LEVON AND KENNEDY: MISSISSIPPI INNOCENCE PROJECT

I have been working on Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer’s story for 5 years. They were both wrongfully convicted of two separate murders, which occurred 18 months apart. Their trials involved corruption and incompetence. Levon was sentenced to life and spent 18 years in prison. Kennedy was sentenced to death and was imprisoned for 15 years. They were exonerated by the Innocence Project in 2008 with the help of DNA testing, which identified the one and only culprit of both crimes; the rapes and murders of two 3 year-old girls. My goal was to visually tell their incredible story in an intimate fashion and to reveal the faces of the victims of wrongful conviction. The two men, their families and friends, are individuals mostly invisible and silenced into oblivion in this rural area of Mississippi, where communities are often isolated and living in poverty. This project brings to light this environment, and gives a voice to my subjects with short interviews.