Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty says she is filing a petition to vacate the murder conviction of Bryan Hooper Sr., who in 1998 was found guilty of killing 77-year-old Ann Prazniak in her Minneapolis apartment.

Bryan Hooper Sr. was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and handed three concurrent life sentences. He petitioned six times to have his conviction vacated after multiple witness recanted their trial testimony. The state Supreme Court however upheld the conviction, arguing that he had filed the request years too late.

Moriarty said Tuesday that the state's star witness had come forward on July 29 not only to renounce her testimony but to confess to killing Prazniak and hiding her body. The woman, who was 23 years old at the time, is serving a sentence for aggravated battery at a Georgia prison.

"These recorded confessions from someone with nothing to gain and a great deal to lose are extraordinarily compelling and make it impossible for us to stand behind the conviction of Bryan Hooper," Moriary said. 

While prosecutors did not name her, the key witness in the trial was Chalaka Lewis. At the time, her testimony was controversial as her fingerprints were found at the crime scene and she testified in exchange for a plea deal for burglary. She has not been charged in the Prazniak murder.

"This is a really frustrating case, especially for the family. When you think about the fact that he was convicted 27 years ago," said James Mayer, attorney for Bryan Hooper and Legal Director for Great North Innocence Project. "We now know that he was innocent but he made six efforts to challenge those convictions in court over those years and he was denied each and every time."  

In April of 1998 police found Prazniak's body in a box in her bedroom closet at 1818 Park Avenue. Her wrists, face and head were bound with packing tape and the box was wrapped with a string of Christmas lights.

Neighbors told police that they had seen a woman at Prazinak's apartment around the time of the murder. The woman told police the names of several others, including Bryan Hooper Sr., who had also been at Prazniak's apartment at the time. 

According to a Supreme Court filing, Bryan Hooper Sr. told police he had smoked crack cocaine in Prazniak's apartment but denied being involved in the murder. Police found his fingerprints on two sandwich bags and a beer can in Prazniak's living room. Police also found Lewis' fingerprints on packing tape found in Prazniak's apartment.

During Bryan Hooper Sr.'s trial, four witnesses testified that he confessed to the murder. One of the witnesses falsely implicated him in another murder and gave multiple inconsistent accounts of Bryan Hooper Sr.'s confession, Supreme Court documents say. 

Prosecutors used jailhouse confessions, and Lewis was one of eight people charged and given a plea deal for burglarizing Prazniak's home for her testimony.

The jury ultimately found Bryan Hooper Sr. guilty.

Since the conviction, Bryan Hooper Sr. appealed to the state Supreme Court and said the four witnesses had recanted their testimony. In a 2015 appeal, one of the witnesses stated she had lied about Bryan Hooper Sr.'s confession in the hope of receiving reward money. 

"I'm sorry on behalf of our office," Moriarty told Bryan Hooper Sr.'s daughter Briana Hooper at a press conference on Tuesday. "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."

Bryan Hooper Sr.'s case must next be assigned a judge, who will have 90 days to determine whether to exonerate him. Moriarty said her office would wait until the judge's decision to decide whether to file new murder charges.

"My father Bryan Hooper Sr. is an innocent man and he's always been an innocent man," Briana Hooper said. "Twenty-seven years of missed birthdays, missed milestones, holidays. Twenty-seven years of lost opportunity and time that we can't get back."

Bryan Hooper Sr.'s case is one of 175 that the Hennepin County Attorney's Office's Conviction Integrity Unit has received since it launched in July of last year. Moriarty's office says 116 of those cases have been reviewed, 68 of which will move forward to an investigative stage. Bryan Hooper Sr.'s case is one of 14 full investigations that have been launched.