doing my research and realizing,
"Oh! This is actually
quite commonplace in Texas,"
because at the time,
we had a system for grand juror selection
called "pick-a-pal,"
where a judge could pick anybody,
a friend, let's say,
and then tell the friend, "Hey, Joe,
go out and find me some grand jurors."
And so often what you would get is older,
more conservative,
law enforcement-friendly people,
and often cops. [chuckles]
[Brian]
The foreperson says, "So, tell the truth!
And she says,
"Yes, he was there. He was home."
So, even in the face of the badgering
and the threatening,
she holds firm to the truth.
Rizzo says, "I think you're
up to your neck involved in this deal."
Then there's a break that occurred
during this testimony.
She got put into a locked room,
and Rizzo threatened her.
[Ericka] He talkin' about,,
"I'm gonna take your kids from you."
I think he knew
that was my pressure point.
"I'm gonna take your kids away,
I'm gonna lock you up."
You're trying to make me a co-defendant.
That means I'm gonna get charged
as an accessory,
that's capital murder on me too,
that's a chance that I could get
a needle in my arm.
I know that's what "co-defendant" means.
What are you supposed to do
if you're Ericka Dockery there?
You don't have money for a lawyer,
you are in a hornet's nest,
you want to get out.
She comes back,
and she adjusts her story just a little.
More to their liking, but not quite.
She is then arrested
and charged with perjury,
and she's locked up.
[Ericka] At that time, I was 26 or 27,
you're trying to give me 30 years.
I haven't even
been on this earth 30 years.
How the hell are you gonna try to do this?
[Dewayne] The first three months
I stayed in county jail,
Ericka, she was coming up there every day.
After those first three months,
my mom started coming,
and she came, like, a week straight.
So, I'm like, "Where is Ericka?"
That's when she told me
they'd locked her up
and charged her
with three counts of perjury.
I'm like,
"For what? What's she lied about?"
[Ericka]
I couldn't remember what time I left home.
So, in my statement
that I gave them at the police,
it was a different time
than I gave them at the grand jury.
I couldn't remember.
[Brian] She sits in jail for four months,
loses her job,
her cousin Reginald
was taking care of her kids.
[Reginald] I continue running
like she was still there.
The girls have gotta get ready for school,
they've gotta eat, I've gotta do my job.
[Ericka] Sitting behind bars,
I was so eager to get out
because I wanted my babies.
I didn't want them
to grow up without their mom.
Her life just in an instant falls apart
because Dan Rizzo had the power
and the ability to do that.
We have later found out that
he confided in other DAs at the time
that his tactic in this case
was to squeeze Ericka.
And it worked.
[Ericka] People can say
what they want to say.
But until you go through
something traumatic,
you don't know what you're gonna do,
you don't know how you're gonna be.
It's a lot of days
I contemplated hurting myself.
I really started thinking,
"What is it that I need to do to fix this,
to get myself out this situation?"
[Lisa]
At some point, she writes the judge
and just tells him how awful this jail is
and how much she misses her children
and that she'll basically just do anything
to get out of there.
[Reginald] They broke her.
She changed her statement
a couple of times,
and they finally said, "Okay.
We'll release you, but we're going
to release you on a monitor."
[Lisa] They wanted her to wear
an ankle monitor, she had a curfew,
and she was required to report
to a homicide detective once a week.
Now, why would that be?
To make sure she gets her story straight.
To make sure she tells the same story
that she says she'll tell on the stand.
[Reginald]
I guess how she's looked at,
she's the focal point of the whole trial.
Without Dockery, they couldn't have
They didn't have shit.
[Inger] Alfred Brown's alibi was,
"I was at my girlfriend's apartment."
Loretta Muldrow did everything she could
to try to elicit as much information
and evidence as she could
about that alibi at trial.
And she was hamstrung
because she didn't have phone records
to prove it.
[Anne Marie O'Donnell] The phone call
that they claim that he made,
they could not prove it,
they didn't have the evidence.
They didn't have
any piece of paper showing it.
To tell the truth, he had hardly nobody
to defend him like the other side did.
