A Minnesota man was recently released from prison after he was falsely found guilty for a murder conviction.
Early Thursday morning, Bryan Hooper Sr. was released from Stillwater Correctional Facility after State District Court Judge Marta Chou announced that she had vacated his conviction.
Hooper spent nearly three decades behind bars after he was convicted in a 1998 case for the death of 77-year-old Ann Prazniak.
He was accused of premeditated murder, felony murder through burglary and felony murder through kidnapping, with his conviction largely stemming from the testimony of a woman who claimed she was a witness.
Through a review of the case conducted by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, however, the woman who offered the key testimony confessed to committing the crime, recanting her previous statement. The woman released a statement on her role in Hooper’s incrimination, claiming she wanted to take “responsibility for two innocent lives that I [she] destroyed.”
Other jailhouse informants also promptly took back their testimonies, providing the basis for the release of Hooper.
Now that Hooper has been cleared of the crime, the case will require additional investigation.
“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 Moriarty per a statement. “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.”
The release of Hooper was helped in part by the Great North Innocence Project, an advocacy group based in Minneapolis that works to free those who have been wrongfully convicted. Founded in 2001, the group has helped free 14 people – eight of whom were freed in the past five years.
Overall, the Great North Innocence Project says up to 300 people write to them for help with their cases each year. Although the nonprofit has found success, they recently revealed that they were affected by the recent federal funding cuts.
Per Executive Director Sara Jones, their 3-year $600,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice will no longer be provided to them. The fund helped go towards approximately 15% of their overall budget each year.
With the cuts, the group is expecting delays in helping people like Hooper obtain their freedom.
“We already have a long line of applicants who are waiting for us to assess their cases, do deep dive investigations, which sometimes take years to complete,” said Jones per CBS News. “So it’s going to take longer to be able to address that, and it will set us back in terms of our goals.”
