Posted on Thu, Feb. 07, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. -- Justin Albert Johnson has been arrested in the 1992 rape and murder of a 3-year-old child, a crime for which another man was sentenced to death and spent 15 years behind bars, authorities said Thursday.

Attorney General Jim Hood said Johnson, a 51-year-old Brooksville resident, was arrested at his home on Monday and charged with capital murder and sexual battery on a child under the age of 14.

The slaying of Christine Jackson was a "sickening case" in which the girl was taken from her home in the middle of the night, raped and brutally strangled, Hood said.

Kennedy Brewer was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the child's slaying in 1995. He spent well over a decade in various prisons and jails, including death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

The child was the daughter of Brewer's girlfriend. She disappeared from their home on May 2, 1992, said Vanessa Potkin, a staff attorney with the New York-based Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that tries to free prisoners believed to be wrongly convicted. The child was found in a body of water in rural Noxubee County a few days later.

Potkin said DNA evidence clears Brewer of the crime and implicates Johnson.

Brewer was released on bond last year pending a new trial after his attorney and the Innocence Project pushed for an appeal of his conviction based on DNA testing.

Sperm found on the child's body was analyzed by two different laboratories and both said the DNA was "a perfect match to Johnson," Potkin said.

Johnson was a suspect early in the case and a blood sample was taken just days after the murder, Potkin said. It was sent to the Mississippi State Crime Laboratory, where it was preserved for more than a decade, she said.

"He was right there from the beginning," Potkin said.

But, she said, investigators quickly focused on Brewer because he was the only male in the house the night of the disappearance.

Potkin said it was Johnson who should have been behind bars all along.

Johnson was arraigned Tuesday, pleaded not guilty and is being held without bond at the Chickasaw County Jail. It was not immediately clear if he had obtained an attorney.

Meanwhile, the charges against Brewer are still pending.

"If we find that he is fully exonerated then we will move quickly to remove those charges," Hood said Thursday.

When asked Thursday if prosecutors still believe Brewer was involved, District Attorney Forrest Allgood said he needs to review the newest information before commenting.

Allgood has recused his office from the case because one of Brewer's former lawyers now works for the district attorney, Hood said. Hood's office will likely prosecute Johnson.

In the meantime, Brewer's attorneys say he is trying to pick up where he left off.

"He's gainfully employed. He's working and he's living with his elderly, disabled mother, who he assists in taking care of," said attorney, Carrie Jourdan. "He has had no problems from a criminal legal standpoint" since his release.

Jourdan said that she could not comment on the specifics of the case or what Johnson's arrest might mean for her client.

"This is a murder trial that is still pending," Jourdan said. "Of course we are hopeful that this will have a positive effect on the case, but that's all I can say at this time."

In June 2001, Jourdan told the court that she had received confirmation from Reliagene Technologies in New Orleans that DNA proved that semen found on the child's body was not Brewer's.

The Mississippi Supreme Court in 2002 denied Brewer's request for a new trial but granted a hearing before a Lowndes County judge after the DNA evidence was presented. The judge ordered a new trial.

"The Innocence Project was instrumental in this development," Jourdan said.