Right? And who are you going to believe?
[Dewayne] Dan Rizzo, from my eyes,
it's like he ran the courtroom,
and the judge was there to sign off on it.
Rizzo was like a giant,
like out of the Bible.
Goliath.
And everybody listened to him.
[Ericka] I was sweating
walking through that courtroom.
Dewayne looking at me.
Rizzo looking at me.
And the first thing you want to do
Well, the first thing I did do
is I cried on the stand.
I don't care who you are
or how strong you are,
that is a lot to deal with.
[Dewayne]
Dan Rizzo asked her some questions
and all she was doing
She was, "Yes. Yes. Yes."
She just was agreeing
to everything he was saying.
You have Ericka Dockery coming in
and testifying that
she visited Brown in jail,
and she asked him,
"Were you there at the robbery?"
And he put his head down and said,
"I was there."
[Loretta]
This was a very surreal moment for us
because there was
no prior statement anywhere
attributed to her saying that.
That was very traumatic, just hearing
he shot the officer.
Why would she say that if it wasn't true?
[sighs]
Having to lie
it wasn't something I wanted to do,
but it was something I needed to do.
And it wasn't
to get myself out a bad situation.
No, it was because my girls
didn't have anyone else.
[Loretta] It was very obvious
Ericka Dockery had been coerced.
That was frustration.
And I'm raising my voice
because it's like
uh, PTSD for me.
[Brian] It was three days.
Three days of trial.
For a death penalty case?
It almost seemed like guilt
was, like, a foregone conclusion.
[Anne Marie] The jury room,
everybody was in a hurry to get out.
The first person said, "We will go home
today, we're gonna go home today."
You know, "It's over with,"
and stuff like that.
You shouldn't be talking like that.
You should be at the table,
discussing everything together.
But at the very end,
Ericka That's what helped me to say
that he was guilty.
And down deep, I said, "Oh, my God.
Oh, my God."
We said, "Guilty," then he yelled out,
"I didn't do it," or something like that.
It made me so sad.
When I heard that, I almost wanted to cry
because he was so sincere
when he yelled that out.
Oh, yeah, I said, uh,
"I didn't kill nobody,
I didn't rob nobody."
I guess that was my breaking point,
man, I couldn't take it no more.
I couldn't sit there
and just watch them
continue to do what they were doing.
But it's
I couldn't take it no more, man.
I couldn't take it no more.
Um
After, uh
I got found guilty
they, um
they
brought me to the back.
[sobbing quietly]
[sniffs]
They, uh, brought me to the back.
They brought me to my dorm
'cause I was still in population.
They told me, um
pack all my stuff up,
and they brought me to death row.
Um
[sniffs]
I get to death row
you go see the doctor.
They check your ears,
ask you, "Are you on any drugs?
Do you do any drugs?"
[sniffs]
They, um
give you, uh, your number,
you uh, your death row number.
Mine was 999504.
And, um
[sniffs]
you get butt naked.
You got to squat, lift your
[sighs]lift your penis up,
and your balls.
Um
You're not allowed to have anything
at that point
till, um, they get done with you.
You could stay butt naked up to
[sniffs]
30 minutes to an hour.
Then they bring you to your cell,
they give you a jumper.
They bring to the cell
whatever you had in the county jail.
If they don't want you to have it,
they take it.
And you're in the cell.
When you get ready to come out
of that cell when you're on death row,
you got to get butt naked again.
You got to lift your penis up,
lift your balls up
[sighs]
bend over, spread your ass cheeks.
And you have to do that
going into your cell
coming going back to your cell.
If you go to a visit, you have to do it.
When you come back
from the visit, you have to do it.
If you're going to the medical
to see the doctor, the dentist [sniffs]
if you're leaving the cell,
you got to do it.
If you're going to rec, you have to do it.
Going to the shower, you have to do it.
And
that's what I did, for ten years.
[sniffs]
You're just
You're shut off from the outside world
and there's nothing you can do about it.
[Brian] This case has left me very sad
and disappointed.
- There you go.
- Thank you.
