ST. LOUIS: A Missouri judge on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a man who has served nearly 28 years of a life sentence for a killing that he has always said he didn’t commit.
Lamar Johnson, 50, closed his eyes and shook his head slightly as a woman on his legal team patted him on the back when Circuit Judge David Mason issued his ruling.
Before announcing his decision, Mason said that in weighing the case, there had to be “reliable evidence of actual innocence — evidence so reliable that it actually passes the standard of clear and convincing.”
A court official said after the hearing that Johnson would be “processed out” but should be available soon outside of the courthouse.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed a motion in August seeking Johnson’s release, prompting a hearing in December before Mason.
“Today the courts righted a wrong — vacating the sentence of Mr. Lamar Johnson, following his wrongful conviction in 1995,” Gardner said in a statement after Tuesday’s hearing. “Most importantly, we celebrate with Mr. Johnson and his family as he walks out of the courtroom as a free man.”
Gardner said she’s “pleased that Mr. Johnson will have the opportunity to be the man and member of community that he desires.”
The Missouri attorney general’s office argued at the December hearing that Johnson should remain in prison.
Johnson was convicted of murder for the 1994 fatal shooting of Marcus Boyd. Police and prosecutors blamed the killing on a dispute over drug money. From the outset, Johnson maintained his innocence, saying he was with his girlfriend miles (kilometers) away when the crime occurred.
Gardner said an investigation conducted by her office with help from the Innocence Project convinced her that Johnson was telling the truth.
Boyd was shot to death on the front porch of his home by two men wearing ski masks on Oct. 30, 1994. While Johnson was convicted and sentenced to life, a second suspect, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term.
Johnson testfied at the December hearing that he was with his girlfriend on the night of the crime, except for a few minutes when he stepped outside of the home of a friend to sell drugs on a corner several blocks from where the victim was killed.
“Did you kill Marcus Boyd?” an attorney asked.
“No, sir,” Lamar Johnson responded.
Johnson’s girlfriend at the time, Erika Barrow, testified that she was with Johnson that entire night, except for about a five-minute span when he left to make the drug sale. She said the distance between the friend’s home and Boyd’s home would have made it impossible for Johnson to get there and back in five minutes.
The case for Johnson’s release was centered around a key witness who recanted his testimony and a prison inmate who says it was he — not Johnson — who joined Campbell in the killing.
James Howard, 46, is serving a life sentence for murder and several other crimes that happened three years after Boyd was killed. He testified at the hearing that he and Campbell decided to rob Boyd, who owed one of their friends money from the sale of drugs.
Howard testified that he shot Boyd in the back of the head and neck, and that Campbell shot Boyd in the side.
“Was Lamar Johnson there?” asked Jonathan Potts, an attorney for Johnson.
“No,” Howard answered.
Howard and Campbell years ago signed affidavits admitting to the crime and claiming Johnson was not involved. Campbell has since died.
James Gregory Elking testified in December that he was on the front porch with Boyd, trying to buy crack cocaine, when the two gunmen wearing black ski masks came around the house and began the attack. Elking, who later spent several years in prison for bank robbery, initially told police he couldn’t identify the gunmen.
He agreed to view a lineup anyway. Elking testified that when he was unable to name anyone from the lineup as a shooter, Detective Joseph Nickerson told him, “I know you know who it is,” and urged him to “help get these guys off the street.”
Saying he felt “bullied” and “pressured,” Elking named Johnson as one of the shooters. Gardner’s office said Elking was also paid at least $4,000 after agreeing to testify.
“It’s been haunting me,” he said of his role in sending Johnson to prison.
Nickerson denied coercing Elking. He testified in December that Elking’s identification of Johnson was based on all that he could see of the shooter’s face — his eyes. Johnson has one eye that looks different than the other, Nickerson said. “You can clearly see it.”
Dwight Warren, who prosecuted Johnson in 1995, said that beyond Elking’s testimony, the main evidence against Johnson was an overheard jail cell conversation. A jailhouse informant, William Mock, told investigators at the time that he heard Campbell and Johnson talking when one of them said, “We should have shot that white boy,” apparently referring to Elking.
Warren acknowledged that convicting Johnson would have been “iffy” without Mock’s testimony.
At the December hearing, Special Assistant to the Circuit Attorney Charles Weiss sought to raise credibility concerns about Mock, noting that he sought release from incarceration as a reward for aiding the case. He had been successful in getting probation after a similar jailhouse revelation years earlier in Kansas City, Missouri.
Nickerson described Johnson as a violent drug dealer who had been arrested in killings “probably three times” before Boyd’s death, but was never convicted because witnesses wouldn’t testify.
