On the night of September 19, 1984, a woman woke in her Covington home to find a man armed with a knife in the room with her. The man was wearing a hat and bandana, which left only his eyes exposed. He raped her in a dark room, lit only by light from another room and the streetlamp outside. The victim helped police produce a composite sketch of the attacker. Dennis Brown agreed to be part of a live lineup that included actual suspects, as a filler, because he was innocent and thought he had nothing to fear. The victim picked him out of the lineup, later testifying that Mr. Brown’s eyes were “80% similar” to the perpetrator’s. Two police officers claimed that Mr. Brown made an inculpatory statement that contained details about the victim and her home, but these alleged statements were never recorded or even written down. Their respective accounts of this statement contradicted each other and differed from the victim’s account. Mr. Brown asserted that he’d been threatened during interrogation. Based on these claims from police and the victim’s cross-racial identification, Mr. Brown was convicted by a jury of aggravated rape, aggravated crime against nature, and aggravated burglary in September 1985. He was sentenced to life without parole.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana started investigating this case in 2003. Sexual evidence was located and submitted for post-conviction DNA testing. DNA results proved what Mr. Brown had always maintained, that he was innocent. Six months later, a second report detailing more testing of other evidence confirmed the initial findings. The state dismissed the charges against Mr. Brown in March 2005. He spent almost 20 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.
