ST. LOUIS–After serving 27 years behind bars, Bobby Bostic is a free man. Bostic walked out of a state prison in Jefferson City to the sounds of cheers this morning after being granted parole in December 2021. 

What You Need To Know

  • Bobby Bostic walked out of a state prison this morning after serving 27 years of a 241 year sentence
  • He got parole after the ACLU and state legislators worked on a state statute providing a parole hearing for teens imprisoned essentially for life for crimes other than murder to get a parole board review after 15 years.

  • The judge that sentenced him later had a change of heart for the strict punishment

A crowd of family and friends greeted him outside the prison’s fence at the Algoa Correctional Facility. In a video posted on the ACLU of Missouri’s Twitter page, you can see one member of the crowd walk up and embrace Bostic, who mentions he is wearing a suit for the first time in years. 

Bostic was sentenced to 241 years in prison for a St. Louis-area robbery he committed as a teenager. He was granted parole years after the judge who sentenced him had a change of heart. 

Bostic was 16 in December 1995 when he and another teen robbed at gunpoint a group of people who were delivering Christmas presents to a needy family. Prosecutors said Bostic fired a shot that grazed one victim, and that he and the other teen then carjacked and robbed a woman before releasing her.

At the time, then-Circuit Judge Evelyn Baker believed Bostic could not be rehabilitated, sentencing him to 241 years on 18 counts, with convictions being served one-after-the-other, meaning he wouldn’t be up for parole until he was 112 years old. She said at the time that she intended for Bostic to “die in the Department of Corrections.”

Bostic and the ACLU were unsuccessful in attempts to petition the courts for a release based on a Supreme Court case stating it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile to life without the possibility of parole for non-homicide crimes.

In 2018, Baker, now retired, said she came to regret the sentence and called for it to be thrown out, saying it was grossly unfair. 

The ACLU worked with Missouri legislators and passed a state statute providing a parole hearing after 15 years for Bostic and approximately 100 others serving similar sentences.

This morning, State Senator-elect Nick Schroer, who has been a State Representative since 2016, tweeted “I see our hard work on common sense criminal justice reform paying off as Bobby Bostic will finally step foot outside prison walls as a free man today”.