Judge Mason heard that, paused, then asked, “You sure this isn’t a situation where you guys were in a little bit of a rush to make a conviction?”
“Not at all, Your Honor, not one bit,” Nickerson responded.
In March 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Johnson’s request for a new trial after then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office argued successfully that Gardner lacked the authority to seek one so many years after the case was adjudicated.
The case led to the passage of a state law that makes it easier for prosecutors to get new hearings in cases where there is fresh evidence of a wrongful conviction. That law freed another longtime inmate, Kevin Strickland, last year. He had served more than 40 years for a Kansas City triple killing.
Judge vacates conviction of man imprisoned nearly 3 decades
https://arab.news/b27fc
Judge vacates conviction of man imprisoned nearly 3 decades
- Lamar Johnson was convicted of murder for the 1994 fatal shooting of Marcus Boyd — police and prosecutors blamed the killing on a dispute over drug money
- The case for Johnson’s release was centered around a key witness who recanted his testimony and a prison inmate who says it was he — not Johnson — who participated in the killing
Pandemic treaty talks inch toward deal
Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, killing millions of people and devastating economies, experts stress the urgent need for an accord as new health threats lurk
GENEVA: Countries were on Tuesday painstakingly tweaking the text of a hoped-for landmark agreement on tackling future pandemics, amid fears that US tariffs on pharmaceuticals could still derail the long-negotiated deal.
After more than three years of talks, and a marathon session last week, observers had hoped Tuesday would be about dotting some i’s and crossing some t’s.
But the talks at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva were advancing slower than expected.
Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, killing millions of people and devastating economies, experts stress the urgent need for an accord as new health threats lurk, ranging from H5N1 bird flu to measles, mpox and Ebola.
There are also fears that deep cuts to US foreign aid spending could weaken global health, and that its threatened tariffs on pharmaceuticals could jeopardize the hard-won consensus already reached on swaths of the text.
One of the main remaining sticking points was Article 11, which deals with technology transfer for production of health products for pandemics — particularly to benefit developing countries, several sources told AFP.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, poorer countries accused rich nations of hoarding vaccine doses and tests.
A number of countries that are home to large pharmaceutical industries have meanwhile strenuously opposed the idea of mandatory tech transfers, insisting they be voluntary.
Early Saturday, after five days and a full night of negotiations, it appeared consensus had been reached by adding in that any tech transfer needed to be “mutually agreed.”
But several sources told AFP that the discussions had since hit a bump after pharma-hosting countries began demanding that this phrase be added to parts of the text already agreed upon.
“Today the pharma industry and its G7+ allies are proposing that every mention of technology transfer also mention mutually agreed,” James Packard Love, head of the NGO Knowledge Econology International, said on the Bluesky social network.
“This is a terrible outcome and a huge reverse from Saturday’s text.”
The talks were taking place behind closed doors at the WHO headquarters, but delegates frequently stepped out for informal discussions in the corridors, huddling over coffee and pizza as they tried to unblock the sticky bits.
A group of African delegates gathered in the hallway around the French vice-chair of the talks, while others engaged in lively discussion with WHO’s chief legal adviser Steve Solomon.
The negotiations are taking place as the global health system finds itself in deep crisis after the United States, long the world’s top donor, slashed its foreign aid spending.
Washington has not taken part in the negotiations, since President Donald Trump decided on his first day in office in January to begin withdrawing from the United Nations’ health agency.
The US presence, and not least Trump’s threat to slap steep tariffs on pharmaceutical products, nonetheless hangs over the talks, making manufacturers and their host countries all the more jittery.
But NGOs insist it is time to close the deal.
“Although the agreement went through several compromises, it includes many positive elements,” medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Tuesday.
Michelle Childs, Director of Policy Advocacy at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), voiced hope countries would cross the finish line.
“It would be a first in the history of international agreements,” she said, in its recognition that when countries fund research and development of vaccines and other medical products, you “need to attach conditions to that funding that ensure public benefit.”
If an agreement is sealed, the text will be ready for final approval at the WHO’s annual assembly next month.
Four journalists who were accused of working for Kremlin foe Navalny are convicted of extremism
- All four maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their job as journalists
- The closed-door trial was part of an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022
MOSCOW: A Russian court on Tuesday convicted four journalists of extremism for working for an anti-corruption group founded by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and sentenced them to 5 1/2 years in prison each.
Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that had been labeled as extremist. All four had maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their jobs as journalists.
The closed-door trial was part of an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
The authorities have targeted opposition figures, independent journalists, rights activists and ordinary Russians critical of the Kremlin with prosecution, jailing hundreds and prompting thousands to flee the country.
