Exoneration doesn’t always mean freedom or compensation

Not every exoneration has a happy ending. Many end up like Danny Brown’s. Fifteen years after he was exonerated by DNA, prosecutors in Toledo, Ohio, still cling to the dubious eyewitness identification of a then-6-year-old boy to insist that Brown remains a suspect in the rape and murder of the boy’s mother.

In all that time, prosecutors have successfully prevented Brown from collecting compensation for the 20 years he spent in prison even though they have uncovered no evidence linking Brown to the man whose semen was found on the victim.

As The Blade reports here, Brown is now homeless and in declining health. Jobs are hard to come by even when he’s in good health because he remains a suspect in a horrible murder and suffers from the anxiety that comes with it.