A Minnesota man walked out of prison on Thursday after spending nearly three decades behind bars for a murder that he not only didn’t commit but might have been carried out by the trial’s key witness, prosecutors and advocates said.
Bryan Hooper Sr., 54, was released from Stillwater Correction Facility after a state judge on Wednesday vacated his first-degree murder conviction in connection with the 1998 murder of Ann Prazniak, 77, whose body was stuffed in a box in her apartment.
“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 Hooper’s release.
Great North Innocence Project, an advocacy group for prisoners who claim they were wrongfully convicted, said Hooper’s conviction relied heavily on the testimony of witness Chalaka Young, who is now in a Georgia prison and doing time for a host of crimes, including robbery, assault, and hijacking of a car.
The recently sober and religious Young confessed that she lied when pinning Prazniak’s slaying on Hooper and is now saying she did it, the group said in a statement.
“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.
Young said that her “soul [sic] 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,” according to the group.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit’s (CIU) review of Hooper’s case found that the state’s “key trial witness had come forward not only to recant her testimony against Mr. Hooper, but to confess to killing Ms. Prazniak and concealing her body,” according to a statement by prosecutors.
“The HCAO found that her confession, which she repeated to multiple law enforcement agencies, a prison chaplain, and loved ones, was compelling and consistent,” prosecutors added.
Moriarty apologized for her “office’s role in that injustice.”
The prosecutor also wondered what technological advances must have been completely new and confusing to Hooper after he was released from prison.
“We are relieved that Mr. Hooper can finally return home to his family after 27 years, and I want to again apologize to him and his family for our office’s role in that injustice,” Moriarty added.
“We wish Mr. Hooper all the best as he begins to navigate a world that is barely recognizable from the world he knew in 1998.”
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