His parents were Henry Newton Brown, a civil engineer for the State of Louisiana for forty-four years, and the former Louise Craighead, who retired as a teacher from the Bossier Parish School Board.

He was an Army instructor at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and a paratrooper in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

After two years in the military, Brown in 1968 became an assistant district attorney in New Orleans under Jim Garrison.

The magazine The Angolite, published at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, referred to Brown as "The Deadliest Prosecutor".

At the time, Monds, a surgical technician at Barksdale Air Force Base was convicted of the murder the preceding summer of Vicki Thomas, who was raped, assaulted, mutilated, and killed at a parking lot at Parkway High School in Bossier City.

Monds testified that he had never met Thomas and had no knowledge of her death but had cut his hand while working on a flat tire the night of the crime.

[4] John Milkovich, elected in 2015 as a member of the Louisiana State Senate, was then Monds' attorney.

[11] Henry Brown was the Chief Judge of the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Shreveport.