Officials call for improved DNA criminal testing

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JACKSON - The murder cases against two Noxubee County men freed last month have heightened concerns and pushed more efforts to prevent wrongful convictions in Mississippi.

“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,” said attorney Peter Neufeld.

Neufeld heads the Innocence Project, a group of attorneys that represent Kennedy Brewer and Lavon Brooks.

The men were convicted in the 1990s of raping and murdering two girls in Noxubee County based on now-discredited evidence used by District Attorney Forrest Allgood.

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“Some of it may cost money, but it keeps innocent people from going to the penitentiary, and we will put a whole lot more people in the pen that have committed crimes if we had a DNA lab that tested every sample that we pulled,” Hood said.

Based on DNA evidence obtained after Brewer's 1995 conviction, charges against him were dismissed two weeks ago.

Brooks was released from prison and awaits a judge's decision to throw out his conviction. Another man has confessed to the murders Brewer and Brooks were convicted of.

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