After spending 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, Bryan Hooper Sr. is finally free. The Minneapolis man was released from Minnesota’s Stillwater Correctional Facility on Thursday after a key witness confessed to the 1998 killing of 77-year-old Ann Prazniak.

Hooper’s attorney, Jim Mayer of the Great North Innocence Project (GNIP), said the confession was a turning point. Chalaka Young, the state’s key trial witness, admitted in July that she alone committed the murder and had falsely implicated Hooper.

“Today, the courts have affirmed what Bryan Hooper, his family, his loved ones, and his advocates have always known: Mr. Hooper is an innocent man,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty shared in a statement. “It is our duty as prosecutors to hold the correct individuals responsible for their actions, and that duty demands that we acknowledge our mistakes and make things right as quickly as we can.”

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office confirmed Hooper’s innocence, saying in a press release that the witness not only recanted her trial testimony but also “confessed to killing Ms. Prazniak and concealing her body.” A judge subsequently vacated Hooper’s conviction, officially clearing his name. 

The original case against Hooper rested largely on Young’s testimony and claims from jailhouse informants who later recanted, according to CNN. Mayer said that police pressured Young after finding her fingerprints on tape used to bind the victim. “She ends up telling them a story about how this man, Bryan Hooper, as it turns out, forced her to serve as his lookout while he committed the crime,” Mayer said. That testimony, along with statements from the informants, led to Hooper’s conviction and life sentence in 1998. 

For decades, Hooper pursued post-conviction relief, but courts repeatedly rejected his appeals. That changed on July 19 when Young, currently incarcerated in Georgia, signed a handwritten statement admitting responsibility for the murder. She told investigators she “falsely accused Bryan Hooper in order to draw attention away from her own guilt,” according to GNIP.

"I have never seen a more powerful and compelling recantation/confession like this one. If you listen to those recordings, you can hear the anguish in this woman's voice about the enormity of the harm that she has caused the Hooper family, and she really feels it. It's pretty striking," Mayer told ABC News.

On Sept. 3, a judge vacated Hooper’s conviction, and the next day he walked free and reunited with his family, including his four children. “We are relieved that Mr. Hooper can finally return home to his family after 27 years, and I want to again apologize to him and his family for our office’s role in that injustice. We wish Mr. Hooper all the best as he begins to navigate a world that is barely recognizable from the world he knew in 1998," Moriarty said.