[Brian] I say I'm angry,
but really, at the very root of it,
I'm disappointed
that it all had to come to this.
I like to say that as a public defender,
I developed a good bullshit meter.
I could seriously spot a criminal
or a liar or a bullshitter a mile away.
But I saw him, and then, like,
it was a shot right to my heart, like
Oh, my God!
It was like when you hold your kid
for the first time,
it's truth that hits you in a place
that only you could know,
like this really affirming truth deep down
that he was telling me the truth.
That's what I believed that day.
[Dewayne]
When Brian came and introduced himself,
I didn't trust him.
It took me three years
to actually accept him in.
But then them three years,
he would come up there
and just unexpectedly,
he wouldn't let me know he's coming
or nothing. He'd just pop up.
[Brian] I'd go see him a bunch
because I wanted him to know
there was someone out there
that was fighting for him
and cared for him.
In a lot of ways, it was my energy, too.
Like, I needed the juice of seeing him
to remind myself why I was doing this.
We had boots on the ground for months,
investigating witnesses,
going to talk to everybody.
And it wasn't challenging
to get affidavits
because the truth is easy to remember.
[Elijah] All the years Brown was here,
man, he never hated me.
He never showed
no kind of anger towards me.
But just to know he's here
and I'm part of it,
it was eating me inside.
He came to me one day,
and he asked me, he was like,
"Man, what do you think about helping me?"
I said, "Man
whatever you need me to do,
man, I'll do it,
because we both know the truth."
[Brian] We called Dewayne on his birthday,
and he said,
"So, you know,
they've moved Joubert close to me,
and he's willing to talk to you."
I go interview him, and he says,
"Your boy don't belong here."
And I say,
"Yeah, I know. Tell me who did it."
He said, "I'm no snitch.
I ain't telling you shit."
But Joubert then writes an affidavit
saying, "Alfred Dewayne Brown
was in no way responsible
for this murder.
He was not even with us that day."
But he would not write
in the affidavit who did it
because he still remained not a snitch.
[Elijah] If they killed me,
at least I freed myself,
you know what I'm saying,
of the guilty conscience I had
knowing this man was here
because I didn't say nothing
in the beginning.
[Brian]
Ericka was the biggest affidavit to get
because the first thing she said
was the truth.
She was under that ankle bracelet
for so long
that she was afraid to talk to anybody.
[Ericka] You know, it's been 15 years,
but it's not a day that don't go by
that I don't think about this case.
And my granny always tell me,
"You can't keep
sweeping shit under the rug, Ericka."
[laughs] "You've gotta deal with it."
So she said, "If it keeps coming up,
that means you haven't dealt with it."
[Brian] So I flew down on a Sunday,
met her at a Cajun restaurant,
and I said, "I am not the cops.
I can't do a damn thing to you.
I'm just on a search
for the truth, period."
I asked her, "Was Dewayne home
when you left for work that morning?"
And she started to cry.
And she said, "Yes."
And then I said,
"Did you get a phone call that morning?"
"Yes."
And so she began
a sort of cathartic release.
Do you know how hard it is to wake up
every day and look yourself in the mirror,
knowing that you did
a cause and effect in someone's life?
That was like a cloud
hanging over my head,
and how could you live
with something like that?
[Reginald]
I understand why she did what she did.
At first, I didn't.
"No, you're wrong.
You're gonna get this man killed.
He's They gave him the death penalty,
Ericka. You're tripping."
But when I finally had my daughter,
I understood.
You do whatever it takes
to protect your child.
She did exactly what I would have did.
Protect my kids, get back to my kids.
So, I understand what Ericka did.
[Ericka]
Now I'm taking steps to do what's right
and to change what I did to Dewayne.
[Brian] The truth was coming out.
But to what end?
Because I'd give all these affidavits
to the DAs
and they're like,
"Eh, they're affidavits.
They're witnesses.
Either they lied at trial,
they lied now, they're liars.
No." You know, "Good luck."
[Inger] The thing about recanting
affidavits, it goes back to the question,
were you lying then, or are you lying now?
What is your motivation
for changing your story now?
Is it different than what your motivation
was for telling the original story?
