By Ivan Moreno | January 3, 2023, 3:50 PM EST
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Brown and 5 different prisoners have been a part of a botched escape from Louisiana’s State Penitentiary that resulted within the beating and stabbing demise of Capt. David Knapps in 1999. Brown admitted he was a part of the tried jail escape however denied involvement in Knapps’ killing.
The transcript, a press release by one other prisoner, appeared to bolster Brown’s case. It claimed that co-defendant Barry Edge had admitted that he and one other escapee, Jeffrey Clark, determined to kill Knapps and adopted by on their plan.
Prosecutors solely shared the alleged jailhouse confession as a result of they deliberate to make use of it towards Edge at his trial and acknowledged they’d obtained the assertion 4 months earlier. Had he had that assertion, Brown argues he may’ve used it to assist his protection that he was not current throughout Knapps’ slaying and that, opposite to the prosecution’s concept, he didn’t maintain him down through the deadly beating in a jail toilet.
Brown, who has requested the U.S. Supreme Court docket to listen to his case, is much from alone in claiming Louisiana prosecutors routinely flout their obligations handy over so-called Brady materials favorable to the protection.
“Brady violations are a nationwide drawback, however Louisiana is an outlier by way of the variety of Brady petitions and Brady errors which have remained unaddressed. It is way more excessive,” stated Ellen Yaroshefsky, who has written extensively about Louisiana’s prison justice system and is the Howard Lichtenstein Professor of Authorized Ethics at Hofstra College.
If Brown’s petition is accepted, it will be the fourth time since 1995 that the nation’s high court docket has scrutinized Louisiana’s interpretation of the landmark Brady determination — a doubtful distinction that specialists say calls consideration to an entrenched prejudice towards Black defendants. All of the Brady instances the U.S. Supreme Court docket has reviewed from Louisiana, and lots of the certiorari petitions it has obtained from the state alleging prosecutorial misconduct, have concerned Black defendants.
Consultants say Brown’s case provides the Supreme Court docket one other alternative to ship a forceful message on Brady compliance.
“This most up-to-date distortion of established doctrine will strip defendants of constitutional protections, incentivize prosecutorial non-compliance, and deprive jurors of knowledge important to their determinations of guilt and punishment — all offering highly effective causes for this court docket to grant certiorari,” the Nationwide Affiliation of Felony Protection Attorneys stated in an amicus temporary urging the Supreme Court docket to step in.
After the jailhouse assertion was disclosed, the trial court docket granted Brown a brand new sentencing continuing, however the state’s excessive court docket reversed the ruling. Different state excessive courts or federal appeals courts would have adopted precedent and upheld the trial decide’s order, Brown argues.
“However as a result of petitioner’s case arose in Louisiana, he sits on demise row,” his petition says. “Solely this court docket can rectify that incongruity and reiterate Brady’s teachings to Louisiana prosecutors and courts.”
‘He Mentioned We Did It’
The U.S. Supreme Court docket reversed the previous three Brady instances it reviewed from Louisiana courts, with prosecutors typically getting exasperated tongue-lashings from the justices throughout oral arguments.
In 2011 the justices heard arguments in Smith v. Cain 
, a demise penalty case the place prosecutors didn’t disclose that their solely eyewitness to 5 homicides supplied contradictory statements in regards to the shooter.
Brady and Louisiana
by the numbers
44%
% of the registry’s first 2,400 exonerations that concerned the concealing of exculpatory proof, in response to the Nationwide Registry of Exonerations
50
Exonerations the place Louisiana withheld proof, out of 77 complete since 1989
148
Black folks sentenced to demise in Louisiana between 1976 and August 2015, out of 241 demise sentences statewide
37
Brady violations in New Orleans between 1963 and August 2019. In the identical timeframe, there have been 10 in St. Louis, six in and round Memphis, Tenn., and 4 in Atlanta.
