Tag: exonerated

A man who was convicted of murdering a 77-year-old woman in Minneapolis nearly 30 years ago is now free after being exonerated. 

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says 54-year-old Bryan Hooper Sr., who has been in prison for 27 years, was released late Thursday morning from the Stillwater prison. This comes about a month after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she was going to file a petition to vacate his conviction. 

Judge Marta Chou decided to vacate Hooper’s conviction on Wednesday, a day after Hooper’s hearing. 

“I’ll continue to live my life the best that I can. Hopefully, good things happen from that. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Spend time with my family as much as possible. That’s first and foremost. What happens after that, to be continued,” said Hooper while speaking to reporters after his release. 

“It is our duty as prosecutors to hold the correct individuals responsible for their actions, and that duty demands that we acknowledge our mistakes and make things right as quickly as we can. When our Conviction Integrity Unit learned that another person had confessed to the crime for which Mr. Hooper was convicted, they worked tirelessly to clear his name and secure his release,” said Morarity. 

Hooper was previously convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and given three concurrent life sentences for the murder of Ann Prazniak, who was found dead in a box in her bedroom closet at 1818 Park Avenue in 1998. Her wrists, face and head were bound with packing tape, and the box was wrapped with a string of Christmas lights. 

Neighbors told police that they had seen a woman at Prazinak’s apartment around the time of the murder. The woman told police the names of several others, including Hooper, who had also been at Prazniak’s apartment at the time. 

According to a Supreme Court filing, Hooper told police he had smoked crack cocaine in Prazniak’s apartment but denied being involved in the murder. Police found his fingerprints on two sandwich bags and a beer can in Prazniak’s living room. Police also found Chalaka Lewis’ fingerprints on packing tape found in Prazniak’s apartment.

During Hooper’s trial, four witnesses testified that he confessed to the murder. One of the witnesses falsely implicated him in another murder and gave multiple inconsistent accounts of Hooper’s confession, Supreme Court documents say. 

Prosecutors used jailhouse confessions, and Lewis was one of eight people charged and given a plea deal for burglarizing Prazniak’s home for her testimony.

The jury ultimately found Hooper guilty.

“First of all, they need to be very careful when they accept jailhouse informant statements. That should be eradicated from the justice system, period. You know, that was a big problem in my case, that’s what caused me to be wrongfully convicted. So they need to really look into that and change that, and change these bars, these time bars that they put on us when we try and go back post-conviction,” said Hooper. “That hinders us, and something needs to be done about it.”

“I think the police had tunnel vision,” said Jeff Dean, who represented Hooper. “They made the decision they thought it was Bryan Hooper who committed this crime and then they followed that. They couldn’t let it go.”

Since the conviction, Hooper appealed to the state Supreme Court and said the four witnesses had recanted their testimony. In a 2015 appeal, one of the witnesses stated she had lied about Hooper’s confession in the hope of receiving reward money. Hooper petitioned six times to have his conviction vacated after multiple witness recanted their trial testimony. The state Supreme Court, however, upheld the conviction, arguing that he had filed the request years too late. 

Moriarty previously said the state’s star witness had come forward on July 29 not only to renounce her testimony but to confess to killing Prazniak and hiding her body. The woman, who was 23 years old at the time, is serving a sentence for aggravated battery at a Georgia prison.

When asked if he would be out of prison if the woman in Georgia hadn’t confessed, Hooper said, “That’s a good question. But I should’ve been out a long time ago, when other individuals recanted.”

While prosecutors did not name her, the key witness in the trial was Lewis. At the time, her testimony was controversial as her fingerprints were found at the crime scene and she testified in exchange for a plea deal for burglary. She has not been charged in the Prazniak murder.

“I’m so glad she did the right thing,” said Hooper. “God bless her.”   

Chou said it was “tainted by false evidence and that without this false testimony, the jury might have reached a different conclusion.”