posted by on Feb 15
Two Innocence Project clients, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, will appear in a rural Mississippi court tomorrow as a judge decides whether to clear their names of murder convictions that sent them to prison for years. Both Brewer and Brooks spent more than 15 years behind bars for murders that new evidence proves they didn’t commit. Brewer, who spent seven years on death row and another eight years in jails waiting for trail, was released on bond last year, and the Innocence Project has asked that charges against him be dropped tomorrow. He would become the first person exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing in Mississippi and the 213th nationwide.
Brooks is still incarcerated and the Innocence Project has asked that he be released tomorrow based on irrefutable evidence that a man named Justin Albert Brooks committed the murders that sent both Brooks and Brewer to prison.
Learn more about the cases and get details tomorrow’s hearing, and read the Innocence Project’s call for improved forensic oversight in Mississippi.
Media coverage of the Brewer and Brooks cases:
Clarion-Ledger: Innocence Project letter blasts Stephen Hayne's work
The Agitator Blog: Innocence Project Calls for Investigation of Dr. Steven Hayne
Jackson Free Press: Free at last
Hattiesburg American: DA’s having trouble keeping up with DNA
Meanwhile, Mississippi legislators are considering a bill that would create a statewide task force on the handling of DNA evidence. Read more about that issue here. (Clarion-Ledger, 02/13/08)
