January 6, 2021
The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project Launched After New Evidence Points to Wrongful Conviction
Jacksonville, FL, Jan 6, 2021. After reviewing new evidence strongly suggesting that pastor Kenneth Adkins -- a man once recognized as a Jacksonville kingmaker for his political consulting and public relations work -- was wrongfully convicted in his 2017 Georgia case where he was accused of having sex with two 15-year-olds, a group of individuals have joined together under the moniker of The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project. While Adkins as well as the alleged female victim have both consistently denied any sexual trysts ever occurred between Adkins and the two youths, new evidence has been uncovered that convincingly proves that the even if any sexual conduct did take place, based on the unequivocal testimony of the male victim, at the time the conduct would have occurred, both victims would have already reached the age of 16 – the legal age of consent in Georgia.
The new group, The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project, was formed to help garner public attention of what appears to be -- at least in part -- another act of prosecutorial misconduct by now departed Glynn County District Attorney, Jackie Jones.
In 2016, Adkins was hired as a political consultant and public relations expert by a group of controversial Jacksonville preachers in their fight to defeat the proposed Jacksonville Human Rights Ordinance. Adkins, never afraid to make enemies in the furtherance of his clients’ goals, reached his zenith as a local controversial figure that year. Two months after tweeting about his HRO-related battles with leaders in the Jacksonville LGBT community, including an atrocious Tweet about the Pulse night club shooting, Adkins found himself in the crosshairs of an investigation into his relationship with two former members of his church’s youth group. Adkins was investigated by the Brunswick Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the then-District Attorney for Glynn County, Jackie Johnson, before standing trial and being convicted of multiple counts of child molestation.
At trial, the male victim testified that the first sexual encounter with Adkins was when he and his then girlfriend, the female victim, met up with Adkins for his "50th birthday" in January 2010. The victim testified that the three got together for the purpose of the female victim providing Adkins oral sex as a "birthday gift." The male victim also testified repeatedly and unequivocally that this incident occurred only after Adkins became the pastor of a "church on G Street” in Brunswick, Georgia, Greater Dimensions Christian Fellowship. Adkins started at that church after leaving his prior church, Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Brunswick. The male victim was very clear that this first sexual encounter occurred in an office on G Street two doors down from Greater Dimensions on Adkins’s "50th birthday."
At trial, Adkins’s attorney argued that Adkins started at Greater Dimensions in May 2010, but he failed to offer any documentary evidence at all to support that assertion. Had he offered any hard evidence of this, it would have proven that the male victim’s timeline was off by at least a year and that no crime was committed. That is, if the first sex act occurred on Adkins’s birthday after he started at Greater Dimensions, the church on G Street, then the earliest that act could have been committed would have been January 2011, Adkins 51st birthday. However, by January 2011, both of the victims had already reached the age of 16, the age of consent in Georgia. As argued at trial by the prosecutor, for Adkins to have been guilty of the charges, Adkins would have had to have started at Greater Dimensions, the church on G Street, in 2009.
Adkins’s motion for new trial, which will soon be heard by the judge presiding over his case, relies in part on the central issue of whether Adkins started at Greater Dimensions -- the church on G Street -- in 2009, as the prosecutor argued, or in 2010, as ineffectively argued by Adkins' defense counsel. If it was in 2009, then this argument does not support the award of a new trial. However, it was in 2010, then no crime was committed and, at worst, he should be awarded a new trial, and, at best, he should be released from prison with all charges dropped.
While never submitted to the judge or jury by Adkins’s then-defense counsel, those close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project have uncovered a substantial body of evidence dated to 2010 that clearly shows that Adkins started his ministry at Greater Dimensions, the church on G Street, on May 30, 2010. This evidence includes numerous newspaper articles from the Florida Times-Union and the Brunswick News from January, February, April and mid-May 2010, which all state that Adkins was the pastor at First Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist Church. It also includes numerous other articles from the same papers starting in June 2010 referring to Adkins as the pastor of Greater Dimensions Fellowship (the church on G Street). A computer search of a national news-database also confirms that no news articles mention Adkins and Greater Dimensions before June 2010; and no news articles mention Adkins and First Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist Church after May 2010.
In addition to this, a print ad from the Brunswick News from May 2010 has been discovered, advertising that Adkins’s first service at Greater Dimensions would be May 30, 2010.
Even more shocking, is an email from Adkins on May 21, 2010 to 34 people – including his defense lawyer – with a subject line stating, “please consider joining us on this great day!!” with an attachment almost identical to the newspaper ad stating that the first church service at Greater Dimensions would be May 30, 2010.
A review of Adkins’s only Facebook account which dates as far back as 2009 and 2010, contains numerous contemporaneously made posts showing that he was continuing to serve at First Jordan Grove until May 2010 and that he did not start at Greater Dimensions on G Street until May 30, 2010. These include a post from February 23, 2010, in which Adkins states “so excited about the new carpet that is being laid down in first jordan grove [sic]”; a post from March 7, 2010, in which Adkins comments about Georgia’s Commissioner of Labor stating “[h]e really is going to bless everybody at First Jordan Grove Today!”; a post from May 30, 2010, in which Adkins says “today begins a new chapter in my life. very [sic] excited about our new work. Greater Dimensions here we come!!”; and a post from July 27, 2010, in which Adkins states “[o]n Sunday, Greater Dimensions was eight weeks old and we have blessed with a 115 member so far.”
