A Battle Going on For Decades
Later this week, on December 9th, Tonja Brown, who signs her emails as an advocate for inmates and the innocent, will be back at it. She has cleared out that day to speak in Carson City on behalf of her brother Nolan Klein at a Pardons Board hearing. Klein died in 2009 at the age of 54 in the infirmary at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center. He never wavered from saying he was innocent.
Brown will take part in the public comment sections, “to ask them to set aside one hearing per year to allow those who've been wrongfully convicted and passed away [for] their families and their loved ones, the opportunity to continue to exonerate their names,” she explained to Our Town Reno in a recent phone interview.
Her prepared statement begins: “I am here to ask this Pardons Board to place on the Agenda of their first Pardons Board hearing set for in the year 2022, to have an open discussion with its members to allow the Pardons Board to hear Factual Innocence Posthumously cases once per year, until a law is implemented to allow the courts to hear them. “
The opening of the statement for this week above.
Clearing an Entire Family’s Reputation
This effort she said is not only to clear her brother’s name.
“That stigma still is attached to the person's name and not only the name, it's the family for many years,” she said. “I was called the sister of a rapist and you know, things like that. And it's very hurtful. And then the truth is, when you have law enforcement and district attorneys who would hold exculpatory evidence from cases and innocent people are wrongfully convicted, family members, the victims, those wrongfully convicted, they are all victims of the system. Even to this day, I still get called out by people, even from law enforcement who don't even know the facts of this case, and I'm done with it. And just like everyone else who's been in this situation, you hear all these people who've been wrongfully convicted, who are being exonerated. Their families never gave up on them and they would never want to give up on them even after death.”
The March 1989 conviction was for two counts of robbery with use of a deadly weapon, burglary and sexual assault with a deadly weapon. It was never overturned. In his 2019 letter, Washoe County District Attorney Christopher Hicks wrote the Nevada Supreme Court rejected appeals in 1993, 1994, 1998, 2002. and 2009. Klein’s death came just a week after the Director of Corrections at the time ordered staff to begin preparing paperwork for a compassionate release due to his failing health, including pneumonia and liver failure from Hepatitis C.
From the Nolan Klein Says Facebook page, one of many documents highlighted, this one related to confusion on the amount of facial hair the perpetrator allegedly had, and differences in Klein’s lineup and arrest photos.
Fighting for Others as Well
Our Town Reno first met Brown at a yearly protest for families of those killed by local law enforcement. Regular participants also follow the Nolan Klein Says page.
“I think a lot of them feel that they're not getting the justice and you have to look at who's behind all of this too, because when you're dealing with officers, and then you have them policing their own, it's an issue,” she said of having empathy for fellow protesters and one of the main problems they see in how the system is set up. “It shouldn't be policing your own. And now they changed it to where it's a different department. Sparks is now looking into Reno or whatever the case. They don't want them policing their own. And I agree.”
Documents from those who oppose her actions have labelled the Reno Cop Watch Facebook page where details of the Klein case have been outlined as well as “cop haters.”
“We don't all start out hating cops,” Brown wanted to clarify. “I'm not a cop hater, but I certainly support these people at the protests because I have personally seen bad cops and not all are bad cops, but when the good cops keep quiet, it reflects back onto them as well.”
Even if her brother isn’t cleared before she dies, Brown says others will take over. “I have people lined up,” she said near the end of our interview, which also went in detail on what she hopes the board will finally see as requiring the conviction’s review and overturn. Many of those details can be found on the Nolan Klein Says and Reno Cop Watch Facebook pages and some of this will be repeated on December 9th.
“What I'm trying to do is to help, not just my brother, but I'm putting Nolan’s case on trial before the Nevada Pardons board in an effort to get them to look at factual innocence, posthumously, hold hearings and exonerate them, give the families what they want, give them some peace and closure,” she concluded. “And again, if these people are innocent, the real perpetrator is out there committing more crimes.”