Two lawyers who are well-known in Texas for their pro bono social impact litigation have been serving out-of-the-norm roles on both sides in a recent, unusual actual innocence, or plain error, case.

Houston-based civil litigators John Raley, as a special prosecutor, and Neal Manne, who represents Alfred Dewayne Brown, were on both sides of the bar when a judge on May 3 declared Brown innocent of a 2003 murder of a police officer.