For the Second Time in Weeks, a Missouri Prison Has Ignored a Court Order to Free an Inmate Who Was Wrongly Convicted
ST. LOUIS — There has been a court order twice in the past two weeks for a Missouri prison to free a prisoner whose murder sentence was overturned. Christopher Dunn is locked up because of what the state’s attorney general did, just like they did with Sandra Hemme.
Judge Jason Sengheiser of the St. Louis Circuit Court threw out Dunn’s sentence for a killing in 1990 on Monday. Dunn is 52 years old and has been locked up for 33 years. He stayed at the state jail in Licking on Tuesday. The decision by Sengheiser says that the State of Missouri must release Christopher Dunn right away.
Even though Dunn’s conviction was overturned, he wasn’t freed yet because Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey appealed the judge’s decision. “We’re awaiting the outcome of that legal action,” a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections said in an email Tuesday.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore was confused by the decision to keep Dunn in jail. His office looked into his case and found that he had been wrongly convicted, which led to a hearing in May before Sengheiser.
Gore said at a news conference Tuesday, “We thought the judge’s order was very clear; it said he should be freed right away.” “Because of that, we are thinking about how to help Mr. Dunn and what legal options we have.” He wouldn’t say what legal choices were being thought about.
Bailey’s office didn’t answer texts on Tuesday asking for comment.
Hemme, 64, did 43 years in prison for stabbing to death a woman in St. Joseph in 1980, which is similar to what happened to Dunn. On June 14, a judge threw out her sentence based on proof of her “actual innocence.” It was known that she had been wrongfully jailed for the longest time in the U.S., according to the Midwest Innocence Project, which worked to free Hemme and Dunn.
Bailey, on the other hand, kept Hemme locked up at the Chillicothe Correctional Center by appealing all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court. Judge Ryan Horsman said at a court meeting on Friday that Bailey would have to go to court and be charged with contempt of court if Hemme wasn’t freed within hours. Later that day, she was set free.
The judge also scolded Bailey’s office for calling the Chillicothe warden and telling jail staff not to let Hemme go even though he had told them she could. It wasn’t clear if the attorney general’s office called jail officials at the same time at the prison where Dunn is being held.
Kera Dunn, Dunn’s wife, said they wouldn’t really celebrate until he gets out of jail.
The mother of Chris said at the news gathering, “We are so happy, but we don’t want to let out a real sigh of relief until he takes his first free steps and feels the ground under his feet.” “I think all of these feelings we’ve been holding in for a long time will finally come out when that happens.”
Dunn was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in 1990. In February, Gore asked the court to overturn the guilty decision.
Sennheiser decided after thinking about the case for almost two months. He said that there was “a clear and convincing showing of ‘actual innocence’ that undermines the basis for Dunn’s convictions because in light of new evidence, no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find Dunn guilty of these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.”
At the meeting, lawyers for Bailey’s office said that the first statements made by two boys at the scene who said Dunn was the shooter were true, even though the boys later changed their minds as adults.
A law passed in Missouri in 2021 lets lawyers ask for hearings when they find proof that a person was wrongfully convicted. This isn’t something Bailey’s office has to do, but he did it at a hearing for Lamar Johnson, who was sentenced to 28 years in jail for murder. A different judge in St. Louis said in February 2023 that Johnson had been wrongly convicted and set him free.
On August 21, Marcellus Williams, who is on death row, will have another hearing. Bailey’s office also doesn’t agree with the challenge to Williams’ verdict.
The hearing needs to happen right away. Williams is set to be put to death on September 24.
In January, Wesley Bell, the prosecutor for St. Louis County, asked that Williams’ sentence for stabbing Lisha Gayle to death in 1998 be overturned. Three experts said in Bell’s move that Williams’ DNA was not on the handle of the butcher knife that was used to kill him.
Williams came very close to being executed before. In 2017, Gov. Eric Greitens put an end to the case and set up a board of investigation to look into the claim of innocence. The board never made a decision, and last year, Gov. Mike Parson, who is also a Republican, got rid of it.
In June, the Missouri Supreme Court said that Parson had the power to get rid of the board and set the date for the execution in September.