Supply: Nationwide Registry of Exonerations; The Geographic Distribution of US Executions by Frank R. Baumgartner, 2016; Report of Professor Laurie L. Levenson for Robert Jones, 2019
“Could I recommend that you just cease preventing as as to if it needs to be turned over? In fact it ought to’ve been turned over,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia stated to the legal professional defending Orleans Parish within the case. “I feel the case you make is that it would not have made a distinction.”
The Jefferson Parish District Lawyer’s Workplace, which prosecuted Brown, is saying one thing related now — that prosecutors didn’t disclose the jailhouse confession as a result of it was neither favorable nor materials in figuring out Brown’s guilt or punishment. The proof confirmed Brown performed a major function in Knapps’ demise, the DA’s workplace says.
“After Captain Knapps had been hit within the head with a mallet by Edge, and after Captain Knapps was already bleeding, petitioner selected to facilitate the continued assault on Captain Knapps by forcibly eradicating him from the hallway, putting him within the toilet, and conserving him there by brute pressure the place the brutal beating may proceed in relative privateness,” the prosecutors say of their cert response.
It is uncontested that Brown dragged Knapps into a toilet after he was struck within the head and that the guard’s blood was on Brown’s clothes. Brown insists he wasn’t there through the killing and didn’t know what his co-defendants deliberate to do.
The prisoner to whom Edge allegedly confessed recollects that Edge stated he and Clark determined to kill Knapps.
“He stated we may have let him reside. He stated we did it. We decided to kill him to assist our self,” Richard Domingue’s assertion says.
The Jefferson Parish District Lawyer’s workplace declined to remark to Law360, citing Brown’s pending petition.
Brown, Edge and Clark have been serving life sentences for homicide in several instances after they have been convicted in separate trials of first-degree homicide for Knapps’ demise. Clark obtained the demise penalty together with Brown, the one Black inmate who participated within the escape plot. Edge was sentenced to life as a result of jurors couldn’t agree on the demise penalty.
Two different inmates additionally obtained life sentences for first-degree homicide. A 3rd was fatally shot by a jail guard through the tried escape.
Solely One Prosecutor Disciplined
Demise sentences in Louisiana are sometimes reversed due to prosecutorial misconduct, in response to a 2016 research by Frank R. Baumgartner, a political science professor on the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Tim Lyman, a documentation specialist who has labored for Chevron and Dow Jones.
From 1976, when capital punishment was reinstated within the U.S., by August 2015, Louisiana sentenced 241 folks to demise and 148 of them have been Black, in response to the research. Of the 155 instances that had been resolved, 127 led to reversals — an 82% reversal fee that’s 10 proportion factors increased than the nationwide common, the research stated. Twenty-five reversals have been attributed to prosecutorial misconduct, second solely to judicial error at 38.
Prosecutorial misconduct can be a number one contributor to wrongful convictions, in response to a September 2020 report from the Nationwide Registry of Exonerations. Of the primary 2,400 exonerations within the registry, 44% concerned concealing exculpatory proof.
Prosecutors incessantly go unpunished for these violations in Louisiana and different states, specialists say.
“The issue is most disciplinary authorities do not take care of prison instances to start with. They do not have the experience in it. They have a tendency to defer to district attorneys pondering that they are policing their very own,” Yaroshefsky, the Hofstra professor, stated.
Just one prosecutor has ever been disciplined by Louisiana’s disciplinary physique for a Brady violation in all kinds of instances, regardless of the state withholding proof in 50 of 77 exonerations, in response to the Nationwide Registry of Exonerations.
“A results of that’s that prosecutors don’t have an incentive to not commit misconduct as a result of they by no means pay any penalties anyway,” stated Richard Davis, the authorized director of the Innocence Mission New Orleans.
The only real prosecutor who was disciplined, Roger Jordan, obtained a three-month suspended sentence for hiding exculpatory proof within the case of Shareef Cousin, who was 17 when he was sentenced to demise in 1996 for the deadly taking pictures of Michael Gerardi.
