Wrongfully convicted man has spent nearly three decades in prison
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — State Rep. LaKeySha Bosley, D-St. Louis, announced her support of a renewed effort by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to release the wrongfully incarcerated Lamar Johnson from prison.
“Circuit Attorney Gardner has every reason to set free an innocent man that has been kept incarcerated by a system that has unfairly and immorally targeted Black and brown citizens,” Bosley said. “Like all Americans, Mr. Johnson deserves justice, and every second he spends behind bars is a stark indictment of unequal treatment before the law in this country.”
Gardner filed a motion last week vacate the murder conviction handed down to Johnson roughly 27 years ago. That motion highlights new evidence that exonerates Johnson, detailing that an eyewitness was paid money by the circuit attorney’s office in the 90s to pick Strickland out of a line-up and that the office’s case also relied entirely on the testimony of a jailhouse informant.
Gardner first attempted to overturn Johnson’s conviction in 2019, but the intervention of Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt pushed the matter to the state Supreme Court, which ruled a local prosecuting attorney lacked the ability to make such a request. Her latest attempt comes thanks to a 2021 law passed by the Missouri General Assembly and championed by Bosley made it easier for prosecutors to overturn wrongful convictions. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker successfully used that law to free Kevin Strickland, who had been wrongfully convicted of a triple homicide in 1978 and imprisoned since then.
However, Bosley says the law, while well-intentioned, could use some revisions to ensure that all Missourians wrongfully imprisoned could still receive some form of restitution from the state to help them rebuild their lives.
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