Minneapolis, MN — Bryan Hooper, another wrongfully convicted Black man in Minnesota, is hoping to be freed from his life sentence after the state’s key trial witness recently admitted to the murder Hooper was convicted for. In late July, the perpetrator of the vicious 1998 murder of 77-year-old Ann Prazniak confessed to the crime while in a Georgia state prison.

Citing her newfound sobriety, a supportive prison system, a spiritual awakening and the crushing weight of carrying the secret of killing Ann Prazniak, Chalaka Young (then Chalaka Lewis) came forward to confess that she lied about Hooper and that she killed Prazniak.

“I publicly lied on you and will do all it takes to fix it so that you too may know the truth. I hurt you so bad and you can’t get back that time I stole from you but I can now tell the truth so that all will know that you truly was innocent,” said Young in a written statement on July 28, 2025.

Young was 23 years old at the time of the murder, and Hooper was 27. Young is currently in a Georgia prison and has four years left of a 10-year sentence, though she’s now bracing for additional time after confessing.

“They might give me the 25 years that he has done,” Young wrote, “they may give me the electric chair, they may give me whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

Hooper had previously been denied on six attempts to get his conviction overturned in Minnesota courts, including the MN Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, August 12, 2025, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty led a press conference to announce that her office, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office (HCAO) and the Great North Innocence Project submitted a petition to vacate Hooper’s murder conviction.

“Whether Hooper’s conviction is ultimately vacated will be up to the court. We believe, however, that the evidence plainly supports Mr. Hooper’s innocence and that his claim is strong and worthy of our support,” said Moriarty.

Hennepin County’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) had already been reviewing Hooper’s case when they were given the new evidence by the Minneapolis Police Department. Andrew Markquart, the director of the HCAO CIU, said they were supporting Hooper’s exoneration “because we’re convinced that the evidence points toward his innocence and we hope that he will finally achieve his freedom soon.”

“I’m sorry on behalf of our office,” Moriarty said to Bri’ana Hooper, Bryan’s daughter. “And I understand at the same time, sorry doesn’t bring back those 27 years. What we’re doing today though, I hope, is the beginning of getting your father out of prison.”

Imprisoned since 1998, Hooper was convicted based on testimony from incentivized jailhouse informants. Chalaka Young, the key witness in the trial, testified in exchange for a plea deal for burglary. Two witnesses were given reduced sentences on unrelated offenses, and another was given $30, though they were promised $800.

“Mr. Hooper’s case highlights the risks of relying on jailhouse informants,” said James Mayer, Legal Director of the Great North Innocence Project, who took up Hooper’s case.

Mayer called the case “a moment of reckoning” for the courts and said it collectively failed the Hooper family over the last 27 years.

“The fact is that Bryan Hooper is innocent, and yet somehow he was convicted of murder. Somehow he was sentenced to life in prison. And somehow that was held up on appeal. And somehow, through six separate efforts to obtain post-conviction relief, to challenge that conviction in state court and federal court — rejected every single time. Many of those claims never had an evidentiary hearing on their merits in court. They were dismissed on procedural grounds.”

Meyer spoke for Hooper’s family, saying they felt two ways: “…excitement and joy that he may soon be rejoining his family and community and the other being, ‘it’s about damn time.'”

Hooper’s original attorney, public defender Jeff Dean, had fought to prove his innocence through the trial and had said that the state’s witness was the real killer.

The case will now be assigned a judge who will have 90 days to make a ruling. Judge Paul Scoggins was named on August 14 with a ruling to be removed pursuant to rule 26.03 subd 14(4) made by Hooper’s legal team.

Young has not been charged with the murder of Ann Prazniak. Hooper remains in prison. Moriarty said that she’ll focus on potential charges for Young after Hooper gets home.

Hooper wrote a letter to Unicorn Riot in 2024 in which he detailed his case: “The prosecution charged me with the crime in a rush to judgement based on jailhouse informants [sic] false statements and false statements of drug addicts that I confessed to the crime. There was no physical or DNA evidence linking me to the crime, the testimonies that got me locked up have been recanted, and evidence has linked others to the crime.”

Hooper’s daughter, Bri’ana, has been consistently pushing for awareness around her father’s wrongful conviction. Last year, during a press conference, she said, “…my father has spent his life missing many milestones because Minneapolis police Department deemed him as a threat, as a thug, as a gangster.”

During the press conference on August 12, Bri’ana thanked the legal workers for acknowledging what her family had been saying all along: that Bryan Hooper Sr. is innocent.

“27 years of missed birthdays, missed milestones, holidays. 27 years of lost opportunity and time that we can’t get back,” said Bri’ana grievously.

She called for justice for her family and the community. She said there’s an opportunity to use her father’s story “to shed light on the other people who are sitting behind bars for crimes that they did not commit.”

Hennepin County’s CIU reports that they’ve received 165 applications for review since launching last fall. They’ve completed initial reviews of 116 cases, closed 48 applications and 54 are queued up for full investigation, including 14 which are in active investigation — Hooper’s case was one of the 14.

Director Markquart assured The Coalition to Free Mahdi Ali recently that the CIU would give Mahdi Ali’s case its “full attention.” Ali was convicted in Minneapolis under Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s Office. Bryan Hooper was also convicted under Freeman’s watch, along with thousands of other Black men in Hennepin County during his two tenures from 1991-1999 and 2007-2023.

Meanwhile, thousands of people in Minnesota prisons have applied to the statewide Conviction Review Unit to review cases of wrongful conviction or over-sentencing. Hundreds of applicants — people like Deaunteze Bobo, Jermaine Ferguson, Cornelius ‘Corn’ Jackson, Joseph Haywood, and Lincoln Caldwell — have their cases in the review stages.

The CRU has freed three people from their prison sentences since its inception in 2021. Because of CRU’s limited capacity and lengthy wait time, wrongful conviction applicants like Philip Vance question the unit’s motives, as their life dwindles away in prison while years go by.

Late in 2023, Marvin Haynes was exonerated and released from prison after serving 19 years of a life sentence for a 2004 murder in Minneapolis that he did not commit. Haynes was able to get Hennepin County to bypass the time limitations on filing Post-Conviction Relief forms — the same document that Hooper just filed — and a judge heard the new evidence in Haynes’ case and was able to exonerate him. Hooper is hoping for the same.

Earlier this year, the Department of Corrections Parole Board denied Hooper parole after a hearing was held.

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