Favorskaya and Kriger worked with SotaVision, an independent Russian news outlet that covers protests and political trials. Gabov is a freelance producer who has worked for multiple organizations, including Reuters. Karelin, a freelance video journalist, has done work for Western media outlets, including The Associated Press.
The four journalists were accused of working with Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption, which was designated as extremist and outlawed in 2021 in a move widely seen as politically motivated.
Navalny was President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest and most prominent foe and relentlessly campaigned against official corruption in Russia. Navalny died in February 2024 in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on a number of charges, including running an extremist group, which he had rejected as politically driven.
Favorskaya said at an earlier court appearance open to the public that she was being prosecuted for a story she did on abuse Navalny faced behind bars. Speaking to reporters from the defendants’ cage before the verdict, she also said she was punished for helping organize Navalny’s funeral.
Gabov, in a closing statement prepared for court that was published by the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said the accusations against him were groundless and the prosecution failed to prove them.
“I understand perfectly well ... what kind of country I live in. Throughout history, Russia has never been different, there is nothing new in the current situation,” Gabov said in the statement. “Independent journalism is equated to extremism.”
In a statement Karelin prepared for his closing arguments that also was published by Novaya Gazeta, he said he had agreed to do street interviews for Popular Politics, a YouTube channel founded by Navalny’s associates, while trying to provide for his wife and a young child. He stressed that the channel wasn’t outlawed as extremist and had done nothing illegal.
“Remorse is considered to be a mitigating circumstance. It’s the criminals who need to have remorse for what they did. But I am in prison for my work, for the honest and impartial attitude to journalism, FOR THE LOVE for my family and country,” he wrote in a separate speech for court that also was published by the outlet, in which he emphasized his feelings in capital letters.
Kriger, in a closing statement published by SotaVision, said he was imprisoned and added to the Russian financial intelligence’s registry of extremists and terrorists “only because I have conscientiously carried out my professional duties as an honest, incorruptible and independent journalist for 4 1/2 years.”
“Don’t despair guys, sooner or later it will end and those who delivered the sentence will go behind bars,” Kriger said after the verdict.
Supporters who gathered in the court building chanted and applauded as the four journalists were led out of the courtroom after the verdict.
The Russian human rights group Memorial designated all four as political prisoners, among more than 900 others held in the country. That number includes Mikhail Kriger, Artyom Kriger’s uncle, a Moscow-based activist who was arrested in 2022 and is serving a seven-year prison sentence.
Mikhail Kriger was convicted of justifying terrorism and inciting hatred over Facebook comments in which he expressed a desire “to hang” Putin.
Superyacht that sank off Sicily killing seven to be raised
- Inquests into the deaths of Lynch and the other three British victims are being held in Ipswich in eastern England
- The retrieval operation was due to begin on April 26
LONDON: The superyacht “Bayesian” that sank off Sicily in August, killing British tech mogul Mike Lynch and six others, is to be raised and brought to shore next month, an investigator said on Tuesday.
The luxury 56-meter (185-foot) yacht was struck by a pre-dawn storm on August 19 as it was anchored off Porticello, near Palermo, and sank within minutes, killing Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and five others.
Lynch, the 59-year-old founder of software firm Autonomy, had invited friends and family onto the boat to celebrate his recent acquittal in a huge US fraud case.
Inquests into the deaths of Lynch and the other three British victims are being held in Ipswich in eastern England.
Simon Graves, a principal investigator for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) — a British government organization that investigates maritime accidents involving British ships around the world — told a pre-inquest hearing that the Bayesian was going to be raised and expected to be on dry land by the end of May.
The retrieval operation was due to begin on April 26.
Inquests were opened and adjourned last October pending the completion of probes by both the UK investigators and a criminal inquiry by Italian prosecutors.
Graves said a MAIB interim report on whether there were any breaches of maritime legislation could be published online in four to six weeks, with the final report to follow in “months not weeks.”
Coroner Nigel Parsley said he was “in the hands of the criminal investigations” as to when a final inquest hearing date could be set.
There were 22 passengers on board, including 12 crew and 10 guests, when the yacht sank.
The inquest in the UK is examining the deaths of Lynch and his daughter, Hannah, 18, as well as Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his 71-year-old wife Judy Bloomer, who were also British nationals.
The others who died were US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht.
Angela Bacares, Lynch’s wife and Hannah’s mother, was among the 15 survivors.
Bangladesh restores ‘except Israel’ clause in passports after public pressure
- Bangladesh’s previous government dropped the wording in 2021 without public notice
- Immigration says it may take several weeks to finalize procedures to print it again
DHAKA: Bangladesh is reinstating the “except Israel” clause in its passports, the Department of Immigration said on Tuesday, after public pressure to reverse its removal by the previous government.
