After spending almost 30 years in prison for a rape the victim herself repeatedly insisted he didn’t commit, a man has walked free holding the “freedom paper” he said he had been waiting for all his life.
49-year-old Patrick Brown walked out the doors of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court on Monday, May 8, carrying a one-page court order and, for the first time in almost three decades, not dressed in a prison jumpsuit.
In 1994, Mr Brown was convicted of aggravated rape in a case involving his six-year-old stepdaughter.
The girl never testified, and Brown was convicted on the testimony of adults claiming “what they believed” the victim had said, according to the Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams.
Leaving the courthouse on Monday, Louisiana man Mr Brown held on tight to his court order. “This is it,” he said. “This is the freedom paper that I have been waiting for all my life.”
Family members gathered outside the courthouse, as Mr Brown walked out a free man. Clutching the paper, he said: “I’m going to find me a picture frame for this paper.” He continued to hold on tightly until he was out of sight.
Patrick Brown embraces loved ones outside Orleans Parish Criminal District Court (
Image: Orleans Parish District Attorney)
The woman, now an adult, has protested Mr Brown’s innocence for years, with a statement from the Orleans Parish District Attorney saying she had been campaigning since 2002, asking administrations to review the case, “correct the injustice, and rightfully prosecute the actual perpetrator” – who she claimed to be another family member.
On Monday, the woman spoke of how she had written more than 100 letters to prosecutors and court officials, explaining that Mr Brown was not the one who raped her. But nobody listened to her.
Civil Rights Division Chief Emily Maw said the case “presents multiple injustices”, explaining that “the wrong man has been in prison for 29 years”, “the right man was not fully investigated and prosecuted”, and “this victim has endured not just the deep trauma of child sexual assault, but the trauma of knowing the wrong man has been imprisoned for almost three decades while the man who raped her walked free.”
In the court filing, Chief Maw wrote: “This is a case of finally listening to a woman who, for over twenty years, has been telling the state that the wrong man is in prison.”
Brown held onto his court-order tightly (
Image: Orleans Parish District Attorney)
Judge Calvin Johnson agreed. Before signing the order granting Mr Brown his freedom, the judge said the state had been complicit in the harm and “horror” the woman had endured. “That’s a wrong that all of us – all of us – are guilty of,” he said.
“Thank you for listening, finally”, the woman said. “Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for helping me tell the truth. Thank you for helping our family heal. Thank you for giving me my dad back.”
In the courtroom, she had fallen to her knees when Judge Johnson announced Mr Brown would be going home. When she could stand again, she embraced the man she saw as a father, with Mr Brown later saying he whispered an apology to her.
“I was telling her I’m sorry it happened to her,” he said. “I was telling her I failed as a father. I was supposed to protect my household and I didn’t.”
When he took office, DA Williams launched the Civil Rights Division, which helped free Mr Brown. “It is incredibly disheartening to know that this woman was dismissed and ignored, no matter how inconvenient her truth, when all she wanted was the real offender to be held responsible,” said DA Williams.
Brown has said he ‘never gave up hope’ while in prison (
Image: Orleans Parish District Attorney)
Brown’s case marks only the 16th time a Louisiana rape conviction has been overturned since 1991 (
Image: Orleans Parish District Attorney)
He went on to say: “When someone is wrongfully convicted, not only is it an injustice for the person who has years of their life stolen, but it is an injustice for the victim and the people of New Orleans because the real perpetrator is left to harm others.”
During the trial, the victim did take the witness stand. However, her nose began to bleed and she was whisked away from the box before she could testify that it was not Mr Brown who raped her, but another family member. Emily Maw, head of the Civil Rights Division, called Mr Brown’s case remarkable in a court filing.
It was not a survivor recanting her testimony, she wrote, but a situtaion where her account had been “discounted and ignored every time she has tried to correct this injustice.”
Mr Brown’s case is the sixteenth time a Louisiana rape conviction has been overturned since 1991, in a state with the highest per-capita rate of wrongful convictions, according to the University of Michigan Law School’s National Registry of Exonerations.
“They have more than me behind those walls looking for their truth to come out,” Mr Brown said.
But, he said: “I never gave up hope. If you’re incarcerated, you can’t give up hope. If you give up hope, you’re dead.”