Cousin turned one of many youngest prisoners on demise row within the U.S. and the youngest in Louisiana historical past. After Jordan’s misconduct was revealed, the Louisiana Supreme Court docket ordered a brand new trial in 1998 and his case was dismissed the next yr.
Jordan was accused a number of instances of Brady violations, in response to court docket paperwork, together with in Smith v. Cain. The Supreme Court docket reversed Juan Smith’s conviction in 2012.
“The names are identified, the habits is thought, and the habits is tolerated and excused,” stated Angela A. Allen-Bell, B.Okay. Agnihotri Endowed Professor on the Southern College Regulation Middle.
Jordan, who previously practiced in Orleans Parish, is now a protection legal professional in personal observe. He didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Repeat Allegations of Misconduct
An legal professional for Brown, Letty Di Giulio, has filed three cert petitions alleging misconduct by certainly one of Brown’s prosecutors in different instances. In November, the excessive court docket declined to assessment Assistant District Lawyer Thomas Block’s conduct in a human trafficking case, however Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Within the case, Block testified to rebut the protection’s competition {that a} key witness obtained a deal for her testimony, however Justice Sotomayor wrote that his testimony “went far past that restricted function” and known as his habits “one of the crucial egregious cases of prosecutorial testimony amounting to prosecutorial misconduct.”
“I had hoped that this case, by which ADA Block so flagrantly flouted and abused his energy, would possibly lastly be a reckoning,” Di Giulio advised Law360 on the time.
Block declined requests for remark by his workplace.
The opposite prosecutor in Brown’s case, Hugo Holland, has been accused of a number of Brady violations, together with within the case of Corey Dewayne Williams, a 16-year-old intellectually disabled boy who was convicted and sentenced to demise within the 1998 homicide of a pizza supply driver. On the time, Williams nonetheless sucked his thumb, incessantly urinated himself, and ate filth and paper, in response to his legal professional’s 2018 cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
Till investigators obtained a confession from Williams after hours of in a single day questioning, police suspected three older males have been conspiring to pin the crime on Williams, however prosecutors didn’t disclose that to the protection throughout trial, in response to court docket paperwork.
“A few of the most egregious Brady instances have come out of Louisiana,” stated Mary McCord, the chief director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Safety, which filed an amicus temporary in Williams’ case and has submitted one on behalf of Brown. It contains signatures from dozens of present and former prosecutors.
“The federal government has an obligation to prosecute the place prosecution is warranted nevertheless it wants to take action by enjoying by the principles and doing so pretty,” McCord stated.
The U.S. Supreme Court docket by no means obtained an opportunity to resolve whether or not to assessment the case as a result of after 20 years in jail, the Caddo Parish district legal professional stated Williams’ constitutional rights could have been violated throughout his trial. Williams was launched after agreeing to a deal by which his first-degree homicide conviction was vacated in alternate for him pleading responsible to manslaughter and obstruction of justice prices.
Not like Block, Holland is just not employed by Jefferson Parish. He is been working as a contract DA since being compelled to resign from Caddo Parish in 2012 after he and a colleague allegedly lied on a federal software to acquire automated rifles for the workplace.
Holland declined to remark.
Counting Trial Wins, However Not Brady Violations
Louisiana’s dysfunctional justice system has been an issue for many years and is rooted in racism, stated Allen-Bell, creator of an upcoming e-book, “The Summons,” about race and justice within the state. Prosecutors lie in open court docket about proof they’ve, she stated, citing the case of Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore for instance.
In 1977, Whitmore was prosecuted for the demise of former Zachary Mayor Marshall Bond, who was overwhelmed and stabbed at his farm. A non-unanimous jury — a Jim Crow-era holdover — convicted Whitmore on a 10-2 vote.
“The scene as I acknowledged, had no fingerprints. All tough surfaces. Nothing left there,” the prosecutor within the case stated throughout Whitmore’s trial, in response to a transcript he obtained.
