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DURHAM (AP) - The president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP says while a man jailed for three years on a murder charge won't spend more time behind bars, an injustice is still being fought.

The Rev. William Barber said Wednesday more needs to be done to prevent prosecutors from wrongly targeting innocent people.

James Johnson had been charged with rape, murder and kidnapping in the death of 17-year-old Brittany Willis in 2004.

Now 22 years old, Johnson spent more than three years in jail before he was released on the charges, which were dropped when another teenager who implicated Johnson recanted his story after being convicted of the crime.

On Monday, Johnson entered an Alford plea on a charge of misprision of a felony. Under an Alford plea, Johnson will serve no time and no judgment will go on his record.

"The James Johnson case was never a case about the Willises versus James Johnson," Barber said. "The case was about James Johnson versus an arrogant system of injustice."

Johnson has said then-16-year-old Kenneth Meeks showed up to his home in June 2004 in a sport utility vehicle he didn't recognize. From there, the two drove to the construction site where Willis had been killed. Johnson was shown the teen's body.

He later went to Wilson police and told them what he knew.

Meeks initially told authorities Johnson participated in the crimes, and Johnson was charged with murder. Meeks, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, later recanted, telling authorities and a local newspaper he'd acted alone.

NAACP officials spent Wednesday morning telling stories of others who had been convicted in North Carolina. Some, like Alan Gell, had been sentenced to die for crimes they were later found to have not committed. Gell was acquitted in 2004 of a 1995 killing after it was revealed prosecutors had withheld key evidence during his original trial.

"These prosecutors are supposed to be ministers of justice," Barber said. "In (James Johnson's) case, they became ministers of injustice. If the system had looked at the evidence, he wouldn't have been incarcerated."

Arthur Johnson, James Johnson's father, said early in the case an investigator told him they knew his son hadn't killed Brittany Willis, but suspected he knew more about what happened than he was saying.

Arthur Johnson said his son was determined to fight the charges against him, and that they never expected it to take all of James' adult life up to this point.

"Plea deals were coming fast and furious," he said. "But we were going to show the justice system we're not going to take status quo any longer."

James Johnson didn't attend the news conference, choosing instead to attend class at Wake Technical Community College, where he enrolled last year.