Stillwater, MN — Bryan Hooper Sr. walked out of a Minnesota prison on Sept. 4 after 9,999 days of captivity for a murder he was wrongfully convicted of. Three weeks after the confession of the state’s key witness, Hooper appeared remotely in front of Judge Marta Chou with his legal team. Two days later, he was released from prison and hugging his children with his charges dismissed.
On Monday, Hooper Sr. addressed the public during a press conference. He thanked all of the legal support he received and stated “I can’t begin to explain what it felt like to be sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit. But I knew one thing, that I was never gonna stop fighting for my freedom. And I took that time that I was given and I taught myself a plethora of subjects. I used to tell my mom, ‘mom, I’m just away in college right now.’ I’m trying to be a wizard at everything. But, I’m just happy to be home.”
After 27 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Call For Bryan Hooper’s Murder Conviction to be Vacated
Hooper shared a heartfelt statement addressed to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty: “Mary, it is my sincere hopes that whoever succeeds you, have the will and the courage to see the truth when the truth is there and resolve these injustices. Thank you.” Moriarty had apologized to Hooper earlier in the press conference.
When asked if Hooper was mad after losing 27 years of his life to a wrongful conviction, he said there was “a lot of anger” but that he used it “for something good, not something bad.” Hooper said he took out his anger on books.
While in a Georgia state prison in late July this year, Chalaka Young confessed to the vicious 1998 Minneapolis murder of Ann Prazniak, 77. Young, then named Chalaka Lewis, was the state’s key trial witness in the conviction of Hooper, who had maintained his innocence the whole time.
Hooper was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison despite no physical evidence tying him to the crime. His conviction was based solely on incentivized jailhouse informants — even Chalaka was given a plea deal for a lesser burglary charge for the deadly incident at Prazniak’s apartment, in exchange for lying to say Hooper was the killer.
Despite many other witnesses recanting over the years, the courts denied every appeal that Hooper attempted — he previously filed five Post-Conviction Relief Petitions. Hooper was also denied parole earlier this year. In Minnesota, prisoners can be given supervised release after serving 30 years of a life sentence.
After Young’s new confession, the Great North Innocence Project and Hooper’s legal team worked together to submit his sixth Post-Conviction Relief Petition. After filing, Moriarty waived the two-year statute of limitations, the Knaffla bar and the statutory bar under Minn. Stat. § 590.01, all of which have been previous barriers for recent petitions by Hooper and others.
Judge Marta Chou was assigned the case after Hooper’s legal team removed Judge Paul Scoggins, and Chou held a hearing on Sept. 2. The next afternoon, Judge Chou issued a court order to release Hooper from prison and vacated his murder conviction — Hooper was released on Sept. 4 from MCF-Stillwater. In the ruling, Judge Chou listed the facts of the case, from the trial to the filed petitions to the confession and hearing. Read the order granting Hooper’s Petition for Post-Conviction Relief (pdf).
Hooper’s case is not a one-off. He’s one of what could be hundreds, if not thousands, of wrongfully convicted innocent people locked away in Minnesota’s prison system.
From the 1990s into the 2010s, Mike Freeman and Amy Klobuchar reigned over the county attorney position. Michelle Gross of Communities United Against Police Brutality said during that time the county basically created a “street to prison pipeline like a conveyor belt of Black men just being sent to the prison system. And it was almost as if it didn’t matter whether you were innocent… it wouldn’t matter what kind of defense you tried to mount or anything. You weren’t going to be able to get yourself out of that because they were going to put somebody away for those different crimes because they needed to sort of calm down the white populace.”
In 2021, the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit (CRU) started accepting applications to review wrongful convictions. They received over 1,150 applications with at least 203 cases with verifiable reasons to believe the applicants are innocent. The CRU has completed five investigations since its inception, according to the latest public data.
Four years later, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty created the Hennepin County Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) to review wrongful convictions in Hennepin County — Minnesota’s most populated county with about 1.3 million people.
The CIU has received 173 applications according to the latest numbers released by the county. The CIU has completed a review of 118 cases, closed 49, have 55 queued up for a full investigation and are currently investigating 13 others — Hooper’s was in full investigation mode.
Hooper is the fifth person freed from a life sentence after being wrongfully convicted in the last five years in Minnesota: Myon Burrell (commutation); Thomas Rhodes (conviction vacated); Marvin Haynes (exonerated); and Edgar Barrientos-Quintana (exonerated).
A fundraiser has been started to help Hooper get on his feet.
Hooper’s daughter, Bri’ana, fought consistently to free her father. “My father has spent his life missing many milestones because Minneapolis Police Department deemed him as a threat, as a thug, as a gangster,” she said during a press conference last year.
Hooper wrote a letter to Unicorn Riot last year requesting support exposing his “wrongful conviction.”
Read Hooper’s Petition for Post-Conviction Relief [Aug. 12, 2025].
Read the state’s answer to Hooper’s filed Post-Conviction Relief Petition [Aug. 12, 2025] in which Moriarty notes, “Mr. Hooper has been incarcerated for 9,976 days for a crime that the evidence shows he did not commit. The State of Minnesota has no interest in adding a single day to that sordid tally.”
Cover image via Great North Innocence Project.
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