That's the title of an article in today's New York Times by Shaila Dewan reporting from Macon, Mississippi. LINK
The scene in the tiny Noxubee County jail on a rainy afternoon has become almost commonplace. Kennedy Brewer, sentenced to death and locked up for 15 years for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old, was released on the strength of a DNA test showing that the semen in the rape kit was not his.
The bail bondswoman snapped a Polaroid.
Mr. Brewer’s sister, Martha, smiled and said, “I ain’t got to mow the lawn no more.”
Back home on Highway 388, two of Mr. Brewer’s nieces sketched out a T-shirt design to read “Welcome Home Kenny.”
But Mr. Brewer is not free and clear. He is only out on bail.
In a move that appears to be novel, prosecutors intend to retry him for the crime.
Virtually no effort has been made to find the man who raped the girl, Christine Jackson, and dumped her body in a creek in Noxubee County, one of the most rural in the state.
This is the first time prosecutors have sought a new capital murder trial after a conviction was overturned by DNA evidence, said Peter Neufeld, director of the Innocence Project, a legal aid group based in New York that has used DNA testing to exonerate the wrongly convicted since 1992. Usually such cases are simply dropped.
But prosecutors are not convinced of the innocence of Mr. Brewer, a black laborer who is mildly retarded. Forrest Allgood, the district attorney who first tried the case, said his theory then was that Mr. Brewer, who was the boyfriend of the victim’s mother, acted alone.
At the trial, Mr. Allgood argued that the couple’s bedroom was “the killing field,” although traces of human blood found there were so small that they could not be tested.
His view has changed.
“I perceive that Kennedy Brewer assisted someone else in the killing of the child,” Mr. Allgood said. “Whether he actually penetrated that child or not functionally doesn’t make any difference if he was aiding, assisting and encouraging in her death.”
Mr. Allgood declined to offer a new theory of what occurred the night Christine disappeared, saying only that Mr. Brewer was the baby sitter that evening and that there was no sign of forced entry at the house.
The defense lawyers, including Mr. Neufeld, say the girl could have been abducted by way of a broken window in the bedroom.
And:
Modern forensic tools do not appear to carry much weight in Noxubee County. Mr. Allgood said DNA reversals — there have been more than 200 nationwide — did not prove innocence.
Prosecutors often drop such cases only because witnesses are no longer available or evidence has been lost, Mr. Allgood said, but “John Q. Public thinks another innocent man got convicted who would have been killed.”
After the DNA results from the rape here came back in 2002, Mr. Brewer was moved from death row to the county jail, where he stayed for five years. Because Mr. Allgood was still seeking the death penalty, Mr. Brewer was not eligible for bail.
Mr. Allgood tested the DNA found on the girl against that of two men who visited Mr. Brewer at the house the night of Christine’s disappearance. The men were not a match.
He also ran a second test that excluded Mr. Brewer’s male relatives. But he did not run the profile against the state’s DNA database, saying in an interview that no such database exists.
That was a surprise to John M. Allen, the assistant director of the state crime laboratory, who said, “We’ve been up and running on our DNA database for years.”
Mr. Allgood also said he had notified the sheriff’s office of the DNA results. But the sheriff, Albert Walker, said he had not received any official notification and had not reopened the case.
The article notes that the Allgood recused his office, and another Mississippi district attorney is now prosecuting the case. The death penalty is not being sought in the new trial, which is expected to begin next year. Brewer was convicted in part of the basis of bite mark analysis, the same "science" that led to the conviction of Ray Krone in Arizona. Krone was the 100th inmate who had been sentenced to death to be exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Bite mark analysis was a technique widely used prior to the availability of DNA testing.
Comments