A Wrongful Conviction, Nearly Two Decades Lost
Myon Burrell was 16 years old when he was arrested for the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards, an innocent bystander killed by a stray bullet in a Minneapolis gang shooting on November 22, 2002. He spent more than 18 years in prison before Minnesota's Board of Pardons commuted his sentence on December 15, 2020, and he was released the same day. From his first interrogation to today, Burrell has never wavered: he says he was not the shooter, and was nowhere near the scene when Tyesha was killed.
How He Was Arrested
Within hours of the shooting, a jailed gang leader named Isaac Hodge, hoping to trade information for leniency on his own federal charges, called police and claimed the shooter was "16-year-old Myon Burrell," a claim later recanted by the man Hodge said had named Burrell. Police then pressured actual suspect Isaiah Tyson, who initially claimed Burrell had been with him, not because it was true, but because he mistakenly believed it would serve as an alibi. A codefendant's girlfriend, meanwhile, told a 911 dispatcher and later a grand jury that it was Tyson, not Burrell, who admitted to firing the shots.
Burrell was interrogated for nearly three hours. He asked for his mother 13 times and was denied. He repeatedly told investigators to check surveillance video from Cup Foods, a nearby store where he said he'd been at the time of the shooting, footage police apparently never retrieved.
Two Trials, One Shaky Eyewitness
2003 trial: Burrell was convicted based largely on the testimony of Timothy Oliver, the intended target of the shooting and the only eyewitness who identified Burrell — testimony the Minnesota Supreme Court later called facially implausible, since Oliver claimed to have walked unarmed toward the shooter immediately after being fired on nine times. The Minnesota Supreme Court overturned Myon Burrell's original conviction in 2005, ruling that he had been denied a fair trial due to multiple prejudicial legal errors, including an invalid Miranda waiver, the improper admission of his interrogation video, and other evidentiary and discovery errors. The court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial.
2008 retrial: By the second trial, Oliver had been murdered, so his original testimony was simply read into the record, never subject to updated cross examination. In his place, the state built its case on six jailhouse informants, several tied to the same gang as the original tipster, Isaac Hodge, testifying in exchange for reduced federal sentences. Meanwhile, Burrell's actual codefendants, Tyson and Williams, were finally allowed to testify, and both stated under oath that Burrell had nothing to do with the shooting, with Tyson admitting he personally fired the fatal shots. Their plea deals had been structured, unusually, to prohibit them from testifying on Burrell's behalf, a condition the Minnesota Supreme Court itself found irregular. Burrell was convicted again and eventually resentenced to life in prison.
The Evidence That Emerged After Trial
Over the following years, a body of new evidence accumulated pointing toward Burrell's innocence:
- Recanted informant testimony: Two jailhouse informants who testified against Burrell, Terry Arrington and Dameon Leake, later signed sworn affidavits admitting they fabricated their testimony, including a supposed confession from Burrell, in exchange for reduced sentences.
- A recanted eyewitness identification: A friend of the late Timothy Oliver signed an affidavit stating that Oliver had privately admitted the real shooter was Tyson, and that he'd only named Burrell because Isaac Hodge pressured him to.
- Three new alibi witnesses: Three women independently came forward describing seeing and speaking with Burrell outside Cup Foods at the exact time of the shooting, corroborating his own account from the night of his arrest.
- Newly discovered jail-call recordings: A box of CDs containing recorded jail calls surfaced years later, in which Tyson is heard telling a friend, within days of the murder, that Burrell "wasn't even there." These recordings were apparently in the possession of Burrell's first trial attorney but were never introduced as evidence in either trial.
- A damning police video: Footage surfaced showing a Minneapolis police detective offering a witness cash in exchange for statements incriminating Burrell.
The Independent Panel
In 2020, following calls for review — including from then-Senator Amy Klobuchar, who had been Hennepin County Attorney at the time of Burrell's first trial — an independent panel of six legal experts conducted a months-long investigation into the case. Their 57-page report, issued December 8, 2020, raised serious concerns about the credibility of the jailhouse informants, the reliability of Oliver's identification, and the overall thoroughness of the original investigation. The panel concluded that continued incarceration served no legitimate purpose.
One week later, Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, sitting as the Board of Pardons, voted to commute Burrell's sentence to time served. He walked out of prison that day.
The Fight for Exoneration Continues
Release was not exoneration. Burrell's legal team subsequently filed a formal post-conviction petition under Minnesota law, arguing that:
- Newly discovered evidence — the new alibi witnesses, the recanting informants, and the friend who says Oliver privately recanted — meets the legal standard required to overturn a conviction because, taken together, it would likely have produced an acquittal.
- Ineffective assistance of counsel — his original trial attorney apparently failed to preserve and pass along exculpatory jail-call recordings that could have corroborated Tyson's account that Burrell was never present.
- The interests of justice — given the weight of new evidence, the case should be heard on its merits regardless of ordinary filing deadlines.
The petition also noted that Burrell's case had been accepted for review by the Minnesota Attorney General's Conviction Review Unit, a newly formed office established to examine claims of wrongful conviction.
Why It Matters
Myon Burrell's case has become a symbol of what can go wrong in the criminal justice system: a juvenile interrogated without his mother present, an unreliable eyewitness whose account went largely unchallenged, jailhouse informants incentivized to lie, and exculpatory evidence that sat unheard for nearly two decades. Whatever the ultimate legal outcome, the volume of evidence now supporting his innocence — three independent alibi witnesses, two recanting informants, a recanting friend of the sole eyewitness, and his own codefendants' sworn testimony — has raised profound questions about whether Myon Burrell should have spent a single day in prison for a crime he has always said he did not commit.