Mississippi lawmakers review evidence preservation in wake of Brewer and Brooks cases

After Innocence Project clients Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks were cleared on Friday, Mississippi legislators began calling for reforms to the state’s criminal justice system. The Innocence Project has suggested that a law requiring that biological evidence be preserved could lead to more exonerations of innocent prisoners in Mississippi, and State Rep. Greg Snowden said the legislature should work toward an evidence preservation statute as soon as possible.

"There are people in prison who don't need to be there. Hopefully there are very few people like that. Particularly when the stakes are high, like if it is a death row sort of thing, obviously you want to do everything you can to make sure the right person is convicted," Snowden said.

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. (ABC-11, Meridian, MS, 2/16/08)

The Innocence Project has also called for a review of crime lab oversight mechanisms in Mississippi.

Read more about these proposed reforms and the cases of Brewer and Brooks here

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