The practice of our office was to go out
and talk to everybody,
and we did that.
I mean, I challenged every single claim
that they raised.
I basically said,
"This is the claim that's being raised,
and this is the reason why it's wrong
and why it doesn't warrant relief."
[Brian] Although Inger Hampton said
she wanted to search for the truth,
I'm not so sure that that was the case.
She wanted to protect what Dan Rizzo did.
Whether they knew the full extent
of what Dan Rizzo did, I don't know.
Absent any evidence other than allegations
that pressure had been brought to bear,
that threats had been made,
and Dan Rizzo gave an affidavit
saying that none of that happened.
So, it was It
There was no It was
It was a "he said, she said."
I worked with Dan Rizzo.
He was senior to me in the office.
I've always had
a good relationship with him,
I've never personally witnessed him
do any of the things
that he's accused of doing in the writ.
[Brian] I met him only one time.
I was going through evidence
in the DA's office,
and he came by, shook my hand,
and he's like, "What case are you on?
I'm like, "Oh, the Brown case."
He's like, "Oh, Brown. What was that one?"
Like he's got so many
damn death penalty cases!
And he was, uh, sort of flip
and sort of "bleh,"
and I wanted to say right then,
"I'm gonna get this guy out."
Once I realized
sort of the facts of this case,
I realized that the phone records
were everything.
In a non-DNA case, this was our DNA.
So, we subpoenaed the phone company.
They said, "The records are long gone."
We speak to the cops.
"We don't have them."
We ask his prior lawyer,
Loretta Muldrow,
"Hey, did you ever subpoena
the phone records?"
Considering that was
his goddamn alibi the whole time.
She's like, "I didn't subpoena them
because I worked at the phone company
and I didn't think they keep them."
[Loretta] At the time,
the technology was that
you could not get landline records.
I was aware of that,
and so was Officer Breck McDaniel.
[Inger] Breck McDaniel, who was an officer
with the Houston Police Department
had really established himself
as an expert
in the area of cell phone evidence.
Breck was able to obtain
the cell phone data
on both Elijah Joubert and DaShan Glaspie.
Alfred Dewayne Brown did not have a phone.
So, the story, as it was told,
was that he would use one of their phones.
[Brian] Breck McDaniel comes to court
with these sort of really fancy maps.
"Call by Doby to Sharonda Simon
on Glaspie's cell phone."
So, you had to accept
Glaspie's initial statement, which was,
"Brown borrowed my phone all day."
Just like, "Joubert borrowed my gun."
It all should have been
stricken as hearsay
because how do we know that Dewayne
made the call from Glaspie's cell phone?
So, legally this is an improper document.
Breck McDaniel testified at trial
about these cell phone records,
but here we are, many years later,
with no avenue
to get these landline records.
I would go down and see Dewayne
and I'd say, "I can't find
these fucking phone records."
I'd be so angry.
And he'd put his hand on the glass,
he'd say, "Get it up here.
Put your hand up here,"
and I'd reluctantly
put my hand up there, kinda sad.
He's like, "It's okay."
He's like,
"I believe in what you're doing, man,
and the truth is gonna come out."
Despite the fact that I believed
in his innocence a hundred percent,
I believed we wouldn't win.
And my wife will tell you that she didn't
know what that was going to do to me.
[woman] Each of us knows what it is
for a swarm to come,
making it nearly impossible to keep going.
[Brian] I'd come home from Houston
stressed and panicked,
and I'd try to pick up my own pieces
and be a dad, and a husband,
and a churchgoer,
and a community member,
but I would think about him
all the time.
[woman] Perhaps the swarms that we face
are larger than we are.
And we suffer the consequences
of systems that fail us
and violence that does not know our names,
yet injures us just the same.
[Dewayne]
A guy that I knew on death row,
he was about three cells down from me
he actually hung himself
[sniffs]
with a tennis shoe.
Tennis shoe strings.
Being on death row
it'll hurt you.
[Inger]
So, the writ is filed, I file my response,
and here we are in, like, 2013,
and I remember one of my colleagues
from the writs division
showing up in my doorway,
and she said, "Have you ever seen this?"