“Quick ahead to 2019 and Mr. Whitmore has despatched me copies of all these fingerprints that this prosecutor stated by no means existed,” Allen-Bell stated.
Whitmore has been in jail for greater than 40 years, most of them in solitary confinement. He has requested the state to match his fingerprints to these discovered on the crime scene, however his request has been beset by delays. His professional bono legal professional has already paid a fingerprint professional who definitively excluded Whitmore from two latent prints, in response to Whitmore’s movement.
“You might have a historical past of instances in Louisiana, lots of them not even printed, that I used to be capable of finding the place persons are being topic to those Brady violations on a routine foundation,” Allen-Bell stated. “It’s not uncommon, it isn’t occasional. It’s constant, it’s common, it’s predictable. That is how unhealthy that is.”
An August 2019 report from Loyola Regulation College professor Laurie L. Levenson underscored the purpose. Evaluating Brady violations in Orleans Parish to district legal professional workplaces with related caseloads in different states since 1963, the yr of the Brady ruling, Levenson discovered that “the numbers are usually not even shut.”
She discovered 4 Brady violations in Fulton and DeKalb counties in Atlanta; six in Shelby County in Memphis, Tennessee; and 10 in St. Louis. New Orleans’ 37 Brady violations have been “practically 400% increased than the following highest jurisdiction,” Levenson stated.
Levenson’s report was commissioned by attorneys for Robert Jones as a part of his lawsuit towards the Orleans Parish District Lawyer’s Workplace, which prosecuted him in 1992 for a sequence of violent crimes within the French Quarter, regardless of having data that pointed to a different man.
Jones spent 23 years in jail earlier than being exonerated.
A lot of Levenson’s report targeted on the tradition of the district legal professional’s workplace when Jones was convicted through the tenure of Harry Connick Sr., who served from 1974 to 2003. Connick’s workplace didn’t have a coverage to make sure Brady compliance, Levenson stated. The trial secretary tracked prosecutors’ wins and losses to incorporate of their personnel recordsdata, however not Brady violations, she added.
Jason Williams, who has been Orleans Parish district legal professional since January 2021, settled Jones’ lawsuit for $2 million throughout his first yr in workplace. Protection attorneys noticed it as a promising signal that the workplace is altering.
“This DA’s workplace administration is actively working to enhance the practices of the workplace regarding well timed and full disclosure of proof, as required by Supreme Court docket precedent and state statutes,” Williams’ workplace stated in a press release, including that employees take part in coaching periods with “former prisoners whose convictions have been vacated by courts on Brady grounds.”
Williams’ workplace additionally created a brand new division to look at “previous instances involving allegations of proof suppression,” the assertion stated. That unit helped exonerate 5 folks in 2021, in response to the Nationwide Registry of Exonerations.
“He’s the one DA within the state that has overtly acknowledged the excessive incidence of [Brady violations], and he is the one one which has put programs in place to confront it,” Allen-Bell stated.
Courts, not simply prosecutors, even have to enhance how they deal with Brady violations, protection attorneys say. Judges are inconsistent on their interpretation of materiality in deciding Brady claims and too usually aspect with prosecutors, in response to a 2014 NACDL research that examined 620 federal instances over 5 years.
In 145 of these instances, prosecutors didn’t disclose favorable data to the protection, the research stated, however judges sided with the federal government 86% of the time in concluding there was no violation.
“While you’re preventing about Brady data, the issues prosecutors say in court docket belie their understanding of Brady,” stated Gwyneth O’Neill, a New Orleans legal professional with Schonekas Evans McGoey & McEachin. “In the event that they’ve by no means completed protection work, plenty of these prosecutors do not even essentially perceive the way it might be favorable to the protection. The Supreme Court docket way back cautioned that they need to err on the aspect of disclosure. They’ve clearly chosen to not heed that warning in Louisiana and have suffered no penalties for failing to take action.”
–Modifying by Marygrace Anderson.