A Missouri man who was exonerated after nearly three decades in jail has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of St. Louis and eight police officers, alleging they framed him for a murder he did not commit. On Wednesday, Lamar Johnson, 50, filed a wrongful conviction case in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. People stated that Mr Johnson served 28 years in prison for the 1994 murder of his buddy Markus Boyd.
According to a statement from his attorneys at the national civil rights firm Neufeld, Sheck, Brustin, Hoffman & Freudenberger, Mr. Johnson, then 20, was with his girlfriend miles away on October 30, 1994, when two masked individuals shot Boyd while he was sitting on his front porch in St. Louis.
“But police coerced an eyewitness into a false ID and manufactured false evidence from a racist and unreliable jailhouse informant while failing to interview numerous people who could have testified to Johnson’s whereabouts, seek a single search warrant, or investigate other obvious evidence of his innocence,” Emma Fruedenberger, a partner at NSBHF, said in a statement.
Mr Johnson and a now-dead man, Phillip Campbell, were convicted of shooting Marcus Boyd over an alleged drug debt, and both received life terms. However, Mr Johnson was released in 2023 after a judge ruled that he had been unfairly convicted, according to the Associated Press.
From jiffy tube worker to Innocence Project ally
Mr Johnson is now seeking punitive damages and an undisclosed monetary amount as compensation for the 28 years he has lost.
“I am grateful to be free and I’m doing my best to make up for all the time that was stolen from me and my family, especially my daughters,” Mr Johnson said in a statement. “And I want to put this dark and painful chapter behind me, but there can be no healing without answers and accountability. I deserved better and so did Markus. I intend to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
His attorneys agree. “This lawsuit is about accountability,” Emma Freudenberger, a partner with NSBHF, said in the statement.
“The defendant officers framed a young man with his life ahead of him. Even after the Court declared his innocence, there have been no apologies and no consequences,” the statement continues. “The City of St. Louis cannot continue to simply ignore the glaring police misconduct that has caused Mr. Johnson and his family so much harm.”
According to CBS News, Mr Johnson acknowledged to selling minor amounts of cocaine while working at Jiffy Tube and attending community college. But he was determined to clear his record and be released from prison, so he contacted the Midwest Innocence Project. They collaborated with then-Circuit Attorney Kim Garner to investigate.
Mr Gardner submitted a motion in August 2022 requesting that Mr Johnson’s conviction be vacated.
In a December 2022 hearing in St. Louis Circuit Court, a man called James Howard purportedly confessed to Boyd’s murder, claiming that he and Campbell killed Boyd and that Johnson had no involvement.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Howard and Campbell killed Boyd because he disrespected Howard’s boyfriend, Sirone Spates, also known as Puffy.