51ºÚÁÏ

ST. LOUIS — Joe Amrine belongs to an exclusive club.

He is among a handful of men in Missouri — and — who were convicted of a crime, sentenced to prison and later exonerated.

Amrine, 66, is a free man these days. On Monday afternoon, he walked into the courtroom of Circuit Court Judge David Mason to root for another man, Lamar Johnson, who is trying to join the club.

“We’re a class of people now,� Amrine told me during a break in Johnson’s hearing. “It’s sad.�

Indeed, it’s an indictment of the American justice system that so many people — many of them Black men like Amrine — have been wrongfully convicted on bad evidence, police shortcuts or prosecutorial misconduct. But the people in Amrine’s club who were present Monday to root for Johnson is also evidence that the system, when pressed, can correct its wrongs.

There is a direct connection between Amrine’s case and Johnson’s, and not just because they briefly served time in the same Potosi prison. In 1985, Amrine was accused, and later convicted, of killing a fellow inmate in the Jefferson City Correctional Center. He was sentenced to death. Eventually, all three major witnesses recanted their testimony.

Amrine feels a connection to Johnson’s case. He’s been out of prison for 20 years but watching a friend “fight for his life� rekindled the spirit that helped him gain his freedom.

So it is also for Kenneth Nixon. Last year, he walked out of prison in Michigan after serving 16 years for a murder the prosecutor now says Nixon didn’t commit.

Nixon, 36, wears a black hoodie with lettering on the back listing the time he served in prison. So do his friends, Eric Anderson (9 years) and Marvin Cotton Jr., (19 years, 7 months, 12 days). The three men, who were all freed because of the work of the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit, flew to 51ºÚÁÏ from Detroit to be at Johnson’s trial.

“When there is an innocent person in a case, it doesn’t matter how long we have to drive to get there,� Nixon said. “It’s a little disheartening that (Lamar) has to go through this process, to continue to have to prove his innocence over and over again.�

That’s what attorneys Charlie Weiss and Jonathan Potts argued on Monday. “This is a rather historic moment in this court,� Weiss said in his opening argument.

The two attorneys with the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner firm have vast experience in innocence cases. Here, they are working as specially appointed prosecutors of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who first started trying to free Johnson in 2019. That’s when her Conviction Integrity Unit, following work first done by the Midwest Innocence Project, determined Johnson was innocent. Johnson was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder in the death of Marcus Boyd.

That attempt was blocked because unlike Michigan and California, and other states that were early adopters of conviction integrity units, Missouri didn’t have a law allowing a prosecutor to undo a past wrong. The Missouri Legislature changed that in 2021, and the statute has already been used once, in Kansas City, to free an innocent man, Kevin Strickland.

Nixon and his fellow exonerees were also there to support Strickland in his hearing. They hope that people reading about Strickland and Johnson and other innocence cases come to realize that not everybody who is sent to prison is guilty.

“We are living, breathing proof that the system can get it wrong,� Cotton said.

Most of the evidence presented by Weiss and Potts so far in Johnson’s hearing is the same as what Gardner tried unsuccessfully to present in 2019. But this time, they’re before a judge. And while the office of Attorney General Eric Schmitt is opposing Johnson’s release, it’s already clear that Mason, the judge, sees some problems with the conviction.

The principal eyewitness in Johnson’s 1995 conviction, James G. Elking, told the judge on Monday that he never could pick Johnson out of a lineup.

“I don’t get how that got by the court,� Mason said. “Who were the prosecutors?�

Therein lies the difficulty of innocence cases. Men who were involved in drugs, gang activity and other crimes are put away with the help of jailhouse snitches and questionable evidence. And it’s no easy process to get the court system to examine itself from within, to ask the types of difficult questions that Mason will have to ask before he decides this case.

How did this happen to Lamar Johnson? Or Joe Amrine, or Kenneth Nixon, Eric Anderson and Marvin Cotton Jr.?

It happens because sometimes, in a rush for justice, mistakes are made by police, prosecutors, judges and, yes, even witnesses.

“This is the part I hate the most,â€� Elking told Mason on Monday. Then he described a conversation he had with former 51ºÚÁÏ police detective Joe Nickerson after he couldn’t pick out anybody in the lineup.

In an elevator, after the detective put pressure on, Elking said he made an offer to Nickerson: “You tell me the numbers (in the lineup) and I’ll tell you if you’re right. … And he did.�

Nickerson has denied the claim. But on Monday, Elking, sitting a few feet from Johnson, told the court he is seeking his redemption for his role in an injustice nearly 30 years in the making.

“I’ve been living with this,� he said. “I wish I could change time.�

• Coverage from the first day of the hearing: Star witness in Lamar Johnson trial testifies police told him who to ID in murder

• Lamar Johnson’s wrongful conviction case goes before a 51ºÚÁÏ judge this week