ThrobbingHood
“I’m Sorry for 2025”
His GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-lamar-johnson-after-wrongful-conviction
Long before he had a graying beard, Lamar Johnson wrote to the St. Louis judge who oversaw his 1995 trial, saying he had received letters from another man admitting guilt to the murder for which he had just been convicted.
“Mr. Shaw I did not kill Markus Boyd,” Johnson wrote nearly three decades ago, “and I hope someday justice will prevail.”
Following years of legal battles, that day came Tuesday, when Circuit Judge David Mason announced he was granting the St. Louis circuit attorney’s motion to vacate Johnson’s conviction. Prosecutors had determined Johnson, who spent 28 years in prison, had nothing to do with Boyd’s killing.
The crowd in the courtroom cheered as Mason announced his decision. Johnson — who, at 49, has spent more than half of his life in prison — wiped tears from his eyes.
Mason’s ruling, in which he called Johnson’s innocence “clear and convincing,” marked the end to a years-long effort to free Johnson.
Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner became convinced of Johnson’s innocence in 2019, but she did not have a legal avenue to release him.
“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,” they said. “That is intolerable. That is not justice. We can and must do better.”
Last year, a Star report detailed how the dubious testimony of a repeat jailhouse informant — who had a swastika tattoo and once called Johnson a racial slur — helped prosecutors convict Johnson, who is Black. The informant, who was white, claimed to have heard Johnson confess to the killing while in jail, but his story, Gardner’s office determined, “was and is not credible.”
Johnson will not be compensated by the state for his wrongful conviction because Missouri law only allows for payments to people exonerated with DNA evidence. His legal team has set up an online fundraiserfor him, which has raised more than $9,000.
“Once he is released he will enter the free world with no resources to begin his new life outside of prison walls,” his lawyers wrote. “While he has worked inside prison for more than two decades, he is paid only cents per hour.”
they destroy innocent peoples lives all the time without a care in the world
