Clarence Brandley

Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, medical examiner for Harris County, testified that the victim had died of strangulation and that a belt belonging to Brandley was consistent with the ligature used in the crime. In closing argument, District attorney James Keeshan mentioned that Brandley had a second job at a funeral home and suggested that perhaps he was a necrophiliac and had raped Fergeson after she was dead — an argument that could not have been made in good faith because Keeshan had a report stating that Brandley only did odd jobs at the funeral home and had never been involved in the preparation of bodies for burial. The defense objected to Keeshan's remark as inflammatory, but Judge John Martin overruled the objection.

Suspicion immediately fell on two of the custodians, Brandley and Henry (Icky) Peace, who had found the body. During their joint interrogation – as Peace would recount – Texas Ranger Wesley Styles told them, "One of you is going to have to hang for this" and then, turning to Brandley, added, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected."

The prosecution presented a different witness who had not testified previously. He was Danny Taylor, a junior at the school, who had worked briefly as a custodian but was fired before the crime. Taylor claimed that Brandley had once commented – after a group of white female students walked past them – "If I got one of them alone, ain't no tellin' what I might do."

The prosecution appealed, delaying disposition of the case another 10 months. But within hours of the U.S. Supreme Court's denial of certiorari on October 1, 1990 (Texas v. Brandley, 498 U.S. 817 (1990)), they dropped all charges. A few months later, Brandley was ordained as a Baptist minister, and a few months after that he was married. The officials involved in the case were not disciplined, nor did they apologize. Prosecutors in the case still insist they convicted the right man.

After further investigation, Brandley's lawyers petitioned for another evidentiary hearing, which the Court of Criminal Appeals granted on June 30, 1987. The new hearing was conducted by Special State District Judge Perry Pickett. Robinson, Acerman, and Styles testified for the prosecution, each seeming to help rather than hurt Brandley's case.

On October 9, 1987, Judge Pickett recommended that the Court of Criminal Appeals grant Brandley a new trial, declaring: "The litany of events graphically described by the witnesses, some of it chilling and shocking, leads me to the conclusion the pervasive shadow of darkness has obscured the light of fundamental decency and human rights." The Court of Criminal Appeals, after sitting on the case for 14 months, finally accepting Picket's recommendation with a sharply split en banc decision on December 13, 1989 (Ex Parte Brandley, 781 S.W.2d 886 (1989)).

Despite the accumulation of new evidence, Judge Coker recommended that Brandley be denied a new trial – a recommendation perfunctorily accepted by the Court of Criminal Appeals on December 22, 1986. But by now civil rights activists, including Reverend Jew Don Boney, had coalesced and raised $80,000 to help finance further efforts on Brandley's behalf. The Rev. Boney was the Chairman of the Houston, Texas-based "Coalition to Free Clarence Lee Brandley" and spearheaded community efforts to have Brandley receive a fair trial. Boney was interviewed on numerous national news outlets and brought significant media and community attention to the case. National Advocate James McCloskey, of Centurion Ministries in Princeton, New Jersey, also took on the case.

Much was made of the willful destruction and disappearance of the potentially exculpatory evidence in Brandley's appellate briefs, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence without mentioning the issue. "No reasonable hypothesis is presented by the evidence to even suggest that someone other than [Brandley] committed the crime", said the court. Brandley V. Texas, 691 S.W.2d 699 (1985).

Brandley's second trial in February 1981 was held before a different judge, but another all-white jury. The prosecution did not call John Sessum, one of the original witnesses. Later it was discovered that the prosecution had decided not to use Sessum because he no longer was willing to support the other custodians' versions of events, even though he had been threatened with being charged with perjury if he refused to go along.

Cheryl Dee Fergeson, a 16-year-old junior at Bellville High School, was murdered on August 23, 1980. Fergeson was part of a school volleyball team playing a match against another high school in Conroe, Texas. Her body was found in the loft above the school auditorium.

Before an all-white Montgomery County grand jury on August 28, 1980, five days after the crime, Brandley professed innocence. Although he contradicted his white co-workers in several respects, he acknowledged that he had disappeared for perhaps 30 minutes about the time the murder was believed to have occurred. He said he was in the custodian's office smoking and listening to music alone. He also testified that a number of other persons had master keys that would open the auditorium and, in any event, that doors near the stage usually were propped open with a two-by-four.

Brandley went on trial in December 1980 before an all-white jury. The prosecution's case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence and witness statements, as there was no physical evidence linking Brandley to the crime. Pubic hair with so-called "negroid characteristics" were allegedly found on the body, but no expert testimony was given at trial to indicate they belonged to Brandley. These hairs were subsequently lost from the prosecution's exhibits and have never been recovered. Spermatozoa recovered from the victim's body had been destroyed – without having been tested to determine whether Brandley could have been its source. Moreover, a fresh blood spot had been found on the victim's blouse that had not come from her and could not have come from Brandley. The spot was Type A, but Brandley had Type O blood.

Brenda Medina, who lived in the nearby town of Cut and Shoot, Texas, saw a television broadcast about the Brandley case. Saying she had been unaware of the case until then, she told a neighbor that her former live-in boyfriend, James Dexter Robinson, had told her in 1980 that he had committed such a crime. Robinson had previously worked as a janitor at Conroe High School. Medina said she had not believed Robinson at the time, but now it made sense. At the neighbor's suggestion, she went to see an attorney, who took her to see District Attorney Peter Speers III, who had succeeded Keeshan in the job when Keeshan ascended to the Texas District Court bench. Speers quickly concluded, or so he said, that Medina was unreliable, and therefore that he had no obligation to inform Brandley's lawyers. The private attorney she had consulted thought otherwise, however, and brought her to the attention of the defense.

Robinson admitted he had told Brenda Medina in 1980 that he had killed the young woman in Conroe, but claimed he had said that only to frighten Medina. She had been pressuring him because she was pregnant, he said, and he simply wanted her to stop pestering him. Acreman stuck by what he had said at both trials, although he admitted that Robinson had been at Conroe High School the morning of the murder. Incidentally, Robinson and Acreman, unlike Brandley, had Type A blood — consistent with the spot on Fergeson's blouse.

Clarence Lee Brandley (September 24, 1951 – September 2, 2018) was an American who was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of Cheryl Dee Fergeson in 1981. Brandley was working as a janitor supervisor at Conroe High School in Conroe, Texas where Fergeson was a 16-year-old student athlete visiting the school from Bellville, Texas. Brandley was held for nine years on death row. After lengthy legal proceedings and community outcry that eventually ended in the Supreme Court of the United States, Clarence Brandley was freed in 1990. After his release, Brandley was involved in further legal proceedings over child support payments that had accrued over his time in prison, and ultimately with an unsuccessful $120 million lawsuit against various agencies of the State of Texas.