ST. LOUIS — Lawmakers in the Missouri statehouse are calling for changes and an apology after Lamar Johnson's sentence was vacated after 28 years.
Circuit Judge David Mason on Tuesday overturned Johnson's conviction for a killing that Johnson has always said he didn't commit. Johnson walked free after he was processed out at the courthouse Thursday afternoon.
In response to the overturned conviction, Democratic lawmakers in the Missouri House of Representatives are calling for changes to the system and demanding an apology from state officials.
House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, who represents Springfield, said lawmakers need to take immediate action to guarantee restitution for people who are wrongfully convicted. She said she has already proposed a bill that would do that.
"While Mr. Johnson celebrates alongside his family, his community and the thousands of people who have supported him along his journey, the state has an obligation to make him as whole as it can after it robbed him of nearly three decades of his life," she said in a statement.
Another representative, Democrat LaKeySha Bosley of St. Louis, said the state owes Johnson an apology. She said elected officials had chances to free him earlier, but did not.
"Our state attorney general's office fought tooth and nail to keep an innocent man behind bars, and even after overwhelming evidence of his innocence, he did not receive a pardon from Missouri's governor."
Bosley also supported Quade's bill to guarantee restitution in similar cases.
"To Mr. Johnson, I am sorry our system took so much from you. As an innocent man, you deserved better from Missouri," she said in her statement.
The Republican-led state attorney general's office fought to keep Johnson locked up. A spokeswoman for the office, Madeline Sieren, said in an email that the office will take no further action in the case. She again defended the office's push to keep Johnson behind bars.
“As he stated when he was sworn in, Attorney General (Andrew) Bailey is committed to enforcing the laws as written,” Sieren wrote. “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.”
Johnson's attorneys blasted the state attorney general's office after the hearing, saying it “never stopped claiming Lamar was guilty and was comfortable to have him languish and die in prison.”
“Yet, when this State’s highest law enforcement office could hide from a courtroom no more, it presented nothing to challenge the overwhelming body of evidence that the circuit attorney and Lamar Johnson had amassed,” they said in a statement.
Johnson plans to reconnect with his family and enjoy experiences he was denied for most of his adult life while locked up, his lawyers said.
“While today brings joy, nothing can restore all that the state stole from him. Nothing will give him back the nearly three decades he lost while separated from his daughters and family,” they said. “The evidence that proved his innocence was available at his trial, but it was kept hidden or ignored by those who saw no value in the lives of two young Black men from the South Side.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
