Texas set to execute Arthur Brown Jr for Houston murders despite claims of innocence and mental retardation

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On Thursday night, Texas plans to execute Arthur Brown Jr. for the 1992 murder of four Houstonians in a drug lord.

Although Brown has been on death row for nearly 30 years, the lawsuits filed after new death row public defenders took on the case last year make several dramatic arguments, including that Brown is innocent of the murders. Last week, the Texas Capital and Medical Examiner’s Office asked the court to stay Brown’s execution, alleging that Houston prosecutors had suppressed evidence pointing to another suspect for decades.

Lawyers also argue that Brown is so mentally handicapped that his execution under previous court rulings is unconstitutional. And they argue that Brown’s trial was tainted with racism, saying the white juror has since said he knew immediately the black defendant was a “thug” and had no doubt he would kill again.

“Arthur Brown Jr. is an innocent man with an intellectual disability who was sentenced to death in Texas as a result of police negligence, prosecutors covering up exculpatory evidence, misrepresenting eyewitness accounts, [and] false forensic evidence,” the public defenders said in their filings last week.

So far, appeals in state and federal courts have been unsuccessful, with judges largely saying the lawsuits don’t raise the bar high for appeals to be heard this late.

The Harris County prosecutor’s office denies it covered up the evidence, saying attorneys may have previously found an interrogation of a witness pointing to another suspect. The district attorney’s office also disputes that Brown qualifies as mentally retarded and argues that the racial bias suit could have been brought earlier, decades after Brown’s sentencing.

“To put it simply, the applicant’s ‘new’ evidence is of little value and pales in comparison to the weight of the accusatory evidence,” prosecutors said.

As of Wednesday evening, Brown had his final submission to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding his mental retardation lawsuit. If the Supreme Court rejects it, the 52-year-old will be executed after 6 p.m. on death row at Huntsville prison.

Brown and two other men were convicted of the execution-style murders of Jose Guadalupe Tovar, Jessica Quinones, Audrey Brown and Frank Farias in 1992. Each of the four victims was tied up at Tovar’s home in Houston and shot in the back of the head.

Tovar and his wife Rachel were known drug dealers who supplied cocaine and marijuana to Brown and other men, according to court documents. Rachel Tovar and Nicholas Cortez were also shot in the head but survived.

The murders and subsequent trial of Brown were sensational, with allegations of witness coercion by police and prosecutors, shocking recantations in the stands, and Brown’s sister imprisoned for contempt of court and later charged with perjury.

According to court documents, three of Brown’s sisters testified for the state by placing Brown in one of their Houston homes on the night of the drug-buying murders. The two said he offered to pay them to drive his van filled with drugs to where he lived in Alabama and fly home the next day.

One of the sisters, Caroline Momoh, faced contempt charges for initially refusing to testify despite being granted immunity and testified that Brown told her that he “shot six Mexicans.” Under cross-examination, Momoh said her previous statement was false, and she and another sister testified in court that they testified because the police threatened to take their children away if they didn’t. “I was told that I had to testify about it. statement,” Momoh said, according to the statement. She was later prosecuted on charges of perjury for altering her testimony.

Two other men, Marion Dudley and Antonio Danson, were also convicted of capital murder. Dudley, who maintained his innocence until his death, was executed in 2006. Danson is serving a life sentence.

New doubts

Defense attorneys have always considered the case against Brown to be frivolous at best. In addition to rebutted testimony, prosecutors relied heavily on eyewitness accounts from two murder survivors, both of whom had questionable memories of the headshot.

At the trial, Rachel Tovar and Cortez identified Brown as the assailant, but Tovar gave conflicting information to police at the hospital, and Cortez had previously failed to pick Brown out of the photo queue, according to court documents. In the subsequent Danzón trial, Cortes again failed to identify Brown from photographs.

Physical evidence related to the killings – guns believed to be linked to Brown and believed to have fired lethal projectiles – were found elsewhere, including in the possession of another man after he was killed in a similar attempt robberies at the home of a drug dealer in Alabama. This man, Terrell Hill, was the focus of the defense theory at trial, which considered him the likely shooter.

The science that was used to link the weapon to the bullets found at the scene was later discredited on appeals, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals still upheld Brown’s conviction. The judges ruled that the jury would still likely have convicted Brown without ballistic evidence.

But in a police interview that was kept out of court and not released to Brown’s lawyers until this year, Rachel Tovar’s son said his mother used the nickname for Hill when describing her attackers to police at the hospital. In an interview, she told police that she had heard the nicknames “Redhead” and “Squirt” used during the attack, and that her son recognized them when he opened the door.

When the police questioned her son, Anthony Farias, he repeatedly said that Red’s real name was “Terrell,” according to Brown’s new file. Prosecutors did not call Farias to testify in court, which meant they did not have to give defense lawyers a copy of his interview, a point that Brown’s lawyers questioned at trial.

“They filmed a two-hour video of Anthony Farias. What was so important about Anthony Farias that they filmed it, and why isn’t he here to testify?” — said the prisoner’s lawyer at the trial in 1993, according to court records.

Now Brown’s lawyers say the evidence calls for a new look at his plea of ​​innocence.

“Mr. Brown is presenting to this court long-hidden information from the Harris County District Attorney’s office that points to Marcus Terrell Hill, a Tuscaloosa drug dealer who was shot and killed while attempting to rob an Alabama drug lord while carrying an alleged murder weapon. In this case, as the party responsible for the murders for which Mr. Brown and his co-defendants were wrongly convicted,” the public defenders wrote in appeals last week.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s office said the interview could have been obtained by appellate attorneys years ago when lawyers were conducting reviews of state information for the public. It is unclear whether the videotape was in the case file at the time. The state also said that Faria’s testimony would not have added weight anyway, as it was hearsay.

In addition, prosecutors said that Hill had an alibi. According to court documents, his cousin said they arrived in Houston the day before the murder but couldn’t find a hotel room, so they drove back to Alabama.

Ogg’s office upheld Brown’s conviction, noting that Brown’s friends called him Squirt, and prosecutors believed Rachel Tovar and Cortez’ visual identification of Brown. The state also continued to point to Momo’s testimony, which was quickly retracted, saying that Brown had told her that he had shot Mexicans and that her gun was missing.

“Victims’ rights matter,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Reiss said. “The victims in this case have suffered for decades from the carnage they had to live with through the fault of Arthur Brown Jr.”

In addition to Brown’s claim of innocence, his lawyers also tried to stop his execution based on claims that he was mentally handicapped.

Since 2002, the US Supreme Court has banned the execution of persons with mental retardation, considering it a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

In Brown’s case, attorneys presented evidence that Brown had attended special education classes since early childhood and was considered “mentally retarded, teachable” in elementary school. In the third grade, his IQ was estimated at 70, which is usually considered mentally retarded. Brown’s lawyers also point out that throughout his life he was generally considered “slow” and his friends and family learned to speak plain language to him.

Prosecutors countered that Brown was not mentally handicapped but had a learning disability. They noted that his high school IQ had jumped to 80, and the school psychologist suggested moving him from a class for “mentally retarded” to a class for students with learning disabilities.

In his latest appeal, Brown’s lawyers hope the disability suit will prompt the nation’s Supreme Court to stop his execution. For years, the High Court overturned the methods of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to determine such disability, remanding one case repeatedly.

“No court has ever heard the merits of this Eighth Amendment claim because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) applied a new injunctive relief to his identity claim, which is completely inconsistent with his practice in many other cases,” they said. Brown’s lawyers. Submission on Wednesday.

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