LA- City of Covington agrees to pay former inmate

2-28-2009 Louisiana:

A Covington man who spent 19 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit is poised to receive $1.4 million in the settlement of a federal lawsuit he filed against the city.

During an emergency meeting Friday morning, the Covington City Council approved a $300,000 promissory note to Dennis Patrick Brown, whose 1985 conviction for aggravated rape was overturned in 2004 after DNA evidence conclusively excluded him as a suspect in the crime.

The council approved the note by a 5-0 vote after meeting in executive session with City Attorney Deborah Foshee and Mayor Candace Watkins.

The $300,000, which will be paid to Brown in 10 annual installments of $30,000, plus $1.1 million from the city's insurers, will be used to settle the suit Brown filed in October 2005, City Council members said.

City officials declined to comment further, saying the matter is still in litigation. Watkins said the city will make a statement once the settlement becomes official. The agreement should be signed next week, Foshee said.

Brown sued the city and former city police officers, alleging civil rights violations, after his release from Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and the dismissal of the charges against him by the district attorney's office.

One of Brown's attorneys, William E. Rittenberg of New Orleans, declined to discuss details of the pending settlement "until it's a done deal." But "anything he gets will not be too much for spending 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, " Rittenberg said.

Brown, who's now 41 and living in western St. Tammany Parish, was incarcerated from age 17 until his release at age 36. "That was the prime of his life, " Rittenberg said.

Covington police arrested Brown in September 1984 after a woman reported being raped at knifepoint in her home on Polk Street. Based on her description, police sketched an image of a suspect with a bandanna covering all but his eyes.

She later picked Brown out of a lineup. During the September 1985 trial, the victim testified that she had no doubt Brown raped her.

Brown denied the attack, testifying that police had threatened him with a knife to gain a confession. He told the jury that police investigators were lying and that the first time he set eyes on the victim was in court. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

His case caught the attention of the Innocence Project of New Orleans, a group of lawyers who have used a Louisiana statute passed in 2001 to test evidence from old crimes. They secured a court order to test blood, semen and clothing found at the scene of the rape. Two tests of the evidence excluded Brown as the rapist.

In his suit, Brown contends investigators coerced a confession through physical force and intimidation and fabricated a detailed report of his confession while conveniently losing an audio tape that would have shown he had been threatened.

Brown also named a former technician with the State Police Crime Lab as a defendant in the suit, contending that he failed to run additional blood tests on the evidence that could have excluded Brown as the rapist. The city's settlement does not involve Brown's claims against the state, Foshee said.

Foshee, in court documents filed in Covington's defense, contended city police did nothing wrong and most of the points raised by Brown in the suit were brought up and dismissed during motions for his criminal trial.

In dismissing motions to suppress the confession, the identification by the victim and other evidence, state courts ruled that Brown's constitutional rights had not been violated, Foshee said in a court brief.

Covington officials declined to explain why they are settling the suit if there was no wrongdoing on the city's part.

Rittenberg said he and other attorneys representing Brown took on the case for free. Until early this month, Brown's legal team included Eric H. Holder, who withdrew from the case after he was named U.S. attorney general by President Barack Obama. ..News Source.. by Charlie Chapple, The Times-Picayune