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A woman incarcerated in Georgia has confessed to a 27-year-old murder in Minneapolis. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Tuesday that it’s long past time for the man who’s spent half his life in prison for the crime to be released.

In 1998, a judge sentenced Bryan Hooper Sr., now 54, to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the killing of Ann Prazniak. But in a handwritten confession and multiple interviews with law enforcement and prosecutors, Chalaka Young admitted killing Prazniak and lying on the witness stand during Hooper’s trial. 

At a Tuesday news conference, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said that her office’s Conviction Integrity Unit had already been reviewing Hooper’s case when they got word of Young’s admission.

“On July 29, we learned that the state’s star trial witness had come forward on her own to not only recant her testimony against Mr. Hooper but to confess that she was responsible for killing Ms. Prazniak and concealing her body.” 

Moriarty said that four other witnesses who also testified against Hooper also recanted their testimony at various times after the trial.  She said her office is supporting a petition to vacate Hooper’s conviction that attorney Jim Mayer with the Great North Innocence Project filed earlier Tuesday. 

On April 15, 1998, police found Prazniak’s body inside a cardboard box in the bedroom closet of her apartment on Park Avenue, south of downtown. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner estimated that Prazniak, 77, had been dead for at least two weeks and possibly as long as a month. 

In the time after Prazniak’s death, neighbors said that her apartment had been used as a drug and prostitution den with multiple people entering and exiting. Hooper admitted going inside the apartment, but through multiple appeals over nearly three decades, he maintained that he had no knowledge of or involvement in Prazniak’s killing.

According to court documents, Hooper’s fingerprints were found on two baggies and a beer can in the living room, but not on any objects with a direct link to the murder. 

At Hooper’s trial, Young, who was known then as Chalaka Lewis, testified that Hooper forced her to stand as a lookout while he killed Prazniak. She also told jurors that Hooper made her help him wrap up the body by tearing off and handing him strips of tape. 

Young, 50, cites her newfound Christian faith as the primary reason for confessing to Prazniak’s murder. In a seven-page handwritten statement dated July 19, she writes “I am not okay any longer with an innocent man sitting in prison for a crime he did not commit. God has opened up my eyes and here is the truth.”

Young also admits that she lied on the witness stand in 1998 and asks Hooper for his forgiveness. Young is about halfway through a 10-year prison sentence in Georgia for aggravated assault in an unrelated case.

According to Hooper’s petition, a prison official interviewed Young twice, and the Georgia Department of Corrections contacted Minneapolis police. Young repeated her confession in a telephone interview with MPD Sgt. Mark Suchta, and she spoke last week with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.  

Moriarty said Young’s confession is genuine. 

“She’ll be out in four years,” Moriarty said. “I will also say that she also expects to be charged with murder. She knows exactly what she’s getting into here, so she certainly has a lot to lose.” 

Moriarty hasn’t announced any new charges in the case. She said the immediate priority is getting Hooper out of prison. That decision is ultimately up to a Hennepin County judge, and the court has yet to set a timeline for reviewing the case. She added that Prazniak’s next of kin has passed away, and neither the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office nor the Minnesota Department of Corrections has been able to identify any other close family members.

Moriarty apologized to Hooper’s daughter Briana Hooper, who grew up without her father and stood by him over nearly 30 years of failed appeals.

“My father Bryan Hooper Sr. is an innocent man and he’s always been an innocent man,” Briana Hooper said. “We have an opportunity to use my father’s story to shed light on the other people who are sitting behind bars for crimes that they did not commit.” 

“We like to talk about how we want our prosecutors and our police to be tough on crime, said Jim Mayer, with the Great North Innocence Project. “But the thing that is the softest on crime is letting the actual guilty party free and keeping an innocent person behind bars.” 

Andrew Markquart, who leads the Conviction Integrity Unit that Moriarty 

, said Hooper’s case is among those for which the unit had started a full investigation.

“It’s a big deal for us to support an exoneration,” Markquart said. “It is not something we take lightly at all. So if we’re going to stand up here and endorse an exoneration, it’s only going to be after a very thorough investigation.

Markquart said that 175 people have requested case reviews. Of those, he said that the office has reviewed 116 cases, rejected 48, and slated 68 cases for full investigation. 

Moriarty announced the formation of the Conviction Review Unit following the release of 

, who was wrongfully convicted for the 2004 killing of Minneapolis flower shop owner Harry “Randy” Sherer. In November, Edgar Barrientos-Quintana 

 after a review by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office Conviction Review Unit found that he was not responsible for the 2008 murder of Jesse Mickelson, a teenager who was shot near Roosevelt High School .

Moriarty said that in the 2½ years she’s been in office, Hooper’s exoneration request was the third that she’s filed and likely will not be the last.

Correction (Sept. 4, 2025): An earlier version of this story misspelled Bryan Hooper’s name. The story has been updated.

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In 1998, a judge sentenced Bryan Hooper, now 54, to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the killing of Ann Prazniak. But in a handwritten confession and multiple interviews with authorities, Chalaka Young, 50, admitted killing Prazniak and lying on the witness stand in Hooper’s trial. 

Handwritten confession in 1998 murder speeds request to vacate man’s conviction

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Handwritten confession in 1998 murder speeds request to vacate man’s conviction

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