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ST. LOUIS — Lamar Johnson walked out of the downtown courthouse Tuesday afternoon, a free man for the first time in decades.

Just hours earlier, a St. Louis Circuit judge vacated Johnson’s murder conviction, ruling he was wrongly imprisoned nearly 30 years ago and that there is clear and convincing evidence of his innocence.

The ruling by 22nd Circuit Court Judge David Mason comes roughly two months after a weeklong hearing in December during which another man confessed to the 1994 killing of Marcus Boyd — the crime that sent Johnson to prison with a life sentence.

Cheers erupted in the courtroom as Mason read his decision.

“These cases are not easy, and they shouldn’t be,� said Mason.

After the ruling, Johnson’s mother, Mae Johnson, sat inside the downtown courthouse lobby, waiting for her son to be released and saying she was patient and had never lost faith. Standing nearby was Erika Barrow, his former girlfriend and the mother of his daughter.

“I’ve been waiting — we’ve all been waiting for this day for so long,� said Barrow. She ran over to greet Johnson as the elevator doors opened and he stepped out.

Johnson paused in the lobby, thanked his supporters and when asked if he thought this day would ever come, he smiled and shook his head.

Opposing Johnson’s bid to overturn his conviction were prosecutors from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, who claimed in their final arguments after the hearing in December that none of the new evidence was credible.

After the ruling Tuesday, the office released a statement: “The court has spoken, and no further action will be taken in this case.�

The ruling ends Johnson’s decadeslong fight to prove his innocence. After years of being turned down on appeals and habeas corpus petitions, Johnson’s case attracted national attention in 2019 when Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s Conviction Integrity Unit reported misconduct by the investigation’s lead detective and other constitutional errors in the 1995 trial.

The case inspired a state law that provides prosecutors with a legal avenue to appeal cases in which they believe defendants were wrongfully convicted.

“I hope more innocent men and women who are wrongfully imprisoned will win back their freedom through this law,� said bill co-sponsor State Sen. Brian Williams, D-University City, in a statement. “We cannot change the past, but we have an obligation to fix what we can where we can.�

Much of Mason’s decision centered on the main witness in Johnson’s 1995 trial, Greg Elking, who said at the December hearing that police coerced his original identification of Johnson as the man who wore a ski mask and shot Boyd. Mason described that identification as “suspect at best.�

�All Elking witnessed was the assailant’s eye, giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘eye witness,’� Mason said, describing it as “yet another serious weakness in the case against Johnson.�

Without Elking’s identification, there was no case, according to the December testimony of former assistant circuit attorney Dwight Warren and former detective Joe Nickerson.

Johnson was represented by attorneys from the Midwest Innocence Project along with attorneys from the Circuit Attorney’s Office.

�This case says that in the state of Missouri, a person’s right to justice and liberty is valued more than the finality of an unjust conviction,� said Gardner.

�I would love for Mr. Lamar Johnson to spend time with his family and to live life.�

Inside the courthouse lobby Tuesday afternoon Johnson’s daughter, Kiera Barrow, 28, waited next to her mother. Her dad is coming home just in time for her wedding in a few months, she said, but they’ve already started their to-do list.

"Skydiving. He really wants to go skydiving,� Keira Barrow said. “It wasn’t on my list, but if that’s what he wants to do, then we’re doing it.