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There is about to be a major victory in two innocence cases in Mississippi. The cases were developed by the Innocence Project at Cardozo University. In the second of the two related cases, the Innocence Project at Cardozo is being joined by the brand-new Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi Law School and its new director, Tucker Carrington.

The Mississippi Innocence Project is a law clinic that has just begun classes this semester at Ole Miss. The clinic must support itself by fund raising and began reaching public attention last Fall with a fund raiser (described here) at which John Grisham and Scott Turow spoke. The continued survival of the clinic and its ability to identify, investigate, and take innocence cases to court depends on donations. If you would like to help, write to me at nmisscommenter(at)gmail.com. The Clarion Ledger recently ran an editorial by the Mississippi project’s new director, about legislature to develop formal mechanisms for DNA testing of potential innocence cases.

A press release from the Innocence Project at Cardozo tells the story of the two Mississippi cases. Note the truly remarkable role of the attorney general’s office; this is a virtually unheard-of entry by this or any A.G.’s office on the side of justice in this way. This is the case involving the murder of two little girls that Hood referred to in his testimony in Natchez last week. Here’s an account of the case from the press release:

A hearing is set for Thursday morning in Noxubee County. Kennedy Brewer, who was wrongfully convicted in one of the cases and sentenced to death, will appear in court on a motion to dismiss the case against him, which would make him the first person in Mississippi to be exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing. Papers filed today on behalf of Levon Brooks, who was convicted in the other case, seek to also vacate his conviction and dismiss the case. It is possible that Brooks’ case will also be heard Thursday,and both Brooks and Brewer could leave the hearing exonerated. The Innocence Project (which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law) represents both men.

"Both of these men are innocent, and they should be fully exonerated very quickly, " Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld said. "In two decades of working on these cases, we have never seen a more stark and troubling example of a rush to judgment at the hands of notorious forensic analysts who conspired to commit fraud. 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. 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. "

In 1992, Brooks was convicted of the 1990 rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter. The child was taken from her home in the middle of the night and her body was later found in a pond near her home. Her skin had slippage and other marks consistent with a child who had been killed and then dumped in a pond … but the local forensic analysts falsely claimed that the marks on her wrists were "bite marks " from Brooks. In 1995, Brewer was convicted of an identical crime that happened just 18 months after the one for which Brooks was convicted. Brewer’s girlfriend also had a three-year-old daughter who was taken from her home in the middle of the night, raped and murdered. Her body was found in a creek near her home, with cuts that the same prosecution witness said were "bite marks " from Brewer but were actually caused by insects and animals in the creek. 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.

In 2001, while Brewer was on death row, DNA tests excluded him as the source of the semen recovered from the girl’s body. 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. For a full five years, the prosecutor did not move the case to trial … so Brewer waited for five years in the county jail. Finally, last summer, the Innocence Project helped Andre de Gruy of the Office of Capital Defense Counsel in Mississippi secure Brewer’s release from jail and geared up to represent him at a new trial. Meanwhile, seeing the similarities between the two cases, the Innocence Project took Brooks’ case … but quickly learned that the biological evidence from the crime was too degraded to yield results from DNA testing.

The Innocence Project was concerned that conflicts of interest in Noxubee County would hamper efforts to secure justice for Brewer, so the Innocence Project asked the Mississippi Attorney General to intervene. Ben Creekmore, the District Attorney of Oxford, was appointed Special Prosecutor of the Brewer case.

Meanwhile the Innocence Project continued its own investigation of both cases … which led to Justin Albert Johnson, a 51-year-old Noxubee County man who was an initial suspect in both cases. At the time of the Brooks case, Johnson frequently stayed in a house very close to the victim’s home; at the time of the Brewer case, he lived with his parents just a couple of houses down from that victim’s home. Although Johnson was the only suspect with a history of committing sexual assaults against women and young girls, local law enforcement investigating both crimes ignored him after they prematurely locked onto Brooks and Brewer as prime suspects. In recent months, the Innocence Project secured DNA testing on evidence from the Brewer case which matched Johnson’s DNA profile.

Just as it had in Brewer’s case, the Innocence Project feared that local conflicts and regional concerns could compromise Brooks’ quest for justice. Neufeld appealed to the Attorney General to intervene and take over the arrest, interview and prosecution of Johnson. The Attorney General’s office assigned its elite Integrity Unit to work on the continuing investigation of the case. Once Brewer and Brooks are fully cleared, it will be the first time that a case has ended in exoneration after a state Attorney General has intervened and removed it from a local prosecutor, according to the Innocence Project.

This week, based on the DNA match, the almost identical modus operandi and his proximity to both crimes, investigators from the Attorney General’s office arrested Johnson and questioned him about both cases … and he confessed to both. He also assured the investigators that he acted alone. The confession was recorded. The Innocence Project expects that he will be prosecuted for both crimes.

Here is the motion post conviction relief, which tells the whole story pretty much. This case has received national attention, with good stories in the New York Times) (free registration. The Clarion Ledger story from Friday is here.