ST. LOUIS — Lamar Johnson is a murderer no more.
He is neither a convict nor a felon. He is a free man. He is innocent.
There Johnson stood on Tuesday in the third-floor courtroom of Circuit Court Judge David Mason, with a smile beaming from ear to ear, tears streaming from his eyes, hugging his attorney Lindsay Runnels, the weight of nearly three decades in prison shed from his body like heavy armor he no longer needs. He was in the same judicial district where in 1995, after presented a case based on bad evidence by a prosecutor who took shortcuts and a police detective who rushed toward the conclusion he wanted, a jury sent him away for the rest of his life.