Bangladeshi passports carried the sentence “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel” until 2021, when authorities rolled out a new travel document and the phrase was removed without any public notice.
While authorities justified it by saying it was meant to “maintain international standard,” many people in the country — which has no diplomatic relations with Israel — questioned the move.
The new interim government, which took charge of Bangladesh in August after the ouster of its long-standing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has decided to undo her cabinet’s decision.
“We’ve received the government’s directive to reinstate the ‘except Israel’ clause in Bangladeshi passports. We are currently working to implement it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammed Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told Arab News.
“For many years, our passports carried the ‘except Israel’ clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it. We were used to seeing ‘except Israel’ written in our passports. I don’t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you’ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.”
Pressure to reinstate the clause has been mounting since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing deadly onslaught on Gaza, which began in October 2023.
Over 51,000 people have been killed, 116,000 wounded, and 2 million others face starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings while blocking humanitarian aid from entering.
A clear ban on travel to Israel in Bangladeshi passports was one of the key demands raised during a series of Gaza solidarity protests, which have been held regularly in Dhaka since last month after Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire agreement and resumed bombing hospitals, schools and tents sheltering displaced people.
The biggest such protest took place in Dhaka on Saturday, with about 1 million people taking to the streets to call on the international community to “take effective and collective action to end the genocide,” and especially on Muslim countries to immediately sever all economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel and to “impose commercial blockades and sanctions on the Zionist state” and begin active diplomatic efforts to isolate it on the international stage.
“People will definitely welcome this new decision. It reflects the feelings of the people of this country,” Salam said, but he was not able to specify when the new passports will be available.
“There are some technical challenges involved with this change. Currently, we import e-passports from Germany under a government-to-government agreement … It may take another week to finalize the necessary procedures. In the meantime, we are exploring whether there’s any option to modify the existing stock of printed booklets.”
Italy’s Meloni to meet Trump amid US-Europe trade tensions
- Meloni is walking a tightrope between her ideological affinity to the president and her ties with European allies
- French government ministers have warned that the nationalist Italian leader might undermine EU unity by going alone to Washington
ROME: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is heading to the White House for a meeting on Thursday with President Donald Trump, seeking to ease tensions over US tariffs on European goods and position herself as a bridge between Washington and Brussels.
Meloni is walking a tightrope between her ideological affinity to the president and her ties with European allies, who have criticized Trump’s tariff hikes and his decision to exclude the EU from talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
While Meloni is under pressure at home to protect Italy’s export-driven economy, which last year ran a 40 billion euro ($45.4 billion) trade surplus with the US, she must also be seen to defend the interests of the whole 27-nation EU bloc.
French government ministers have warned that the nationalist Italian leader might undermine EU unity by going alone to Washington, but the European Commission, which has responsibility for negotiating trade accords, has welcomed Meloni’s trip.
Trump’s abrupt decision last week to pause most global tariffs for 90 days has relieved some of the pressure on Meloni, meaning that she won’t feel the need to return with a deal, but rather to create the right environment for an accord.
“She is no longer traveling amid an open clash involving the EU. She is going as a de facto mediator,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst at Luiss University in Rome.
ROME’S AMBITIONS
Meloni was the only EU leader invited to Trump’s inauguration in January and this week’s meeting will take place the day before she hosts Vice President JD Vance in Rome — back-to-back talks that could be crucial to furthering Italian ambitions to play a pivotal role in transatlantic relations.
“If she facilitates negotiations with Trump without penalizing Europe, she will emerge much stronger,” said Castellani.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has so far not been granted an audience with Trump, meaning that she has to rely on others to promote EU interests.
A Commission spokesperson said Meloni and von der Leyen had been in regular contact ahead of the White House meeting.
Both leaders have called for all of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs to be scrapped for the EU, and Meloni is expected to push for a “zero-for-zero” deal on industrial tariffs between the two sides.
French officials fear Trump is seeking to divide and conquer Europe, and worry Meloni could play into his hands.
“We need to be united because Europe is strong if it’s united,” Marc Ferracci, the French minister for industry and energy, told FranceInfo radio. “If we start having bilateral talks, of course it’ll break this momentum.”
CHINA
While Trump has frozen many tariffs, he has maintained a wall of levies on China and some analysts say this might bring China and Europe closer together.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, and urged greater engagement with China in order to defend globalization and to oppose “unilateral acts of bullying.”
Rome has distanced itself from his comments.
“The great clash underway is not between the US and Europe, but between the US and China,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told Reuters in an interview.
Trump and Meloni may also discuss defense and Castellani said Meloni might promise to hike defense spending in future.
Italy’s defense budget was 1.49 percent of GDP last year even as Trump is pushing NATO allies to lift military spending to 5 percent of GDP.
