Two Mississippi Men are Cleared After 15 Years

February 15, 2008

At hearings this morning in a packed Mississippi courthouse, two Innocence Project clients convicted of separate child murders in the same small town were cleared based on new evidence proving their innocence. This day comes after nearly 15 years behind bars for Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, who were joined in court this morning by more than 100 of their relatives.

Brewer, who served much of his time on death row, was fully exonerated today after all pending charges against him were dropped. He is the first person exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing in Mississippi and the 213th nationwide.

Brooks was released this morning after his conviction was vacated, and will be fully exonerated when charges against him are dismissed, which we expect in the next few weeks.

Brewer and Brooks were convicted of eerily similar child murders in Noxubee County, Mississippi, within 18 months of each other in the early 1990s. In 2001, while Brewer was on death row, DNA tests excluded him as the source of biological evidence from the crime scene. His conviction was vacated, but the District Attorney (who had prosecuted the case at trial) said he was going to re-try Brewer for the crime, and again seek the death penalty. He remained behind bars while the trial was pending until last year, when a judge finally released him on bond.

Seeing the similarities between the cases, the Innocence Project took Brooks’ case and began our investigation to find the true perpetrator of these crimes. The break in the case came in recent months, when the DNA results from Brewer’s case pointed to another man, Justin Albert Johnson. Because of concerns about the way evidence of the men’s innocence would be handled, the Innocence Project persuaded the Mississippi Attorney General to intervene in the cases. The Attorney General’s office questioned Johnson and he confessed to committing both crimes alone. The DNA evidence, combined with the confessions, led to Brewer’s exoneration and Brooks’ release. This is the first time in the nation that a case has ended in exoneration after a state Attorney General has intervened and removed it from a local prosecutor.

The same sheriff’s officer investigated both crimes, the same District Attorney prosecuted both crimes, and the same discredited forensic dentist and same controversial pathologist conducted the post mortems and misled juries in both cases with false testimony implicating Brooks and Brewer. The flawed expert analysis in these cases has led the Innocence Project to call for improved forensic oversight in Mississippi.

“The system wasn’t just broken in these cases — different elements within the system actually conspired to convict two innocent men of heinous crimes, while the actual perpetrator remained at large,” said Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld, who appeared in court on behalf of Brewer and Brooks this morning. “These cases should haunt Mississippi and the nation, and they should lead to a top-to-bottom review of how the state is investigating and prosecuting cases.”
Read more about the Innocence Project’s efforts to improve forensic oversight nationwide.

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