Lamar Johnson Missouri man set free from jail after nearly 30 years behind bars after St Louis judge vacates wrongful conviction. How did the justice system get it so wrong?
When getting a conviction matters more than the truth or a man’s freedom.
A St Louis, Missouri judge has vacated a murder conviction that led to one man spending more than half his life in prison for a murder that it is now believed he did not commit.
Lamar Johnson, 50, spent nearly 30 years behind bars for the 1994 slaying of 25-year-old Marcus Boyd — a murder he always said he didn’t commit. Come Tuesday, the man walked out of a courtroom a free man.
St Louis Circuit Judge David Mason said the decision to vacate required ‘reliable evidence of actual innocence — evidence so reliable that it actually passes the standard of clear and convincing,’ AP reported.
‘This is unbelievable,’ Johnson told reporters as he left the courthouse.
‘I hope someday justice will prevail.’
In 1995, Johnson was convicted of fatally shooting Boyd over a $40 drug debt and received a life sentence. Another suspect, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term.
Johnson claimed he was with his girlfriend miles away when Boyd was killed. Years later, the state’s only witness recanted his identification of Johnson and Campbell as the shooters. Two other men have since confessed and said Johnson was not involved.
‘Mr. Shaw I did not kill Markus Boyd,’ Johnson wrote nearly three decades ago to a St Louis judge, ‘and I hope someday justice will prevail.’
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner launched an investigation in collaboration with lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project – a resource center for wrongfully convicted individuals. A 2019 investigation found misconduct by a prosecutor, falsified police reports and perjured testimony.
The former prosecutor and the detective who investigated the case rejected Gardner’s allegations, but on Tuesday, Judge Mason said he was overturning the conviction.
After 28 years of ongoing legal battles, prosecutors agreed that Johnson had nothing to do with Boyd’s murder. It wasn’t until 2021 when a new state law went into effect that prosecutors were able to to petition a court to exonerate prisoners they deemed wrongly convicted.
In a statement after the ruling, Gardner said the decision ‘righted a wrong.’
A Missouri judge overturned the conviction of a Black man imprisoned for 28 years for a murder he did not commit.
Lamar Johnson was convicted based on a witness who says police pressured him and was paid “witness compensation.”
Johnson, now 50, is not eligible for compensation. pic.twitter.com/MJOrsfWlmO
— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 15, 2023
What is a black man’s liberty worth?
‘This case says that in the state of Missouri, a person’s right to justice and liberty is valued more than the finality of an unjust conviction,’ Gardner said. ‘My office fought long and hard … We are pleased that Mr. Johnson will have the opportunity to be the man and member of our community that he desires.’
Johnson’s attorneys blasted the state attorney general’s office after the hearing, saying it ‘never stopped claiming Lamar was guilty and was comfortable to have him languish and die in prison’.
‘Yet, when this state’s highest law enforcement office could hide from a courtroom no more, it presented nothing to challenge the overwhelming body of evidence that the circuit attorney and Lamar Johnson had amassed,’ they said in a statement.
‘It took an innocence organization, three law firms, the Circuit Attorney, both chambers of Missouri’s legislature and the Governor’s signature on a law passed for him, to free Lamar Johnson,’ lawyers for Johnson said. ‘That is intolerable. That is not justice. We can and must do better.’
