A Minnesota man wrongfully convicted of murder walked free Thursday after the star witness who helped the prosecution put him behind bars for 27 years confessed to the crime, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.
Bryan Hooper Sr. was released from the Stillwater correctional facility and into the arms of his family one day after a judge vacated his first-degree murder conviction, explained the Great North Innocence Project.
“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,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarity, whose office helped prosecute Hooper, in a statement Thursday.
“I want to again apologize to him and his family for our office’s role in that injustice,” she added in her statement. “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.”
Hooper was charged in the death of Ann Prazniak, a 77-year-old woman who was found bound and asphyxiated in a cardboard box in the bedroom closet of her Minneapolis apartment. He was convicted on one count each of premeditated murder, felony murder while committing burglary and felony murder while committing kidnapping, per The Guardian, and was sentenced to three life sentences.
