Lamar Johnson (Exoneration)

Case background and investigation

Markus Boyd, 25, was shot and killed on the front porch of his home in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 30, 1994. According to CBS News, Boyd was sitting with a friend, Greg Elking, when two men wearing masks approached and opened fire. Boyd's first name appears as both Markus and Marcus in news coverage.

Police arrested Lamar Johnson a few days later, on November 3, 1994. Prosecutors alleged that Boyd was killed over a drug debt. Johnson maintained that he was elsewhere at the time of the shooting. He was tried in July 1995, convicted of murder, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The case against him depended heavily on Elking's identification and on the testimony of a jail informant. A second man, Phillip Campbell, was also charged; CBS News reported that Campbell pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and received a seven-year sentence.

Doubts about the conviction grew over the following decades. According to CBS News, Campbell wrote letters as early as 1995 stating that Johnson had not been involved and naming James Howard as the other gunman, and Elking wrote to a clergyman in 2003 saying his identification had been false. It later emerged that Elking had received more than $4,000 in payments that were not disclosed to the defense at trial.

In 2019, the Conviction Integrity Unit of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner concluded that Johnson had been wrongly convicted and asked a court to set the verdict aside. St. Louis Public Radio reported that the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that Gardner had no authority to bring such a motion, after which the legislature passed a law allowing prosecutors to do so. Gardner's office filed again under the new law, and the Missouri Attorney General's Office opposed the request.

Circuit Judge David Mason heard evidence beginning December 12, 2022. Elking recanted his identification under oath, and Howard, who is serving a life sentence in another case, testified that he and Campbell shot Boyd and that Johnson was not there. On February 14, 2023, Mason vacated the conviction, writing that the testimony amounted to clear and convincing evidence that Johnson was innocent. Johnson, then 50, was released the same day. The Attorney General's Office said it would take no further action.

On January 17, 2024, Johnson filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of St. Louis and several former police officers, alleging that evidence was fabricated and that information favorable to him was withheld, St. Louis Public Radio reported. The sources reviewed do not report any new criminal charges in Boyd's death following Howard's testimony.