Huffington Magazine Issue 34 | Page 46

DOUBT rather than release Brewer and declare him innocent, West and District Attorney Forrest Allgood insisted that while someone else may have raped the little girl, West’s analysis still clearly showed that Brewer had bitten her. They posited that perhaps Brewer had held the girl down and bitten her while someone else raped her. Brewer’s conviction was overturned, but Allgood promised to try him again. So Brewer remained in prison. Brewer’s attorneys next tried to get the DNA profile of Christine Jackson’s killer uploaded to state and national databases to see if “How many other cases like this are out there?” they could find a match. Allgood fought them every step of the way. (Allgood did not respond to a request for comment.) In 2004, Tyler Edmonds was convicted of conspiring with his sister to kill her husband. Edmonds was just 13 at the time. The prosecution’s theory was that Edmonds and his sister had simultaneously held and fired a gun at the victim while he slept. Hayne testified that he could tell by the bullet wounds in the body that there were two hands on the gun that created them. HUFFINGTON 02.03.13 That assertion was too preposterous even for the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 2007, the court overturned the verdict — but also went out of its way to explain that the ruling pertained only to the Edmonds case. Th