Testing on saliva from victim’s clothing matches to a young
man who lived near the scene of the crime and is serving time for a felony in
Mississippi
Contacts:
Paul Cates, 212-364-5346, pcates@innocenceproject.org
Jené O’Keefe
Trigg, 504-943-1902, jeneot@ip-no.org
(NEW ORLEANS– June 25, 2014) — Nathan Brown walked out of
the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center today after a Jefferson Parish judge
overturned his 1997 attempted aggravated rape conviction based on new DNA
evidence proving his innocence and pointing to another man who lived near where
the assault occurred and is currently incarcerated on a felony in Mississippi.
The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office joined the Innocence Project in
requesting that the conviction be overturned.
Brown, who always maintained his innocence, wrongly served nearly 17
years for the crime due to a cross-racial misidentification and an inadequate
defense lawyer whom he met the first day of trial.
“Mr. Brown is another victim of an unduly suggestive police
show-up procedure,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project,
which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law in New York. “There are best practices to minimize the
risk of misidentification from a one-on-one show-up, and we’re hopeful that
this case will inspire law enforcement in Louisiana to adopt the procedures
recommended by the International Associations of the Chiefs of Police.”
Brown, who is black, was 23-years-old when he was charged
with the August 1997 attempted rape of a white woman that occurred in the
courtyard of the apartment complex where they both lived. After returning from
a night out with friends, the victim was tackled to the ground from behind
while walking to her apartment. The assailant bit her neck, ripped her dress
open and took her purse before the victim was able to fend him off by striking
him with her high heels, which she was carrying. The victim saw him flee on a bike shortly
before reporting the incident to a police officer who had been called by
neighbors who heard her screams.
According to the victim’s description, the assailant was a
black man of average build who was wearing black shorts and no shirt. She also
said the man had a very strong body odor. Although the victim believed her
attacker lived outside of the apartment complex and initially told police she
saw him riding away on a bike, a security guard for the complex directed police
to Brown. When police knocked on Brown’s door just minutes after the crime, he
was in his bedroom wearing pajamas, rocking his young daughter to sleep.
Rather than asking Brown to come to the station house to
participate in a line up, the officers conducted a highly suggestive show-up,
taking Brown, who was told by the police to “get dressed” and changed out of
his pajamas into black shorts, to the victim who was waiting in a patrol car.
Brown had no shirt on during the show-up.
The victim was initially sitting in the patrol car and then asked to get
out to take a closer look and smell him, at which point she identified him as
her assailant. Although Brown did not have strong body odor, but rather smelled
of soap, she explained at trial that she believed he must have taken a shower
and that meant he was her attacker.
Brown’s mother retained a private lawyer to represent
him. His lawyer met Brown for the first
time on the day his trial was set to start.
The trial took place just three months after the crime. At trial, the
victim claimed that she recalled seeing a tattoo with the letters “LLE” on the
assailant’s chest, but a police officer testified that the victim didn’t
mention anything about the tattoo until after the show-up (during which Brown
did not have a shirt on exposing a “Michelle” tattoo on his chest). Brown
testified in his own defense and told the jury that he was at home caring for
his “fussy infant daughter” at the time of the crime. Despite the fact that four relatives who were
at home with Brown that night testified as alibi witnesses, Brown was convicted
in less than a day. He was sentenced to
25 years in prison without the possibility of parole for the crime of attempted
aggravated rape.
“Most people would be shocked to learn that an innocent
person could be convicted on the basis of so little evidence at a trial lasting
less than a day,” said Vanessa Potkin, Brown’s lead counsel at the Innocence
Project. “Nathan’s story highlights some of the common failures of our criminal
justice system that we would like to think are a thing of the past. His conviction was the product of a rush to
judgment by all involved. He became a suspect because he happened to be one of
the only black men living in a mostly white apartment complex. Once he was brought out of his home in the
middle of the night to be identified by the victim, there was almost no other
investigation, despite the evidence that he was at home with family when the
crime occurred and didn’t have a bike or the purse taken from the victim. Yet this was enough for a jury to send him
away for 25 years. You would think this case occurred in 1937, not 1997.”
Brown has maintained his innocence throughout the past 16
years and contacted the Innocence Project to help prove that he was wrongly
convicted. With the consent of the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office,
the Innocence Project conducted DNA testing of a stain on the shoulder on the
dress the victim was wearing where she was bitten. The stain tested positive
for saliva and yielded a full male DNA profile that excluded Brown. This profile was consistent with male DNA
found on three other areas of the dress, including the front where the
assailant ripped it open. The profile
was entered into the federal DNA database and there was a match to an offender
convicted of a felony in Mississippi, who is a black male and, at the time the
crime happened, was a 17-year-old living within blocks of the complex where the
victim was attacked.
“Mr. Brown’s mother paid for an attorney who it appears did
almost nothing to prepare for the trial,” said Emily Maw, Director of the
Innocence Project New Orleans.
“Unfortunately we have seen that happen far too many times here in
Louisiana. Of the 41 people who have been exonerated in Louisiana, more than
two thirds had less than effective defense lawyers.”
Following his release, Brown will be living in a newly
renovated apartment run by First 72+, an organization created by formerly
incarcerated individuals including Calvin Duncan to assist with the reentry of
exonerated individuals. Duncan will
serve as a mentor to Brown as he gets back on his feet.
Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of
wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in nearly 75% of the 316
convictions overturned through DNA testing. While eyewitness testimony can be
persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong social science
research has proven that eyewitness identification evidence is often
unreliable. In case after case (many involving cross-racial identifications,
which has been proven to increase the risk of mistaken identification) judges
and juries have relied on testimony that could have been more accurate if
scientifically proven reforms proven had been implemented.
Requiring that police identification procedures be conducted
blindly – meaning that the officer who conducts the procedure is unaware of the
identity of the suspect – reduces misidentifications by reducing the chance for
the officer to influence the procedure either intentionally or unintentionally.
Yet, Louisiana lags behind other states in enacting legislation requiring that
police identification procedures be conducted blindly. Louisiana is also one of the few remaining
states that bar expert psychologists from testifying in criminal trials about
the voluminous scientific research documenting the unreliability of
eyewitnesses.
Brown was represented by Barry Scheck and Vanessa Potkin of
the Innocence Project and assisted by local counsel Emily Maw of Innocence
Project New Orleans. The Innocence Project and Innocence Project New Orleans
are independent 501(C)(3) organizations that are affiliated through the
Innocence Network.
A copy of today’s legal filings are available at
http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/PCR_and_Order.pdf
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