Ryan Brown

I am a local criminal defense and civil rights attorney and I have done nothing but represent people throughout my career. In my pre-law school life, I was a musician. I traveled all over playing guitar in several metal bands. The life was not as glamourous as you would think, but I got to travel to and play in nearly every state in the country. I also played a number of shows in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica, meeting a lot of great people along the way. I continued playing in a few bands while I was in college at Trinity University in San Antonio. In law school, at Texas Tech I tutored several subjects, was a research assistant for my Constitutional Law professor, and earned grades high enough to be admitted to Phi Delta Phi legal honor society. It was while I was at law school that my path changed. I took the Innocence Project Clinic my third year. I excelled in the class, earning a CALI award my first semester, and a Jurisprudence award my second semester for being the top student in the clinic. While in law school, I co-authored a report to debunk Fort Bend County Sherriff Deputy Keith Pikett’s extensive history of perjured court testimony. The report proved that Pikett lied about his education, training, background, and just about any other topic that came out of his mouth. This report resulted in Texas courts declaring his testimony unreliable, resulting in many reversed cases, and eventually his “early retirement.” I also was part of the team that got Timothy Cole successfully pardoned, the first posthumous pardon in Texas history, by then governor Rick Perry. After Law School, I moved to Houston to become a staff lawyer with the Innocence Project of Texas. While a staff lawyer at the Innocence Project of Texas, I organized groups of students at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, South Texas College of Law, and Texas Southern University to investigate and litigate wrongful convictions throughout the state. During this time, I also worked at a firm specializing in disability hearings and appeals in Houston.