And she handed me a piece of paper,
and I just
I mean, I probably swore.
I think I was like,
"Where the hell did you get this?
[Loretta] One day, out of the blue,
I get a call from the chief
of the post-conviction unit.
She said she contacted, uh
the "phone expert,"
and she asked him one last time,
"Is there anything else?"
And he said,
"Let me check, I'll get back to you.
[Brian] We subpoenaed Breck McDaniel,
the police officer, to come
and make sure that he has
all the records from the case.
A couple weeks before the hearing,
we get an email
like I've never seen before in my life,
which says that Breck McDaniel
had been spring cleaning his garage
and found a box of documents
on the Brown case.
It sounds like you're reading
a bad John Grisham novel,
but you're not.
Breck McDaniel was
spring cleaning his garage
and found documents
that said "Brown" on it.
And she said,
"Did you get a copy of
Ericka Dockery's landline records?"
I said, "Of course not.
Are you telling me they exist?"
In pops in my email inbox
the phone record.
The phone record I've been looking for
all these years.
[Inger] Fear washed over me.
"Did I miss something? What did I miss?"
But, sure as I sit here today, I
That piece of paper
was not in the state's file.
Why is it in his garage?
Do you know why it was in his garage?
Neither do I.
[Inger] Did Breck think that Dan had it?
Did Dan have it?
Where did it go? Why did it only exist
in a box in a garage?
I don't have any way of explaining that.
[Brian] Breck McDaniel testified at trial
and never made reference
to these phone records.
He made reference to other phone records.
But the fact that he was seen
as a telephone expert
makes his testimony
all the more abhorrent.
[Loretta] What I saw was a copy.
I'm only speculating,
but if one only has the copy,
where would the original be?
There's only one attorney
who handled guilt,
and that would have been Dan Rizzo.
[Lisa] In criminal cases,
there's an adversarial process,
but the defense
isn't supposed to go in blind.
They're supposed to know
if the prosecution has
exculpatory evidence,
evidence that could help the defense,
and so there's case law called Brady
that requires prosecutors
to hand over evidence
they believe may help the defense.
[Brian] This case is the definition
of a Brady violation
in which a prosecutor
violated a legal duty,
a constitutional duty,
to turn over documents
that are helpful to the defense.
[Inger] Clearly, this is Brady evidence.
It's evidence that is dead on
to the alibi defense,
and they didn't have
this piece of evidence.
They withheld exculpatory evidence
on purpose
to get a conviction
in a high-profile case, period.
[woman] Good afternoon.
I took an oath when I became
Harris County District Attorney.
I swore to preserve, protect,
and defend the constitution
of the State of Texas
and of the United States
[Loretta] By this point,
Devon Anderson is the new DA
and the pressure by the police community,
the union presidents
Fierce.
For them to go back and now say,
"We were wrong,"
I think that's the last thing in the world
the police want to happen.
During the appeals process,
our office discovered a phone record
that was inadvertently not disclosed
to the defense.
We immediately turned that record
over to Brown's defense team.
So, Devon Anderson had to decide
whether or not to retry him.
So, then she ordered an investigation,
not an outside investigation,
but people in-house,
her prosecutors,
to go through all the evidence
and decide whether they had enough
to try him.
We re-interviewed all the witnesses,
we looked at all the evidence,
and we're coming up short.
I don't know how else to say it.
We cannot prove this case
beyond a reasonable doubt,
therefore the law demands
that I dismiss this case
and release Mr. Brown.
[Dewayne] The guard came.
Instead of handcuffing me in the back,
he handcuffed me in the front.
Then he walked me to my cell.
He, um
took the handcuffs off
right in front of the cell
and said, "Let me know when you're ready."
Um
I'm sitting there,
standing there in a daze.
Everybody was screaming
and hollering my name,
saying, "You're going home,"
'cause they had seen it on TV.
And, uh
I got my stuff and I
Well, I just walked down the stairs,
and I left.
