In 2019, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s office determined that Lamar Johnson was innocent after he spent a quarter century in prison for the 1994 murder of Marcus Boyd.
Three years later, Johnson still sits in prison. His supporters say more than enough time has passed for Johnson to be freed and receive compensation for the now 28 years stolen from his life.
“Somebody needs to say something,” says Michelle Smith, founder of the Missouri Justice Coalition, at a protest on the steps of the 22nd Judicial Circuit Courts building.
Smith, and about a dozen more, gathered outside the courthouse on Monday to protest public officials’ inaction on Johnson’s case and on other wrongfully convicted people's cases. They specifically called on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and state Attorney General Eric Schmitt to vacate Johnson’s life sentence.
“Even if prosecutor Kim Gardner can’t file for Lamar, have your ass on TV talking about the AG about why he’s holding you up,” Smith says.
Procedural issues and lack of precedent have consistently boggled judges and stood in the way of new trials for the wrongfully convicted. Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Gardner and the Missouri Innocence Project’s request for a new trial for Johnson. In 2019, a circuit judge said she didn’t have the authority to order Johnson a new trial and decided the state’s attorney general should handle the matter.
In 2020, Schmitt’s office said the St. Louis Circuit Court lacked the authority to file a motion for a new trial for Johnson. Since then, a new law has passed allowing prosecutors or circuit attorneys to overturn convictions in their jurisdictions if they have information that the convicted person may be innocent.
Monica Obradovic
Michelle Smith, founder and director of the Missouri Justice Coalition, speaks to protestors.
So far, Gardner has not used this law, and her Conviction Integrity Unit has overturned zero convictions since its formation in 2018.
Kevin Strickland, a Kansas City man who spent 43 years in prison, is the only person whose sentence has been overturned because of the new law. A Jackson-County jury found Strickland innocent, and he was released in November of last year after an all-white jury wrongfully convicted him of a triple murder in 1979.
Meanwhile, as the debate over who has authority to overturn convictions continues, Johnson and others deemed innocent languish in prison year after year.
“If we want to help Lamar be released, we have to apply pressure to the attorney general’s office so, if Gardner files a motion, he [can't] file a motion to have it dismissed,” says state Representative LaKeySha Bosley (D-St. Louis).
Smith highlighted the cases of Christopher Dunn and Michael Whitfield, who have spent decades in prison for murders activists say they didn’t commit. Same goes for Bertha Owens, who is serving a life-sentence for a 1996 murder in which she was convicted with no physical evidence. A witness in her case admitted to lying under pressure from prosecutor Nels Moss. Fox 2 reports that a new attorney has recently taken over Owen’s case.
“I was incarcerated with Miss Bertha, she was like a maternal figure for me,” Smith says. Smith served time in state and federal prison and later founded the Missouri Justice Coalition after she noticed “a gap in advocacy for state incarcerated people.”
Monica Obradovic
Inez Bordeaux screams "We have nothing to lose but our chains" in front of the St. Louis City Judicial Court Building.
Even if state or city officials fight for the wrongfully convicted, activists say they’d still face a grim reality upon their release.
Missouri law only entitles compensation to those who were proven innocent through DNA evidence.
Yet even if the state were to grant exonerees the money they’re entitled to, they’d only receive $100 for each day they were wrongfully convicted. The current rate is an increase from $50 after Bosley sponsored a bill to raise the compensation, but it’s still not enough, she says.
“We increased it to $100 a day, which makes the pay off for a year $36,500, which is still nothing,” Bosley tells the RFT.
Bosley says the work continues. She sponsored a bill last session that would raise payments to $179 per day and eliminate the state statute requiring DNA evidence, however the bill never made it past committee. She’s working on legislation to provide conviction-integrity units for all of Missouri’s 114 counties.
“We need to ensure we get them released by having conviction integrity units and giving more teeth to the legislation that passed a year ago, while also making sure that once they’re released, we give them all the wraparound services we can think of,” Bosley says.
