Man exonerated after 27 years in Minnesota prison when key witness admits she committed the murder

“Twenty-seven years of missed birthdays, missed milestones,” Bryan Hooper Sr.’s daughter said after his release. Witness Chalaka Young admits she actually killed the victim.

Bryan Hooper Sr. is finally free. After spending 27 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, the Minnesota father walked out of prison on September 4 into the arms of his children and with his name finally cleared.

Hooper was convicted in 1998 of the murder of 77-year-old Ann Prazniak, whose body was discovered in her Minneapolis apartment, hidden inside a cardboard box wrapped in Christmas lights. At the time, prosecutors leaned heavily on the testimony of Chalaka Young, who claimed Hooper committed the killing and forced her to help cover it up. That testimony, which was later echoed by four other incentivized witnesses, sealed Hooper’s fate.

But it was all a lie. 

Over the years, the four other witness testimonies were believed to have been incentivized and retracted from the case. Most recently, while serving time on unrelated charges, Young confessed that she killed Prazniak, not Hooper. Her conscience, she said, finally demanded that she “take responsibility for two innocent lives that I have destroyed.” 

In a letter to prosecutors, she wrote, “I am not okay any longer with an innocent man sitting in prison for a crime he did not commit. Soul [sic] purpose here is not to make any excuse but to take responsibility for two innocent lives that I have destroyed and… to make true amends for once in my life,” per NBC News. 

Her admission set into motion the chain of events that restored Hooper’s freedom. After repeating her confession to investigators and family, Prazniak’s murder, which was once thought solved, was placed back in the hands of Minneapolis police for further investigation. 

“The court finds that Mr Hooper’s conviction was tainted by false evidence and that without this false testimony, the jury might have reached a different conclusion,” a judge wrote in a statement. 

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty acknowledged what Hooper’s family had always maintained: “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.”

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,” she added, per NBC News. 

For Hooper’s daughter, Bri’ana, the moment was bittersweet. “Twenty-seven years of missed birthdays, missed milestones, holidays. Twenty-seven years of lost opportunity,” she said at a press conference. “And that time that we can’t get back. But today we don’t have to lose, we don’t.”