[cheering and hollering]
[Lisa] I remember seeing him emerge,
and I saw him look at me,
and I saw him reach out to hug me,
and for a split second, I thought,
"I don't know what to do!
Do I hug him?"
He's somebody I'm writing about,
and I need to be neutral.
And then another voice said,
"This man just got freed from death row.
Are you crazy? Give the guy a hug!"
[laughs]
[Dewayne]
As far as me speaking negative,
it's not worth it, you know.
I'm gonna just live my life,
and I hope everybody else lives theirs.
I go to school and pick up
my daughter, Audrey, who is eight.
And I see her across the field,
and I'm over here,
and we kind of run to each other,
like lovers in a movie.
We kind of fall into each other,
and we fall on the ground.
And I say,
"Hey, Dewayne's getting out today."
And she says, "That's great,
but I got my yearbook today." [laughs]
[Dewayne] When I got out of jail and they
brought me back down here to Louisiana,
my grandmother, she was still living.
I took my shoes off
and just walked around the yard.
And she was like, "What you doing?"
I'm like,
"It's been 12 years and some days
I haven't touched no grass."
I was glad to see her before she passed.
'Cause that was a lady
I was really close to.
She used to make me go to her garden
and help her pick mustard greens, okra,
and potatoes and stuff like that.
I used to hate going out there. But now
I'm thinking about building my own garden
just to, you know just to have it.
Just to do it, man.
I just need the land.
[man] Houston Police Officers' Union
is here today
to support District Attorney Anderson.
But let us be clear
that we believe
we had the right man at that time,
and we believe we have the right man now.
There is no statute of limitations
on capital murder.
We will continue to seek justice
for the Clark family.
We will not stop
until justice is served for them.
Because the charges are dismissed,
I will concede
he's constitutionally innocent
until proven guilty.
There's never really any acknowledgment,
uh, from the actual prosecutor
that he or she acted wrongly,
and there's never really
an expression of regret,
there's never really an accounting
for what went on.
In Texas, prosecutors have
almost absolute immunity.
This prosecutor, Dan Rizzo,
who put somebody on death row
by violating his rights,
can just live the rest of his life happily
in retirement.
He's gotta live with it.
[Brian] Until states begin to prosecute
prosecutors who do the wrong thing,
prosecute them criminally,
it will happen again.
[Lisa] Dan Rizzo,
when I spoke with him, was retired
and taking care of his mother.
He seemed to be genuinely trying
to recall the facts
and seemed to be generally foggy
on some things,
and this phone record
may have been misplaced,
it may have been overlooked,
but he did not recall seeing it.
"Oh, I never knew about those.
Oh, my God!
I'm an arbiter of justice,
just like everybody else.
I wanted to see if he was innocent too!"
The email comes, and that shatters
all of that to total bullshit.
[Inger] What we learned in that civil case
is that in addition to the phone records,
there was also an email
from Breck McDaniel to Dan Rizzo
letting him know
about the landline record.
And he says,
"I think it is a new development.
I was hoping that it would
clearly refute Ericka's claim
that she received a call at work
from Doby at about ten."
"I was hoping it would refute it,
but it doesn't, Dan!"
It's clear from the email
that Breck knew about the call
and that he expresses to Dan
that it's not favorable to the case.
It's certainly not in line
with the theory.
He stated, "I need you to issue a subpoena
because I got these records."
This email is from the day after
Ericka testifies to the grand jury.
And the attachment is the blank version
of this subpoena. Okay?
The attachment is blank
'cause I've seen it.
And he signs it.
There's the signature right there.
I don't know why he denies
knowing about these records.
[Lisa]
Prosecutors have a very difficult job
and mistakes are made.
But sometimes it's not about a mistake.
Sometimes it's a very willful decision
made by a prosecutor to hide evidence.
And that's what happened here.
And that's why, in my opinion,
there won't be justice done in this case
unless Dan Rizzo is held accountable
for what he did.
I would like to see Dan Rizzo
go to death row for
a month.
A month. And I guarantee you
he'll be crying the second day in there,
talking about, "Let me out." [laughs]
I would like to see that.
Just to get a laugh.
