Posted on 02/16/2023 6:20:25 AM PST by Red Badger
After serving nearly three decades of a life sentence, Lamar Johnson officially walks free for a crime he has always insisted he did not commit.
“This is unbelievable,” he told reporters in the courthouse lobby after the conviction was overturned.
On Tuesday, Missouri Circuit Judge David Mason vacated Johnson’s sentence, stating that there was convincing and reliable evidence of “actual innocence” to overturn the conviction.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, working in conjunction with the Innocence Project, filed a motion seeking Johnson’s release in August.
In 1994, Johnson was convicted of murder for the killing of Marcus Boyd, who was shot to death on his front porch by two masked men. Boyd’s death arose from a dispute over drug money, said police and prosecutors investigating the case. Johnson maintained his innocence from the beginning, citing his girlfriend as an alibi, and claimed he was with her miles away when the crime was committed.
Johnson also stated that he stepped outside for a few minutes to sell drugs on a corner several blocks from where the victim was killed, as reported by AP News.
The judge decided to revisit Johnson’s case after a key witness and prison inmate confessed to killing Boyd, affirming Johnson’s innocence.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Not good enough.
Boy, I’d sure be busy if I was retired...
“”Johnson maintained his innocence from the beginning, citing his girlfriend as an alibi, and claimed he was with her miles away when the crime was committed.
Johnson also stated that he stepped outside for a few minutes to sell drugs on a corner several blocks from where the victim was killed, as reported by AP News.””
Well, blocks and miles are a little different and if you give conflicting statements to the police on record they tend to look harder at you. As far as maintaining your innocence all that time the guy who robbed me swore even after he was sent to jail that he was innocent even with clear video evidence. Jails are full of innocent people, just ask them.
What evidence did they even have against him other than circumstantial, that is what I want to know to take 30 years of his life like that.
Not once he sues the state for wrongful conviction! PAYDAY!...............
What is not good enough? Is it not good enough to free him now, that he should have been freed earlier? Or is the evidence, if any, that he was not responsible for that murder not good enough? In other words, he was duly convicted and ought to serve his full term.
Just asking what you mean. I don’t have a dog in this hunt.
Ya can’t make this up. Eye witness identified him, even though shooter wore masks and could only see eyes. Any reasonable jury would have found that dubious, at least one of them.
He was wrongfully prosecuted by one person in charge of the case, and wrongfully convicted by another in charge of the proceedings.
A start, but where there’s one, there are always others because this system rewards wrongdoers, and I’m not talking about the defendants.
People mistakenly label this a ‘miscarriage of justice’; I label it treasonous, and we are witnessing the effects in real time, the perverse logic being misappropriated upon the USC when it is, in fact, the government itself now weaponized against the people.
The man who confessed is serving a life sentence already. The released guy could be innocent or it could be a case of Criminal A with nothing to lose takes the fall for Criminal B.
Hope not, but there is so much dishonesty associated with claims of wrongful convictions.
Either they lied then, or they're lying now. Same result, the prime witness is a proven liar.
Not in the state of Missouri unless they change state law.
Missouri won't financially compensate Lamar Johnson for 3 decades of wrongful imprisonment
The state legislature can override such restrictions in most states by making direct payments to the individual.
Can you see any lawmaker voting against it?........
Anything Kim Gardner is for I am against. She’s a Soros sock puppet.
And once again we now have proof that the courts/juries are utterly incompetent.
If DNA evidence *PROVES* the man could not have committed the crime, then how in h3ll can anyone prove that he did?
Idiots accepting claims instead of looking at them with a critical eye.
Exactly. To do something like that to someone, you need to be *CERTAIN*, not "I think he might have done it."
No. Absolute proof should be required to take a man's life away.
I’m not prepared to get in a “what if” argument with you. I was simply pointing out state law in Missouri only allows restitution in cases where DNA evidence is used to overturn a conviction.
We had a similar overturned conviction in November, 2021 for a man who had been wrongly imprisoned for 42 years. His lawyers went the gofundme route and raised over $1 million dollars after his release.
We need federal laws for when a person’s conviction is overturned under these circumstances. It should be a de facto violation of the person’s civil rights, with the prosecutors, and anyone else involved in the original conviction, facing personal jail time.
The evidence presented was flimsy, at best.
No way would I have convicted based upon the evidence presented to the jury.
WTF is wrong with people?
You are on trial so you are guilty?
Why the distinction for DNA? I don’t get it.
Seems to me that if a person was wrongly convicted, the state owes them restitution, regardless of how the case was overturned.
We had a case here in Florida a few years back where TWO black men were convicted on circumstantial evidence and, IIRC, served 40+ years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
The state legislature voted to give them a couple of million dollars apiece for restitution. I don’t think we have any laws at all that restrict such cases for restitution whether or not DNA or witness recanting testimony is used...............
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