Sources close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project report that most of this evidence was discovered in less than an hour’s worth of research by a lawyer last year. The supporters of the Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project contend that with this mountain of new evidence, there can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Adkins left First Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist in May 2010 and shortly thereafter, on May 30, 2010, started as pastor at Greater Dimensions Christian Fellowship on G Street. They argue that given this actual timeline of events, it is simply impossible for the trial testimony to be true that the first sexual encounter – a gift to Adkins on his birthday– happened in January 2010 after Adkins became pastor at Greater Dimensions. They believe that the documentary evidence shows that in January 2010, Adkins was still working at First Jordan Grove on MLK Jr. Blvd., and he had not yet moved to Greater Dimensions on G Street. If the first sexual encounter happened after Adkins became pastor of Greater Dimensions, and if it was on Adkins’s birthday (consistent with the oral sex being a birthday gift), the sex act could not have happened any earlier than January 2011, when Adkins turned 51. However, by his 51st birthday in January 2011, both victims would have been 16 – the age of consent.
While not addressed in Adkins’ motion for new trial, it is disturbing to the African American community that Jackie Johnson’s District Attorney’s office advanced a timeline that could so easily be vetted and rejected by simply conducting an hour’s worth of research. After all, these are the same prosecutors that seized on a typo in Adkins’s wife’s LinkedIn bio to advance their false timeline. More troubling than this, though, is that it seems that the prosecutor’s office would have necessarily known the true timeline from facts they gathered in a prior investigation of Adkins relating to a loan he took out in 2008 while pastor at First Jordan Grove.
On March 21, 2011, over ten months after Adkins started at Greater Dimensions, a deacon from First Jordan Grove went to the Brunswick Police Department and alleged that Adkins had taken a loan out in 2008 in the name of the church without the church’s approval. That case was investigated for over an 8-months period, resulting in the District Attorney’s office securing an arrest warrant for Adkins on December 22, 2011. While that case went nowhere and was dismissed just 5-days later on December 27, 2011, the fact remains that over an 8-month period the Brunswick Police Department and/or the District Attorney’s office investigated the allegations closely enough to go get an arrest warrant. It seems to sources close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project that such an investigation would have necessarily resulted in the prosecuting authority learning that Adkins had left First Jordan Grove (on MLK Jr. Blvd.) and moved to Greater Dimensions (on G Street) in May 2010. Moreover, sources close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project believe that when the child molestation case was first being investigated, that Jackie Johnson’s office would have reviewed any prior local cases involving Adkins, which would have turned up the results of the 2011 investigation.
Questions abound as to why then District Attorney for Glynn County, Jackie Johnson, would have pursued the case against Adkins in the first place. Of course, Jackie Johnson has recently been the focus of attention for apparent ethical lapses, and possibly racist motivations, related to her office’s handling of the Ahmaud Arbery case and other prosecutions, all of which likely contributed to her recent loss in her bid for reelection. Her ethical obligation in Adkins’s case was very clear according to the ABA: “to seek justice within the bounds of the law, not merely to convict.” Sources close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project believe that her conduct failed to meet this bar.
Questions also abound as to why Adkins’s then privately retained defense attorney, would not have subpoenaed or gathered basic documentary evidence dated from 2010. Clearly, at least according to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project, had he done so it would have been the difference between Adkins being free or dying in prison for a crime he could not have committed. Adkin's wife, Charlotte Adkins, suspects that his attorney was under an extraordinary amount of personal stress related to having just launched his own private practice after having just left the Glynn County Public Defender's Office. As it was, Adkins found it difficult to keep up with his legal fees even though he had been provided a discount. Payment issues became so strained that at one point, according to Adkins’s wife, his lawyer prepared (but did not file) a motion to withdraw from the case not long before trial. Adkins' trial lawyer, after appearing recently on Chris Cuomo’s show on CNN, as well as other national and local news, as defense counsel for William “Roddie” Bryan in the Ahmaud Arbery case, has come under fire by at least one Jacksonville attorney who questioned the lawyer’s competency.
Adkins is now being represented by private counsel paid for by the state of Georgia, Robert L. Persse, who has a reputation as a smart and effective advocate. The new evidence establishing when Adkins started at Greater Dimensions Christian Fellowship is crystal clear. Those close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project contend that there is absolutely no way that the sexual conduct allegations, even if true, could have occurred when the victims were 15. The hearing on the motion for new trial has been postponed for several years, first due to the public defender’s back log, which resulted in the case being sent to Persse, and now due to Covid-19.
While even those close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project acknowledge that questions persist about Adkins’s relationship with the alleged male victim once the young man became a consenting adult, given the clarity as to when any sex acts would have occurred – if they occurred at all – those close to The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project remain steadfast in their position that no crime was committed. Their motivation to support The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project is not because they endorse Adkin's controversial statements from 2016 or believe that he is free of moral shortcomings, but because they steadfastly believe in the concept underlying the American justice system -- that only the guilty should be imprisoned. They argue that Adkins does not deserve to live the remainder of his days in a Georgia prison waiting to die because he had the poor luck to be on the other side of an over-zealous, unethical and racist prosecutor with a defense attorney that was unable to perform his job – including checking his own email. In order for this case not to end up as a miscarriage of justice with Adkins dying in a Georgia prison, The Kenneth Adkins Freedom Project is relying on Glynn County's new District Attorney and the presiding judge fulfilling their roles in policing a process that to date has failed Kenneth Adkins.