[chuckles]
Nah, what I would like to see
for the DAs that are current,
and the ones that's coming up to be a DA,
I would really like for them
to follow the rules
that they went to school for
instead of breaking the law
just to get a conviction.
That's what I would like to see too.
I would really like to see that.
[Brian] Dewayne's been released now
for three-plus years,
and we believe now it's time
for him to be compensated.
[Lisa] But the State of Texas
won't compensate him
because he does not have
an official declaration
of "actual innocence."
He's still technically presumed innocent,
because he was charged,
and then the case was dismissed.
That's not legally the same implication
as "actually innocent."
The DA has appointed a special counsel
to determine Dewayne's actual innocence.
It's a way for the DA to say sort of,
"The sins of the past are over.
What happened in this case was wrong.
He's innocent. Pay him.
Let him live his life."
[woman] Good morning.
I'm here to talk to you and the public
about the State of Texas
vs. Alfred Dewayne Brown.
And let me say that before
our announcement is even complete
that there are those who will disagree.
That happens every time
a district attorney makes a decision
of this magnitude about a person's life.
None of us must ever be
afraid of the truth.
It does no justice to Officer Clark
to convict the wrong person.
The bottom line is that
Assistant District Attorney Rizzo
jumped to conclusions
and convicted an innocent man.
Now, there is no evidence sufficient
for a reasonable juror
to find that he is guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt,
which is the legal definition
of innocence.
And Alfred Dewayne Brown is innocent
as a matter of law.
[Kim Ogg] Police and prosecutors disagree
every day. We have different jobs.
Ours is to determine
whether the legal standard can be met
by the evidence that's provided.
That's exactly what we did in this case.
The system has worked in this case.
Alfred Brown was wrongfully convicted
through prosecutorial
misconduct.
[Brian laughs]
[Brian chuckles]
Get out here.
What's going on, man?
[both laugh]
[Brian] Oh, my goodness.
[laughing]
[Brian grunts]
What's good with you, man?
I can't believe
you're wearing a Yankee hat.
Do you know how much I hate the Yankees?
Can I take this off?
[Dewayne laughs] Go ahead, man.
[Brian] We're about as close
to being done as possible now.
I mean, once the compensation comes in,
then you live your life,
and you do whatever you want to do,
in peace. You know?
- You're feeling closer to that, I guess?
- I wasn't worried about it
but I did feel really good
- when she came out with it.
- Yeah.
- It was like, "Wow!"
- Yeah.
Now that the case is basically over,
you don't have to talk
to your lawyers no more.
You can just live your life.
- I know one of them I'll keep talking to.
- [Brian laughs]
[Brian] If the system plays fair,
the right result usually happens.
The guilty go to jail,
the innocent don't.
But if someone in the system
does not play fairly, then
unjust results occur.
So, that's what happened here.
[Lisa] Let's not forget the victims.
Let's not forget Charles Clark,
the officer who was so near retirement,
looking forward to spending the rest
of his life with the woman he loves.
Let's not forget Alfredia Jones,
who was just back from maternity leave
and had a very young child
that she's supposed to be taking care of.
These people were murdered.
They deserve justice.
Let's think about their families.
They're not getting justice either.
Then there is Ericka Dockery.
I mean, this woman had no involvement
with the criminal justice system
until she was called in as a witness,
and she was treated as the criminal.
And let's think about Brown.
He'll never get those years back
that he served behind bars.
There are quite a few victims here,
but I would say that
the system itself,
you know, the system that we believe in
and the faith that we have in the system
is also a "victim", is also harmed
every time there's a case like this.
[Brian] For Dewayne,
what's really important to him
is what he is determined to be.
He's actually innocent, and that's
what he wants the world to know.
[Dewayne] I want to build me a race car.
I want to continue to drive 18-wheelers.
And I just want to live a quiet,
calm, country-style life.
And that's my plan, that's my goal,
that's my dream.
I like this lifestyle.
I'm not worried about nobody,
I'm not trying
to get in nobody's business,
I'm not trying to get in no trouble.
Just leave me alone and let me
live to see a hundred years old, you know.