Johnson Britt, Robeson County’s district attorney for 24 years, is no more.

Britt is deserving of a long nap. We are sure he could use it.

A Lumberton native and determined Democrat, Britt was first elected to the job in 1994, and won re-election five times after that before deciding enough was enough. He exits after, quite frankly, a bad final month in which serious questions were raised about an investigation in 2016 of a rape that finger-pointers say if properly conducted Hania Aguilar would be alive today.

Sheriff Burnis Wilkins has said publicly that the failure was at his office, and an internal investigation is ongoing, but the look for the District Attorney’s Office is not a good one. Britt, honest sometimes to his own peril, understands that.

We always found Britt to be accessible, helpful, and loquacious. As an interviewee, a reporter would not find anyone better.

There are many memories, but for today we will recall two.

It was in the fall of 2014 that Britt, obviously conflicted, spoke with this newspaper about compelling evidence that Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two black men tried and convicted of a rape and murder in Red Springs in 1984, had been falsely convicted. Britt was thinking aloud, wondering about the correct course: Should he fight the new evidence, or dismiss the charges, and free the two men after they had spent three decades in prison — a decision that would put Robeson County’s judicial system in a national spotlight, and in an unfavorable way.

Britt did the right thing, and McCollum and Brown walked out of prison.

Then there was the murder trial last year of Marques Brown, accused of the 2012 shooting death of Lumberton police Officer Jeremiah Brown. Britt was unable to win a first-degree murder conviction against Brown, a jury decision that he characterized as devastating. During that trial, Britt struggled to read to the jurors a gut-wrenching letter that Goodson’s surviving daughter had written to Brown, essentially asking why he didn’t like her daddy.

Britt admitted later that the second-degree murder conviction was a factor in his deciding to step aside.

To be sure, if you are the district attorney in Robeson County for 24 years, some high-profile murder cases will come your way, and they certainly did with Britt, who handled the murder of James Jordan and that of Myron Britt, a Lumberton man convicted in 2009 of killing his wife, a case that was cracked by an incredible break and forensic science.

It was during Myron Britt’s lengthy trial that it became even more apparent why this county’s crime fight is such a difficult slog. During the time it took DA Britt to dispense with one murder case, there were about a half dozen more murders in Robeson County.

As he exits, we are told there are as many 140 murder cases pending in Robeson County, a number that might grow between the time this is written and when it is read. It is a crisis with no easy answer, but one that Matt Scott has inherited.

We are sure that Britt, who is capable of self-reflection, will leave office wondering if he could have done more — and we will repeat again what we have said so often, and that is this county’s District Attorney’s Office needs reinforcements.

The reality is that Britt ran the District Attorney’s Office during a difficult period in this county’s history, when NAFTA robbed from us so many jobs and our local school system entered a tailspin from which it has yet to right itself. Those are the two compelling factors that have fed our crime problem, which is the worst in North Carolina by an uncomfortable margin.

Britt, we know, did the best he could in what he would quickly call the county’s toughtest job, and he did it honorably. We are in his debt.

But don’t think that Britt is done. At 58 years old, we know he has political aspirations should the landscape get reconfigured in his favor, and we know as well if that doesn’t happen, he has a keen legal mind for private practice.

We know his work is not done.

But first, he has earned some rest.