Clarence Brandley
After lengthy legal proceedings and appeals that reached the Supreme Court of the United States, Clarence Brandley's conviction was overturned and he was freed in 1990.
He filed a $120 million lawsuit against various agencies of the State of Texas because of his arrest and wrongful conviction but received neither an apology nor a settlement.
[2][4] A total of five custodians were working at the school that day: Brandley, Peace, Gary Acreman, Sam Martinez, and John Henry Sessum.
According to Peace, when the two were questioned together, Texas Ranger Wesley Styles told them, "One of you is going to have to hang for this" and, turning to Brandley, added, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected.
[6] Pubic hair with purported "negroid characteristics" were allegedly found on the body, but no expert testimony was given at trial to indicate they belonged to Brandley.
[11] One juror found the evidence insufficient to establish guilt and refused to convict, forcing Judge Sam Robertson, Jr. to declare a mistrial.
Taylor claimed that Brandley had once commented – after a group of white female students walked past them – "If I got one of them alone, ain't no tellin' what I might do.
In closing argument, District attorney James Keeshan said that Brandley had a second job at a funeral home and suggested that he may have been a necrophiliac and raped Fergeson after she was dead.
This, despite the fact that Keeshan had a report stating that Brandley did only odd jobs at the funeral home and had never been involved in the preparation of bodies for burial.
[citation needed] Eleven months after Brandley was convicted and sentenced to death, his appellate lawyers discovered that exculpatory evidence had disappeared while in prosecution custody.
[citation needed] Appellate briefs stressed the willful destruction and disappearance of potentially exculpatory evidence in Brandley's case, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence without mentioning this issue.
Brenda Medina, who lived in the nearby town of Cut and Shoot, Texas, saw a television broadcast about the Brandley case.
[citation needed] After obtaining Medina's sworn statement, Brandley's lawyers petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a writ of habeas corpus.
[citation needed] After Medina related details of Robinson's purported confession, Brandley's lawyers called John Sessum, the custodian who had testified at the first trial but not the second.
But civil rights activists, including Reverend Jew Don Boney, had organized and raised $80,000 to help finance further legal efforts on Brandley's behalf.
Interviewed on numerous national news outlets, Boney attracted significant media and community attention to the case.
Acreman persisted with his previous trial testimony, but did admit that Robinson had been at Conroe High School on the morning of the murder.
Evidence established that both Robinson and Acreman, unlike Brandley, had Type A blood, which was consistent with that found on Fergeson's blouse.
"[citation needed] On October 9, 1987, Judge Pickett recommended that the Court of Criminal Appeals grant Brandley a new trial, declaring: "The litany of events graphically described by the witnesses, some of it chilling and shocking, leads me to the conclusion the pervasive shadow of darkness has obscured the light of fundamental decency and human rights."
Picket went on to say, that in his thirty-year career, "no case has presented a more shocking scenario of the effects of racial prejudice, perjured testimony, witness intimidation [and] an investigation the outcome of which was predetermined.
"[20]After 14 months, the Court of Criminal Appeals accepted Picket's recommendation with a sharply split en banc decision on December 13, 1989 (Ex Parte Brandley, 781 S.W.2d 886 (1989)).
Upon his release, Brandley discovered that he owed almost $50,000 in child support debt, which had accumulated in the years that he was wrongly imprisoned.
This is because a federal law known as the Bradley amendment stipulates that once a child support order has been established, money owed cannot be retroactively reduced or forgiven, even in cases where the debtor was imprisoned and presumably incapable of paying.
