BISHOP KENNETH ADKINS - JUSTICE DENIED

For nearly a decade, Kenneth Anthony Adkins has been fighting a conviction he insists rests on a timeline that cannot be reconciled with the evidence. Now, a newly detailed request to District Attorney Keith Higgins asks Brunswick's prosecutors to confront the dates, account for the records and authorize a genuinely independent review.

The request is dated October 10, 2026. It is not asking for a favor. It asks for answers to specific questions about what the State alleged, what its witness testified, what police reportedly possessed and what prosecutors later argued to the jury.

At the center of those questions sits an ordinary-looking piece of paper: a church resignation letter dated May 22, 2010.

Prison Project has covered Adkins's fight before. We examined the disputed chronology in an earlier case report, and his story was featured in Prison Project Weekly. The new request adds detailed assertions about an August 2026 records response and demands a written accounting from the office now led by Higgins.

Nearly ten years of questions

Adkins, a former pastor in Brunswick, was convicted following a 2016 prosecution involving sexual-offense allegations. He has consistently denied that any sexual or improper conduct occurred with either complainant. His supporters describe a sentence of three life terms and years of post-conviction litigation.

His defense has challenged the prosecution's timeline, the handling and disclosure of potentially favorable evidence, and whether trial counsel adequately pursued records Adkins says he identified as crucial. The core question has remained remarkably consistent: When did he leave First Jordan Grove Baptist Church, and why did the State rely on an earlier departure date?

The October 10 request, signed by Justin Aamir Adkins for the Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project, says the indictment alleged conduct in charged periods ending no later than March 11, 2010. It asks Higgins to compare those charged periods with the male accuser's complete sworn testimony.

One birthday. Two incompatible timelines.

According to the request's account of the trial transcript, the male accuser identified Kenneth's 50th birthday, January 22, 2010, as the date of the first alleged encounter. The witness also reportedly located that encounter after Adkins left First Jordan Grove and transitioned to Greater Dimensions Christian Fellowship.

Those claims cannot both describe the same sequence if the church records accurately establish a May 2010 departure. January 22, 2010 came several months before May 23, 2010.

The request further says the witness testified that he met Adkins only a few weeks before Adkins left First Jordan Grove. Asked for the departure year, the witness reportedly said he did not know. Advocates maintain it was the State, not the witness, that supplied 2009.

That distinction is central. A 2009 departure could make an encounter on January 22, 2010 appear to follow the church transition. A documented May 2010 departure would not.

The first January 22 after the documented departure was in 2011, when Adkins would have turned 51, not 50. The discrepancy raises questions about the witness's recollection and the prosecution's presentation. It does not, by itself, resolve what happened or establish a legal error. That determination requires the full transcript, certified indictment and governing law.

The church records point to May 2010

The October request identifies a series of contemporaneous records that advocates say corroborate the departure date. Those records should be obtained and authenticated as part of any independent review.

A dated resignation letter is not a verdict of innocence. But if its authenticity and timeline are established, it is exactly the kind of record a jury and defense counsel should have had a meaningful opportunity to evaluate.

Why was the letter reportedly in government hands years before trial?

The most consequential part of the October request may be its account of the letter's journey through government records.

According to documents described by the Freedom Project, then-District Attorney Jackie Johnson directed Brunswick police on May 25, 2011 to obtain employment-related information concerning Adkins and First Jordan Grove. A Brunswick Police Department supplemental report reportedly records that church deacon Rayfield Barneman delivered the resignation letter and other records to police on November 15, 2011, under Event ID BP01101081.

That would mean police had the letter almost five years before the 2016 prosecution. The timing matters because the defense maintains that its contents undercut the chronology presented at trial.

The new request then describes an August 5, 2026 open-records response from the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office. According to the request, prosecutors confirmed that a copy of the resignation letter was located in the file box for Adkins's 2016 case, identified there as CR-1600556.

Advocates say the office also reported no record establishing when the letter entered the file, who supplied it, or how it was routed or stored. They describe a copy without a received stamp, Bates number or comparable tracking notation.

Prison Project has not independently reviewed the complete August 5 response or the original documents for this article. These are specific assertions from the October 10 request, not findings by this newsroom or a court.

