Lamar Johnson EXONERATED! Missouri man who spent 28 years in prison in tears after murder conviction reversed
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: A Missouri man who had spent nearly 28 years in prison for a murder he claimed he did not commit was released on Tuesday, February 14, after a judge announced him wrongly convicted and overturned his conviction. In 1995, Lamar Johnson was found guilty of murder in the October 1994 death of 25-year-old Markus Boyd and received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Police reported that Boyd was shot and killed at the time by Johnson and another man named Phillip Campbell.
The state attorney general's office, which is run by Republicans, pushed to keep Johnson behind bars. Madeline Sieren, a spokeswoman for the agency, stated in an email that the office would not pursue the issue any further. She defended the office's efforts to keep Johnson in jail once more. “The court has spoken,” she said, “and no further action will be taken in this case," as reported by New York Post.
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What happened in the courtroom?
Johnson received a fresh hearing after St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner filed a motion declaring that his conviction was largely based on fraudulent eyewitness testimony and accused prosecutors and investigators of wrongdoing.
According to the Missouri Circuit Court Judge, David Mason ruled on Tuesday, February 14 that Johnson's trial contained "constitutional error" and that "clear and convincing evidence of Lamar Johnson's actual innocence" exists.
CNN reported when Mason made his decision, Johnson appeared to cry in the courtroom and closed his eyes, and shook his head slightly as a member of his legal counsel gave him a pat on the back. Mason stated that there had to be "reliable evidence of actual innocence — evidence so reliable that it actually passes the standard of clear and convincing."
Johnson was released after being processed at the courthouse. About two hours after the decision, he strolled up to the media in the courthouse foyer, beaming, and thanked the judge and all the people who helped him with the case. The released man exclaimed, "This is unbelievable."
Gardner praised the decision, saying, "Mr. Lamar Johnson. Thank you. You’re free," she said to the assembled press. “This is Valentine’s Day and this is historical.” “This is an amazing day that we showed that the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri is about justice and not defending the finality of a conviction,” Gardner added.
Fraudulent eyewitness
After the only eyewitness at the trial recanted, and Campbell and another man filed sworn statements confessing to being involved in Boyd's murder, Gardner requested the court to overturn Johnson's murder conviction. The judgment states that James Howard and Campbell, who has since died, shot Boyd over a narcotics quarrel during a five-day court hearing held in December.
According to Mason's order, Johnson had an alibi the night of Boyd's murder and the prosecution did not offer any tangible proof connecting him to the crime. Instead, the paper claims that prosecutors heavily leaned on a single eyewitness, James Gregory Elking, who named Johnson as one of the murderers.
The order says that Elking recanted his identification of Johnson as the shooter of Boyd during the new hearing. According to the decision, the hearing also revealed that prosecutors had paid him more than $4,000 in "witness compensation" prior to the trial, which had not been made public. Elking stated during the proceedings in December that he felt forced to choose someone out of a line-up, according to the evidence given at the court, which established that police interfered with his first identification. According to Mason's order, the prosecution later concealed information that would have cast doubt on Elking's trial testimony.
The witness "may have been compensated out of fear for his life and we may have relocated him," said Dwight Warren, the lead prosecutor in the original case, to CNN in 2019. "But this was 25 years ago and I cannot tell you with certainty," he said. According to Warren, the accusations of prosecutorial misconduct are "outlandish" and a "one-sided hatchet job," as he said in 2019.
According to one of Johnson's attorneys, Campbell served less than six years for the murder of Boyd while Howard received a life sentence for a different homicide. According to the Midwest Innocence Project, which has assisted Johnson with legal matters, he is not entitled to any financial recompense for his incarceration under state law. Johnson "will enter the outside world with no funds to begin his new life outside of prison walls," according to the organization, which created a GoFundMe campaign to help him start it.