A resigned Andre Brown recounts sustaining a traumatic brain injury at the hands of corrections officers before suddenly breaking off into unfiltered elation. “I … just received some great news!” he said over the phone, making every syllable count. In the background, a woman yells “Oh, my God” in relief and his children scream in joy. Brown, 48, just learned he will not go back to prison tomorrow.
“We all thank you, God, thank you so much!”
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office granted Brown a 30-day stay as he awaits a response from Gov. Kathy Hochul after his lawyers, Oscar Michelen and Jeffrey Deskovic, filed an emergency clemency petition. He will return to court in April.
Moments before, Brown planned on turning himself in at 10 a.m. sharp on Thursday, Mar. 13, for a conviction he already served two decades and maintains his innocence for. “I’m in my final hours of being a father and a husband,” he said earlier in the interview. “I’m in my final hours of being a brother, uncle, a nephew, a cousin … of being a free man [and] I’m on the verge of going back to prison for a crime that I did not commit.”
A successful claim of ineffective assistance freed him in late 2022 from two consecutive 20-year sentences for attempted murder: His previous attorney failed to introduce evidence of a physical injury, which may have exonerated him. Brown was convicted for shooting two men on Jan. 15, 1999, but he was recovering from being shot himself and walked with a limp at the time when witnesses said the masked suspect was sprinting.
“According to the court, evidence of defendant’s injury would have established that defendant was incapable of running the distance and in the manner testified to by the victims and the eyewitness,” wrote Judge David L Lewis in his 2022 decision. “With regard to defendant’s claim of actual innocence, the court found that defendant had failed to meet his burden to present clear and convincing evidence in support of his claim.”
But Brown is not out of the woods yet. He will still go back to prison next month if Hochul does not approve his emergency clemency petition because he was never fully exonerated and was only released on his own recognizance for the overturned conviction. Lewis denied Brown’s innocence claim stemming from newly discovered evidence, opening the door for the courts to reinstate the conviction this past Christmas eve.
This news coincides with a crisis in New York state prisons, including several staff being charged with allegedly beating incarcerated individual Robert Brooks to death and corrections officers striking illegally to weaken the HALT laws banning solitary confinement over the past few months.
Hochul can grant Brown clemency, which would prevent him from returning to prison without necessarily vacating his conviction through a full pardon. A spokesperson for the governor said the office does not comment on pending petitions.
Still, just another month with his family means the world to Brown. It’s tough to imagine the mild-mannered Brown as the “loudest disruptor” during his son’s basketball games, but referees have threatened him with a technical foul for yelling at them so hard. He gushes over the past two years with his son and daughter, from watching them wake up to packing their snacks for school.
“I just wanted to be a father,” said Brown. “I just wanted to be a friend to my wife and hold her hand walking down the street, something that she had longed for the 14 years we’ve been married, coming into our 15th year this year in November … being a parent is so humbling to me because I could have never raised my son or my daughter from a (prison) visit room floor.”
Brown refuses to refer to his past two years as “reentry” since he first turned himself in for the conviction barely into his adulthood. “It would be considered a ‘new entry’ because I’ve lived in prison more time than I’ve lived in the street,” he said. “I went to prison when I was 21 years old, I had my 22nd birthday on the inside.”
Growing up in the Bronx, Brown spent his childhood taking care of his siblings and cousin after his parents were divorced and his mom was incarcerated. As a teen breadwinner, he worked at a White Plains retail store until the seasonal period ended. Brown turned to selling crack for around a year, according to his clemency petition.
Dealing led to Brown being shot in the leg while walking through the Bronx. According to the petition, he gave up the life after the incident to enroll at Borough of Manhattan Community College a year before he was arrested.
Over these past two years, Brown helped at-risk youth as a credible messenger and established a GED program and chess club at a local New Rochelle nonprofit. The work is an extension of the self-development he began in prison, ranging from parenting and mental health classes to facilitating HIV/AIDS education and prevention workshops.
Proponents of Brown include the Innocence Project, whose director of special litigation, Vanessa Potkin, advocated for him in a letter to Hochul included in the clemency petition.
“Having worked with hundreds of people returning home after decades of incarceration, we are impressed with Mr. Brown and what he has achieved over the past two years,” wrote Potkin. “He has no hint [of] bitterness and is a positive, enthusiastic, helpful, kind person. He has worked to improve the lives of people around him — through counseling at-risk kids — and has continued on his own path of self-improvement through enrolling in college courses. Mr. Brown is exceptional.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
Author’s Note: A correction was issued for the judge’s name, which is David L. Lewis.