Guilty Until Proven Innocent

“The doctors told me I had three days to live,” said Brown, reached by phone at his home in Syracuse. “They said they could keep me in the hospital, but I said no, and I went camping.” Since then Brown has undergone a liver transplant, gained 75 pounds, regained his health and is working on building a new life for himself and his fiancée.

Brown won his freedom through sheer persistence and the support of the Innocence Project, a Yeshiva University-based legal organization dedicated to taking on such cases. With only a fifth-grade education, Brown immersed himself in the law at a prison library, finally prying free from prosecutors and police hidden affidavits that led to his exoneration. Brown sent a letter to a man he considered a suspect in the case, Barry Bench, in December 2003. Bench committed suicide three days later, prompting a reopening of the case and attracting the attention of the Innocence Project. Later DNA testing implicated Bench and ruled out Brown as the murderer.

The drama of Brown’s conviction, incarceration and eventual release form the core of Dunbar’s movie, which will be shown at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute this week. Brown and Dunbar will meet Sunday, Nov. 9, as part of a panel discussion that will follow a screening of the film. 

Brown hasn’t thought a lot about what he plans to say on the stage; he never imagined he would live to see the outside of a prison cell. “At the time I spoke with him {Dunbar} I was hoping that the DNA evidence would exonerate me after I passed away,” he explained.

Brown’s appearance is part of an event at MWPAI through which the legal profession and the world of art connect. Presented in conjunction with the Oneida County Bar Association, The Art of Innocence will premiere Wednesday, Nov. 5, and continue through Sunday, Nov. 9. The presentation includes an off-Broadway play, two documentary films and a series of panel discussions. 

Roy Brown, an innocent man: “I was hoping that the DNA evidence would exonerate me after I passed away.”

“Through the arts, the institute can provide more of a service to the community,” said Bob Mortis, the director of performing arts for the MWPAI. “In addition to being an enjoyable evening, there is a deeper meaning. We can help organizations to get their message out.”

The first documentary, After Innocence, will be shown twice on Wednesday. The 2005 film, directed by Jessica Sanders, won a special jury award at the Sundance Film Festival. It depicts the effect of false convictions and imprisonment on individuals, their families and society. The 2 p.m. presentation will be followed by a panel discussion that will include Alan Newton, exonerated in July 2006 after serving 21 years in prison. Then at 7:30 p.m., the film will be shown again before a second panel. 

On Friday, Nov. 7, After Innocence will screen a third time, and producer Marc Simon will team with former prisoner Dennis Maher for a panel discussion. Maher was a sergeant in the U.S. Army in 1984 when he was convicted of rape in Lowell, Mass. After serving 19 years of a life sentence, he was freed through the efforts of the Innocence Project after DNA evidence showed that it could not have been his semen that was found at the crime scene. Unlike Brown, Maher received compensation for his time in prison.

On Saturday the venue shifts to the Performing Arts Complex of the Clinton Central Schools, 75 Chenango Ave., Clinton. At 8 p.m., The Exonerated, a play by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, will be presented. The play consists of dialogue drawn from interviews, letters, transcripts and other public records, and tells six different stories of people sent to death row for crimes they did not commit.

Many credit the play with having an influence on the decision of then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois to commute the death sentences of 160 death row prisoners at the end of his term in 2003. (In a plot twist you couldn’t write into a screenplay with any plausibility, Ryan, a 2008 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, now finds himself a prisoner in a federal penitentiary after being convicted of fraud and corruption and sentenced to serve 6½ years).

The program at MWPAI honors the efforts of the Innocence Project, a national non-profit organization founded in 1992. When Brown was freed with their help, he was the eighth prisoner in less than a year to exit a New York state lockup after DNA evidence exculpated him. Since 1989, 196 people in 32 states—21 in New York—have been exonerated. In more than one-third of such exonerations nationwide, DNA also helped identify the true perpetrator. More information on the work of the Innocence Project can be found at www.innocenceproject.org.

As far as Brown, now 48 and rekindling his career as a guitar player, is concerned, every day is just more icing on the cake. When he first spoke to Dunbar in prison, he thought the film might help to clear his name posthumously. Although he knows the presentation won’t change the past, he hopes the film will create awareness of those he feels remain behind bars unjustly. “I don’t know what I’ll say. Maybe open their minds a little. I’m a reminder of how corrupt they are in New York state.”

The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute is located at 310 E. Genesee St., Utica. Tickets are available at the box office, or by calling 797-0055. Admission for the films is $5 for adults, $3 for students. 

—Ed Griffin-Nolan