Adkins's defense says the resignation letter was not disclosed before trial and that jurors did not see it. Whether a constitutional disclosure violation occurred requires examining the prosecution team's possession, what was actually disclosed, the document's favorable character and its materiality. But those issues cannot be responsibly evaluated without an adequate record.

What happened to the original police investigative file?

The case raises another troubling evidence-handling question. According to the post-trial testimony described in the case materials, Brunswick Police Sergeant Roy Blackstock searched for the original investigative file twice and could not locate it. He reportedly testified that Captain Wade Thorpe had said the file was taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation office in Kingsland.

That account does not establish that evidence was destroyed, intentionally hidden or improperly withheld. It establishes a need to trace the file and verify its contents, transfers, custody and current location.

Was the original file transferred to the GBI? Was the resignation letter included? Who had access to the records? What was passed to prosecutors and to defense counsel? These questions are answerable in principle through inventories, logs, correspondence and testimony.

The jury reportedly heard there was no proof of a 2010 departure

Adkins's advocates contend that the prosecution argued during closing that there was no evidence supporting a 2010 departure from First Jordan Grove and pointed instead to 2009. The case materials identify trial transcript Volume 5, pages 949–950 and 959, for review.

That is why the discovery questions matter. If the letter was available to the prosecution team before trial, the timing of disclosure, the accuracy of the closing argument and the defense's opportunity to challenge the account need close examination. If it was not available to prosecutors until later, the office should document that chronology too.

An independent review must distinguish an inaccurate argument from a knowing misrepresentation, and a missing discovery record from legally material suppression. Those are separate questions, and the evidence should decide them.

Brunswick's history makes an independent review more urgent

Public concern about the Brunswick Judicial Circuit did not begin with Adkins. The district's recent history includes other fiercely contested matters that have tested confidence in its prosecutorial institutions.

Former DA Jackie Johnson faced criminal charges associated with allegations about her handling of the investigation into Ahmaud Arbery's 2020 killing. Both charges were disposed of in her favor in February 2025: a judge ordered an acquittal on one count for insufficient evidence and dismissed the remaining felony count because of a defect in the indictment. It would be wrong to portray Johnson as having been convicted of misconduct in that case.

Current DA Keith Higgins's office is facing separate scrutiny. In June 2026, The Current reported that Georgia's Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission had authorized a full investigation into allegations of financial misconduct involving Higgins's administration. Higgins characterized the complaint as politically motivated. Those allegations are separate from the Adkins case and do not prove wrongdoing concerning his prosecution.

There is also a precedent for correcting an inherited conviction. In July 2021, Higgins announced that he would not retry Dennis Perry after new DNA evidence and post-conviction proceedings undermined Perry's decades-old murder conviction. The Brunswick DA's own public announcement records that decision.

Higgins did not lead the office when Adkins was prosecuted. But he now leads the office that, according to the October request, has located the disputed letter in its files. He has already shown that a prosecutor can reassess a predecessor's case when the evidence warrants a different course.

The requests now before Keith Higgins

The October 10 letter calls for a substantive written response and a series of concrete investigative steps. Among the questions it asks the DA's office to answer are these:

The letter additionally identifies medical and communication limitations that advocates say make meaningful self-representation especially difficult for Adkins. Those concerns are another reason a careful, documented process matters.

How much is enough?

One mistaken date can be explained. A misplaced file may have an innocent explanation. Memories can fail. Records can move between agencies. The existence of a contradiction does not automatically overturn a verdict.

But public institutions cannot expect trust while leaving basic evidence questions unanswered for years. When the same disputed chronology appears in a witness's account, the State's closing argument, a dated church record, a police receipt and a later prosecution file, it deserves rigorous examination rather than another round of silence.

Prison Project stands with Kenneth Adkins in demanding that examination. We recognize that his claims remain contested, and that the certified records and the courts must ultimately determine their legal effect. Our position is straightforward: the questions are specific enough to investigate and consequential enough that the investigation must be independent, complete and transparent.

Mr. Higgins, if the letter was disclosed, show the record. If 2009 was supported, show the evidence. If the police file was transferred, identify where it went. If mistakes occurred, acknowledge and correct them. And if a conviction was affected by a constitutional violation, let the law take its course.