Texas: Wrongfully convicted ex-death row inmate Clarence Brandley dies, months after DA reopens case

Clarence Brandley, a former Conroe High School janitor, was in 1981 wrongfully convicted of the brutal murder of 16-year-old Cheryl Fergeson. Brandley spent nearly 10 years on death row before he was exonerated.

If the state of Texas had its way, Clarence Brandley would have died more than 30 years ago.

Instead, the modest man from Montgomery County walked out of the Walls Unit in 1990 and started a 1nd life after becoming, at that time, only the 3rd person released from Texas death row. He settled down in the country; he founded a church; he held odd jobs; and he grew older.

Finally on Sept. 2, the former janitor whose wrongful conviction for a brutal rape-murder of a teenage student where he worked helped pave the way for a state compensation fund, died at the age of 66. It was not in a Texas execution chamber, but in the Kingwood Medical Center, where he'd fallen ill with pneumonia, his family said.

The timing must have seemed a bitter irony: After years of fighting for the innocence ruling that would win him recompense for his time behind bars, authorities had finally begun investigating the case again earlier this year.

"Texas did my brother wrong," said Ozell Brandley.

In a town plagued by a racist history - Conroe was the infamous site of the lynching of Joe Winters in front of the courthouse in 1922 - Brandley's case added to the growing national awareness about the possibility of wrongful convictions driven by racial prejudice, bad lawyering and shoddy evidence.

"There were a lot of things wrong with his case but it seemed like race was front and center," said Richard Dieter, former director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "There was this black janitor and a murdered high school girl and it eventually dawned on people that he was innocent and he'd been railroaded and framed."

The war veteran was convicted in the the 1980 rape and murder of 16-year-old Cheryl Fergeson. The Bellville teen was strangled at Conroe High School during a summer volleyball tournament 9 days before school was set to resume.

Brandley was one of the school's 5 janitors suspected in the case, but - as the only black man in the group - authorities quickly zeroed in on him.

"Since you're the n*****, you're elected," a Texas Ranger reportedly told Brandley.

The white janitors all gave alibis for each other, leaving Brandley to fend for himself. The case was before the days of DNA testing, and police never bothered to collect hair samples from the other janitors - even though it could have potentially matched a Caucasian hair found on the slain girl's body. The 1st trial ended in a mistrial, but the following year an all-white jury convicted Brandley and sent him to death row. In the years that followed, the case drew the attention of civil rights activists, who held rallies, raised legal funds and started the Free Clarence Brandley Coalition.

Still, he might have been put to death, but for the dogged work of defense attorneys - namely Mike DeGeurin and Paul Nugent - who kept the case in the courts up until the last minute. At one point, Brandley was just days from an execution when he won a stay.

"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," State District Judge Perry Pickett wrote after a 1987 evidentiary hearing.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that his trial lacked even "the rudiments of fairness" and sent the case back for a new trial. But, by that point, key evidence had vanished and there wasn't enough to retry it.

The whole ordeal inspired a book - "White Lies" by British author Nick Davies - and later a Showtime movie. The media buzz helped shine a light on the fears of wrongful convictions.

"He was one of the early exonerations," said Robert Dunham, the Death Penalty Information Center's current director, "and it was at a time at which it was beginning to be clear that there was a significant risk that innocent people would be sent to death row if you had a death penalty."

Through it all - despite his claims of innocence - Brandley couldn't get authorities to clear him, so he was never able to get payment from the state's compensation fund.

"He couldn't quite understand why former Governor Rick Perry would do him like that," his brother said.

Years later, as he worked to pay off child support accrued during his time in prison, the police department's failure to arrest the right man still stung.

"All I know is that I'm the 1st person in the state of Texas to have been indicted for capital murder and go to trial within 90 days," Brandley said. "I participated in the investigation, gave my hair, saliva, my blood. And the medical examiner said that because no one asked him to preserve that, he threw it away. Threw it away."

The case was closed, and in 2014 prosecutors and police said they had no intention of reopening it.

Then, in January 2018, former Conroe Police Chief Charlie Ray died. And, when his relatives started going through his belongings, they found a box of trial exhibits in his garage.

Between that find and other requests for a renewed investigation, Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon decided to call in the Texas Rangers and local police.

"We've asked Conroe Police Department to look through all the evidence that's left to see if there's anything that can be harvested, if there's anything that can be retested," Ligon said. "It's still an open case as far as the law is concerned."

Now, Brandley's life is a closed book. To DeGeurin, it's a personal loss.

"I spent a good deal of my life getting him off of death row," he said. "He was always a good person, (who) never bothered his lawyers."

Source: Beaumont Enterprise, September 12, 2018

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde