Maya Moore paused WNBA career to help overturn conviction

A judge in Missouri on Monday overturned the conviction of Jonathan Irons, whose appeal of a 50-year sentence for burglary and assault had been backed by basketball star Maya Moore.

Moore, who graduated from Collins Hills High School before a decorated career at Connecticut and the WNBA, announced last year that she was putting her professional career on hold in large part to help Irons.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled that prosecutors had suppressed evidence in the case against Irons, who was tried and convicted as an adult at the age of 16 in 1997, and spent 23 years in prison. He was convicted of breaking into a home outside St. Louis and shooting the homeowner hiding in a closet. Green called the prosecution’s case “very weak and circumstantial at best” with no physical evidence linking Irons to the crime and eyewitness testimony that was “dotted with inconsistencies.”

Moore, a five-time all-star with the Minnesota Lynx, met Irons in 2007 during a visit to the Jefferson City Correctional Facility. Moore posted her reaction to the vacated guilty verdict on social media that read in part: “Let Justice Roll like a River today.”

Moore was in the courtroom when the decision was announced.

“It felt so surreal,” she said in an interview with the New York Times. “We finally have justice. I was just thinking, ‘Did this really happen? Did it?’ ”

The Missouri Attorney General’s office and the St. Charles County prosecutor’s office can appeal or retry the case. The Missouri Attorney General’s office declined to comment.

In a phone interview with the New York Times, the 40-year-old Irons said, “It feels like I can just breathe, like the weight of the world is off of me, like I have the chance to live.

“She saved my life. I would not have this chance if not for her and her wonderful family. She saved my life and I cannot say it better than that.”