Modern-Day Lynching In Mississippi

From early on in life, American children are taught of the inherent need for law and order in a society otherwise incapable of policing itself. Adolescents are taught the basic rights of accused citizens, and the general functions of the justice system and courts. College criminal justice students are taught of the function of the prosecutor, rules of evidence, and the nature of overzealousness and misconduct in the great American system. The state of Mississippi is glad to offer a disturbing case study of the latter.

Kennedy Brewer was convicted in 1992 of the terrible murder of a 3-year-old girl, Christine Jackson. Jackson was raped too, in an astonishing and sickening display of callous inhumanity. The rape, however and the evidence left behind in the form of DNA, turned out to be Brewer's saving grace. This year, after spending 15 years on Mississippi's death row, a DNA test confirmed that Brewer, a black male and a mildly-retarded individual, did not play a hand in the rape of Christine. In a triumph of justice - albeit 15 years too late - Brewer was released to go home to his family where he currently awaits a new trial for the same killing.

In Mississippi, apparently, DNA testing technology just isn't enough to prove innocence. The prosecutor in the first trial, Forrest Allgood, whose theory initially was that Brewer acted alone, seems unfazed by the evidence which has completely debunked his arguments in the case. The Innocence Project, a non-profit organization which seeks DNA reversals nationwide, says the retrial is one-of-a-kind. Indeed it is - and it is a case of a legal system whose actors have become so preoccupied with one suspect they haven't even performed a proper investigation into who raped Jackson in the first place.

It is as if the prosecutor has taken a page from the Mike Nifong playbook - a stick-to-your-guns-and eventually-the-evidence will-agree-with-you mentality. Meanwhile, while Mississippi waits for the evidence to line up with their version of truth, Brewer's future remains uncertain. It would be easy to assume the state of Mississippi has an inherent interest in thorough investigative work and fair justice given its troubling legal history. In this case however, the state has proven that placing blame on the black man once again will suffice.

One needs only look at the words and actions of the main players in this tragedy to see just the type of tunnel vision and ineptitude infecting this case. Allgood argued in court that Jackson's bedroom was the scene of the killing, yet investigators found only minute droplets of blood too small to be tested. Once the DNA from the rape kit proved not to be Brewer's, Allgood refused to run the sample against Mississippi's database of known offenders, because he claimed it didn't exist. The sheriff of Noxubee insists the case is solved. The investigator on the case thinks because DNA wasn't used for the initial conviction, there is no reason to use it now. The star witness, a dental expert who has had his findings overturned by DNA two times before, has been suspended from one professional dental forensics association and has resigned from two others, seeking to avoid expulsion. Worst of all, not two years before the killing of Christine, another 3-year-old was found raped and murdered nearby. Prosecutors have not tested the DNA of the man found guilty of the crime because they insist the two aren't related.

Allgood's cavalier attitude toward the death gurney onto which he almost strapped Brewer is illustrated by a quote in The New York Times, to which he said "John Q. Public thinks another innocent man got convicted who would have been killed." The problem here is it is likely another innocent man got convicted, and this man served 15 years on Mississippi's death row, where was it not for DNA overriding the simpleminded theories and incomplete investigative work of the state, he would have been killed. Now, he may be locked up again for life while the identity of the man who did rape Jackson - and could have potentially killed her as well - remains unknown.

Sparing a diatribe on the justice or morality brought to or robbed of this country by the use of the death penalty, one thing is for certain - we are not yet perfect in its application. Almost certainly we have performed the state sanctioned murder of an innocent person. The law of averages seems to insist that with all of the DNA reversals in the last decade, one must have slipped through our fingers. But in Brewer's case, there looks to be an example where we finally got it right, only Mississippi's legal system can't seem to wrap around the idea that it may have been wrong in the first place.

One cannot help but think in this case there is an essence of small-town, backwoods justice left over from Mississippi's troubled past. Place the blame on the easiest target, the handicapped black man and no one will dare speak up in his defense. Technology and hard science are no match for what the local sheriff believes to be true. The standards of justice Americans hope are applied to serious cases appear to have been brushed aside in favor of a conclusion, proper or improper. One cannot help but think this is what a modern day lynching looks like.

Commentary Editor Kyle Thomas is a 7th-semester political science and history double major. He can be reached at

Kyle.Thomas@UConn.edu.