PHP 5.3.8, JSON & CentOS 6
Thought I'd follow up with the solution. The PECL installation seemed to conflict with PHP 5.3.8 so after a bit of research and some advice I toyed with the idea of:
# yum remove php# yum install php
However, after further advice instead went with:
# yumdownloader php-common# rpm -Uvh --force php-common*.rpm# service httpd reload# rm php-common*.rpm
This did the trick and JSON is now working again. Hope this helps someone else.
Thanks