{"id":24737,"date":"2023-02-15T07:56:18","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T12:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=24737"},"modified":"2023-02-15T07:56:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T12:56:18","slug":"lamar-johnson-freed-28-years-after-wrongful-murder-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/02\/15\/lamar-johnson-freed-28-years-after-wrongful-murder-conviction\/","title":{"rendered":"Lamar Johnson freed 28 years after wrongful murder conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A US man who spent nearly 28 years behind bars for a murder he has always denied committing has had the conviction overturned in Missouri.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lamar Johnson, 50, walked out of the St Louis’ courtroom a free man after a ruling by Judge David Mason on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The judge said he acted after two witnesses had provided “clear and convincing evidence” that Mr Johnson was innocent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He had been convicted of murdering Marcus Boyd in 1994.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Johnson was visibly moved when the ruling was announced, while his supporters started cheering and applauding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This is overwhelming,” said Mr Johnson, after leaving the courtroom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Last year, Attorney Kim Gardner had filed a motion seeking the release of Mr Johnson after conducting an investigation together with the Innocence Project non-profit legal organisation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Following Tuesday’s hearing, Mr Johnson’s legal team criticised the office of the state attorney general which had pushed to keep him in prison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The office “never stopped claiming Lamar was guilty and was comfortable to have him languish and die in prison,” Mr Johnson’s attorneys said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A spokesperson for the attorney general said in an email that the office will take no further action in the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Our office defended the rule of law and worked to uphold the original verdict that a jury of Johnson’s peers deemed to be appropriate based on the facts presented at trial,” the statement said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Marcus Boyd was shot dead by two masked men on Mr Johnson’s front porch in October 1994.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Johnson has repeatedly said that he was not at home when the attack happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Judge Mason issued his ruling after one witness had recanted his testimony, and an inmate had confessed that he shot Boyd with another suspect, Phil Campbell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During the initial trial, Campbell pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and was sentenced to seven years in prison.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A US man who spent nearly 28 years behind bars for a murder he has always denied committing has had the conviction overturned in Missouri. Lamar Johnson, 50, walked out of the St Louis’ courtroom […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[6743,371,8864,7297],"class_list":{"0":"post-24737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-innocence-project","10":"tag-missouri","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-wrongful-conviction","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24740,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24737\/revisions\/24740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}