Posted on 12/13/2022 2:16:58 AM PST by robowombat
US man seeks exoneration in Missouri murder
Updated: 13 December ,2022: 10:27 AM GST Lamar Johnson has wrongly spent nearly three decades in prison for a St. Louis killing after a witness was coerced into falsely identifying him as the shooter, an attorney for the local prosecutor’s office told a judge Monday.
But Assistant Missouri Attorney General Miranda Loesch said detectives will testify that they never threatened or coerced anyone.
Advertisement “They did their job” and followed leads that pointed to Johnson as the killer, Loesch said.
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Kim Gardner, who leads the same St. Louis circuit attorney’s office that secured Johnson’s 1995 murder conviction, believes he is innocent and is seeking to set him free after nearly 28 years in prison for the shooting death of Marcus Boyd.
The state attorney general’s office maintains that Johnson was rightfully convicted.
St. Louis Circuit Judge David Mason is presiding over the hearing, which is expected to last all week.
Johnson was in the courtroom on Monday, dressed in a blue shirt and tie with brown slacks.
He sat quietly next to his attorneys and listened to testimony.
Boyd was shot to death on the front porch of his home by two men wearing ski masks on October 30, 1994.
A man who was with Boyd, James Gregory Elking, got away.
Johnson was convicted of killing Boyd over a $40 drug debt and received a life sentence.
Another man, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term.
Charles Weiss, an attorney for the St. Louis prosecutor’s office, described for Mason the circumstances that led to Johnson’s arrest.
A woman who lived nearby told police Johnson was the only person she knew who might have had a problem with Boyd.
Police put Johnson in a lineup, but Elking didn’t initially identify him, only doing so after detectives coerced him, Weiss said.
Another detective alleged that Johnson at one point blurted out to him, “I shouldn’t have let the white guy live,” referring to Elking.
Weiss said there was no recording of that conversation, but Loesch cited it as evidence of Johnson’s guilt.
Johnson contended he was with his girlfriend, miles away, when the shooting happened.
Elking recanted his identification of Johnson about 20 years ago.
Campbell and another man, James Howard, later signed sworn affidavits admitting to the killing and said Johnson wasn’t involved.
Campbell is now dead and Howard is serving a life sentence for an unrelated murder and nearly a dozen other crimes committed during an incident in 1997.
He wore handcuffs and an orange prison outfit as he testified Monday.
Gardner launched an investigation in collaboration with lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project.
Their investigation alleged misconduct by a prosecutor, secret payments made to a witness, falsified police reports and perjured testimony.
The former prosecutor and the detective who investigated rejected Gardner’s allegations. Detective Joseph Nickerson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he still believed Johnson was guilty.
Last week, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt asked the court to sanction Gardner, accusing her of concealing evidence.
Schmitt said Gardner’s office failed to inform the attorney general’s office of gunshot residue testing on a jacket found in the trunk of Johnson’s car after his arrest.
Gardner said the failure to turn over a lab report on the jacket was due to an overlooked email. She also called it irrelevant because the jacket was not used in the crime.
In March 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Johnson’s request for a new trial after Schmitt’s office argued successfully that Gardner lacked the authority to seek one so many years after the case was adjudicated.
Gardner and other critics said it was appalling that a man could remain imprisoned on such a technicality.
The case led to passage of a state law that makes it easier for prosecutors to get new hearings in cases where there is new evidence of a wrongful conviction.
Very convoluted.
Ask most any person in prison and they well say they are innocent.
I love that Bob Dylan song, “Hurricane”.
Some of them are as innocent as they claim to be.
When he is set free, the policemen who lied and coerced testimony, and the prosecuting attorney should be jailed for life without the possibility of parole.
OK, just so you know, the St. Louis prosecuting attorney advocating for his release is the same Kim Gardiner who prosecuted the white family who displayed but did not fire weapons when a mob broke into their gated community. No one in the mob was charged, of course.
She is the same woman who is constantly being investigated for malpractice regarding the charges she filed against then Governor Greitens. She also heads the office that let a murder suspect go free because she couldn’t be bothered to send a prosecutor to a court hearing.
This isn’t to say that Johnson may be innocent, Gardiner doesn’t have very much credibility when it comes to legal matters. However she is popular with St. Louis city voters...
Wrongful convictions are hideous, and detectives and prosecutors almost always claim they were in the right. My daughter went to school with a nice kid who had no dad in his life, and was taken under the wing of his criminal cousin. The kid, who only had a traffic ticket for a record, served 25 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit (was given life without parole) before he was exonerated under an Innocence Project effort. The original judge refused to allow the manager of the business where the crime was committed, testify that he was NOT the shooter, and was not present, among other miscarriages of justice. Thank God he was finally out. Became a Christian while in prison, and met and married a woman who worked for years to get him released.
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