By By Micheal Chukwuebuka
A Minnesota man has walked free after spending nearly three decades behind bars for a murder he did not commit – a crime that prosecutors now believe may have been carried out by the state’s key trial witness.
Bryan Hooper Snr, 54, was released from Stillwater Correctional Facility on Thursday, a day after a state judge quashed his first-degree murder conviction in relation to the 1998 killing of 77-year-old Ann Prazniak, whose body was found stuffed inside a box in her flat.
“Today, the courts have affirmed what Bryan Hooper, his family, his loved ones, and his advocates have always known: Mr Hooper is an innocent man,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement announcing his release.
The Great North Innocence Project, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of wrongfully convicted prisoners, said Hooper’s conviction rested heavily on the testimony of Chalaka Young – now serving a prison sentence in Georgia for offences including robbery, assault, and carjacking.
Young, who has since become sober and religious, admitted that she lied when accusing Hooper of the killing and has now confessed to the murder herself.
“I am not okay any longer with [an] innocent man sitting in prison for a crime he did not commit,” Young wrote, according to the advocacy group. She added that her “sole purpose here is not to make any excuse but to take responsibility for two innocent lives that I have destroyed and … to make true amends for once in my life.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed the case and confirmed that Young had not only recanted her testimony but had also confessed to killing Prazniak and concealing her body. Prosecutors said her admissions, made to law enforcement, a prison chaplain, and family members, were “compelling and consistent.”
Moriarty offered a public apology for her office’s role in the miscarriage of justice and acknowledged the challenges Hooper now faces after 27 years in prison.
“We are relieved that Mr Hooper can finally return home to his family after 27 years, and I want to again apologise to him and his family for our office’s role in that injustice,” she said. “We wish Mr Hooper all the best as he begins to navigate a world that is barely recognisable from the one he knew in 1998.”
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