Young black man jailed for 6 days after being mistaken for an older white man

A black man spent six days in prison in Nevada, United States, because police mistakenly identified him as a white criminal and twice his age, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the Henderson and Las Vegas police departments. .

Shane Lee Brown is now seeking at least $500,000 in damages.

Brown, 25, finished work on January 8, 2020 and was driving in Henderson, Nevada – just outside Las Vegas – when Henderson City police officers pulled him over, according to details of the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Nevada.

The approach was a routine traffic stop for driving an unregistered vehicle, the Henderson Police Department told AFP. CNN in a statement.

Brown, who is black, did not have a driver’s license but gave police his name, Social Security number and Social Security card, according to the lawsuit. He acknowledged to police that he had a warrant related to traffic violations, his lawyer later told CNN, and had a hearing scheduled for the following day.

But after a record check on Brown’s behalf, an arrest warrant for another man named Shane Brown appeared, according to the lawsuit. Although the two shared the same first and last name, police did not verify their middle names, skin color and date of birth, according to the lawsuit. Shane Neal Brown, 49, had an outstanding arrest warrant for possession or possession of a firearm, records show.

Despite the differences, Lee Brown was arrested and spent six days in prisons in two Las Vegas-area jurisdictions — the Henderson Detention Center and the Clark County Detention Center, according to the lawsuit.

Neal Brown, meanwhile, was arrested two days after the traffic stop that landed Lee Brown in jail. According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Neal Brown was arrested in Needles, California on January 10, 2020 and released to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police on January 22, 2020.

Shannon Phenix, the public defender assigned to Neal Brown’s case, said Lee Brown was released on January 14, 2020.

For four days, the two men were held at the same time, across state lines.

A CNN contacted the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department but declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Henderson Police say Lee Brown was “properly arrested by Henderson Police for driving with a suspended license and for contempt of court, failure to pay a warrant issued by Henderson Municipal Court,” according to a statement sent to Henderson County. CNN.

“Mr. Brown admitted to the officers who arrested him that he knew his driver’s license was suspended and that he had transit warrants in Henderson,” the statement continued.

“That might have been true,” Phenix, the public defender, told the CNN. “But he would only have been detained in prison because of his transit warrants and would be out of custody in two days, and he would have bail set out on those warrants.”

Lee Brown was unable to see a judge within 48 hours, as the law requires, as the man he was mistaken for had an ongoing case, and the police believed they had the right person. In fact, he couldn’t see a judge, Phenix told the CNN.

Phenix said she was not even notified that an arrest had been made on her case with Neal Brown, because Lee Brown was registered with a separate identification number — “which is a concern because it means the prison knew it wasn’t the same person.” , because they took fingerprints, but they were still holding him on the warrant,” Phenix said.

Instead, she got a call from Lee Brown’s panicked mother, who contacted her and asked for her help in getting her son out of prison.

Meanwhile, while in custody, Lee Brown repeatedly tried to explain to Henderson officers that he was not 49-year-old Shane Neal Brown, who was wanted on an arrest warrant.

“It felt like every word I said was falling on deaf ears. Nobody gave me the time of day, or even heard what I was trying to explain to them,” Lee Brown told CNN.

His protests were ignored for days. “Most of the time I didn’t even get a response,” he said, adding that, at the time, he didn’t know the other Shane Brown was white.

“I didn’t know what race the guy was, I roughly knew his age because I’d seen his birth year, but other than that, I just tried to tell them that there was no way I was that person.”

Lee Brown couldn’t see what Neal Brown looked like because he wasn’t taken to court for the January 14 hearing.

“So because they had different ID numbers, the arrest was like, well, that’s not the right individual, so they didn’t take him to court,” Phenix explained.

As she couldn’t show the judge her client, Phenix brought photos of both men to the Eighth District Judicial Court in Clark County, and pointed out that Shane Lee Brown’s photo did not match the older Brown’s original photo, telling police court that arrested the wrong person. Judge Joe Hardy Jr. then ordered Lee Brown to be released immediately.

Once he was released, Lee Brown sought out Shane Neal Brown and found a reserve photo that looked nothing like him.

“I couldn’t believe it. I was in disbelief, shocked, angry, upset, hurt,” he told CNN.

“If any of the LVMPD officers or correctional officers performed any due diligence, such as comparing their reserve photo with the existing photo belonging to the older white ‘Shane Brown’ mentioned in the warrant, comparing their fingerprints, date of birth, ID No. ., or physical description, they would have easily determined that Shane Lee Brown was misidentified as the subject of the warrant,” the lawsuit states.

When asked why Lee Brown, once arrested, was charged with Neal Brown’s crimes, Henderson Police said, “the circumstances will be addressed in the city attorney’s response to the court.”

The attorney who now represents Lee Brown in the lawsuit, E. Brent Bryson, said the police failed his client when they failed to further investigate his mistaken identity claim.

“It is their duty to know, and if they hear it a hundred times, so be it. It doesn’t matter if they listen all the time. They need to do their investigation, do their due diligence and act accordingly,” Bryson told CNN.

“The law says that (it) comes to a level of deliberate indifference and that’s what happened here. They just didn’t care. They just didn’t do anything.”

Christopher Peterson, a former public defender who briefly represented Neal Brown in the past and now works for the Nevada branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the entire system failed Lee Brown on several levels.

“You have the arrest warrant claiming that this arrest warrant applies to Shane Lee Brown, when in fact it doesn’t. So that’s the first flaw,” Peterson said.

So, Peterson said, Lee Brown went to make a reservation at the Henderson Detention Center.

“You have a records department at every facility that is checking and making sure the records line up,” he said. “These people would potentially have access to paperwork to determine if this is the right guy.”

Then there were the transport officers who took Lee Brown to the Clark County Detention Center. “Presumably they would have some paperwork that would tell them whether or not they had the right guy for the warrant, to make sure they brought the right person.”

Once in Clark County, Lee Brown was booked again and again the mistaken identity was not flagged. “So you have the officers there overseeing the Clark County Detention Center,” Peterson said, and those officers also failed to verify that Lee Brown’s claims of mistaken identity were true.

So, on the day of the hearing, Lee Brown is not taken to court. “This is a clear red flag. There’s a problem when your description is so far away, you can’t figure out who to take to court. This is a serious problem. And yet, somehow, it’s up to the public defender to talk to the judge and say, Judge, they got the wrong person. It should never have gotten to that point.”