A Louisiana man was finally released from prison on Monday after spending 29 years behind bars for a rape he and the victim said he didn’t commit.
Patrick Brown was convicted in 1994 on charges of raping his then-6-year-old stepdaughter. At the time, the stepdaughter was pulled off the stand before she could testify that another family member committed the rape. Brown subsequently was convicted on what Nola.com describes as hearsay testimony and inconclusive evidence and sentenced to life without parole.
The victim began to write a series of more than 100 handwritten letters in 2002 to the courts and Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office that asked for the case to be reviewed because Brown wasn’t her attacker. She also said that the prosecutors were aware that he didn’t rape her and it was another family member.
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“I’ve written over 100 letters … mailed them to the DA’s office. I’ve shown up unannounced to talk to someone and been turned around,” the victim told The Guardian.
Brown and the victim’s efforts were ignored until last year. The civil rights division of the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office reopened the case for another investigation and found that Brown was innocent. Emily Maw, head of the civil rights division, led the efforts to help get his conviction overturned.
“This is a case,” Maw wrote in the court filing, “of finally listening to a woman who, for over 20 years, has been telling the state that the wrong man is in prison.”
The civil rights division was reportedly created by Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams in 2021 to examine past harms in the criminal legal system. According to The Guardian, Brown filed a claim of factual innocence under a new law as a pro se application, which means…
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