Conviction overturned: After 23 years behind bars, Andre Brown celebrates his first Christmas at home

• Andre Brown was sentenced in 1999 to 40 years on a shooting he always said he didn't commit.

• After years of fighting, his conviction was overturned on December 5.

• Brown will now spend his first holiday season home in 23 years.

Hidden in his bedroom closet on December 6, Andre Brown heard his stepdaughter Trinity arrive at their Connecticut home.

Thinking she was all alone, she sang a tune to herself.

Moments later, Brown heard his wife pull into the garage after picking up their 11-year-old son Andre from basketball practice.

She then lured both her children to the bedroom with a promise of a Christmas present from New York.

"So here I am, I pop out, Andre runs downstairs screaming at the top of his lungs. Trinity has the shock of a lifetime on her face," Brown told Insider. "She couldn't believe it. And she just starts crying, and he's jumping up and down. It was amazing."

That afternoon was the first time Brown had seen either of his children face to face.

In March 2000, Brown was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison.  Now 46, Brown was released this month after serving 23 years for a shooting which he and his lawyers say he couldn't have possibly committed.

His conviction was overturned when a Bronx judge ruled that his trial attorney — who has since been disbarred — was ineffective and didn't introduce medical evidence showing Brown would have been physically unable to carry out the crimes as they were alleged to have occurred.

While in prison, Brown got married to a woman he grew up with and he became a father and step-father.

"The day I was released, raindrops were falling on my head. It was almost as if I was dancing in the rain," Brown told Insider days after he was released. "t was just a remarkable feeling. Astronomical."

Twenty three years in state custody

Brown first declared his innocence in January 1999, five days after two teenagers — O'Neill Virgo and Shawn Nicholson — were shot and seriously injured by a masked gunman in the Bronx.

Brown, who was a student at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, went to a local precinct and met with police after he was allegedly identified as the shooter by a woman who was stuck in traffic near the shooting. That woman later picked him out of a lineup.

At trial, Brown's attorney, Thomas J. Lee, never subpoenaed two eyewitnesses — one who would name a different person as the shooter and another who would provide a motive for the shooting. He also didn't present Brown's hospital records at trial, which his attorneys say would have proved he suffered nerve damage in his right leg that would have made it impossible for him to chase his victim as alleged.

About five years after the trail, Lee pleaded guilty to racketeering and was disbarred. He was placed in the FBI's Federal Witness Protection Program after testifying against the heads of the Bonanno Crime Family, Michelen told Insider.

From the moment he first met with police, Brown has insisted he was innocent, he and his attorneys said.

After writing letters and advocating for his innocence for more than two decades, it took 23 years and the involvement of attorneys Oscar Michelen and Jeffrey Deskovic before he'd find freedom.

It was Brown's wife, Tamika, who connected him with Michelen after he tried for years to find lawyers willing to take on his case.

"Here is a woman who had her entire life ahead of her, and she took two steps back to look in at the darkness and say, 'Something is wrong here," Brown said of his wife. "She put two hands forward to start that pulling."

21 years of waiting, and then COVID-19

Even after Attorneys Michelen, Deskovic, and Sabine Jansen got involved with the case and uncovered the evidence they were sure would get him out of prison, there were still years of hurdles ahead.

In March 2020, Bronx Supreme Court Judge David Lewis ruled an evidentiary hearing was warranted in Brown's case. But when courts shut down due to COVID-19, it delayed that hearing and oral argument until this summer.

Brown's conviction was overturned on December 5 when the judge ruled that Lee was ineffective as a trial attorney and didn't introduce medical evidence showing Brown would have been physically unable to carry out the crimes as they allegedly occurred.

"My thoughts on the process is that injustice is a continuous thing," Brown said. "I walked into the precinct willing to answer any question that the authorities may have had for me pertaining to this crime. I showed them my injury from the unrelated incident that I couldn't run to commit this crime."

The Bronx District Attorneys office didn't immediately return Insider's message seeking comment on the case, but Deskovic said that the office plans to appeal the judge's decision.

"If they lose the appeal, we have to wait and see whether they're gonna retry him," said Deskovic — an exoneree who was freed after serving 16 years in prison.

Today, though, Brown isn't concerning himself with that.

He has plans to get a job, bond with his family, and catch up on 23 years of technology.

"This technology thing is just weird to me with these iPhones and everything. It's just so many touchscreens," Brown said, laughing. "I'm a Flintstone. You guys are all Jetsons."

Advice for others fighting for freedom

Brown said several exonerees attended his hearings in support.

Now that he's free, he also plans on helping those still in prison — maybe even by pursuing a law degree in the future.

He said his biggest piece of advice for innocent people wrapped up in the criminal justice system is "don't waste your time."

Stay away from the day-to-day prison politics and other distractions, he said.

"Behind those walls, you get so distracted from going to the main forum where you need to be, and that's in the law library," he said. "You need to be fighting your case, you need to be home with your family, and you need to be studying and educating yourself as I've done all these years."

Brown recalled the moment when he got the same advice he's giving now.

It wasn't long after arriving at Rikers Island in 1999 when another inmate interrupted the routine he had fallen into and insisted he focus his attention on his case, he said.

Every Tuesday, he met up with other inmates playing basketball, he said.

"I couldn't really run up and down the court anymore because of my own injury. They would have me there as one of the referees coaching these guys in basketball because I knew the game," he said.

One day, though, another inmate got visibly upset with him for going out to coach, and Brown didn't understand why.

"He said, 'listen, you're wasting your time,'" Brown recalled.

The man got angry with him and told him he should have been spending his days fighting his case. The next day, he took him to the law library, and Brown started to learn how to use the colored keys on the side of the books to learn about the law.

"If I was to see that guy, I would give him the biggest hug," Brown said, noting he doesn't know what happened to him. "This guy changed my life."

Thanks to that man, his family, and the lawyers, Brown will be spending his first Christmas in more than two decades at home.

"I'm planning myself to put gifts under the tree. That's gonna be so special," he said. "I'm going out and buying gifts to put under the tree: one for my wife, one for my son, one for Trinity, until I can fill the entire tree up myself."

"It's gonna be so special for me to be able to give to them what they've given to me all this years, which was love," Brown said.

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