ST. LOUIS, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court halted the immediate release Wednesday of a man whose murder conviction was overturned — just as the man was about to walk free.
A St. Louis Circuit Court judge had ordered Christopher Dunn, now 52, to be released by 6 p.m. CDT Wednesday and threatened the prison warden with contempt if Dunn remained imprisoned. But Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey has been fighting Dunn's release.
The situation was chaotic as the deadline set by the judge approached. Corrections Department spokesperson Karen Pojmann told The Associated Press that Dunn was out of the prison facility and waiting for a ride. His wife told the AP she was on his way to pick him up. Minutes later, Pojmann corrected herself and said that while Dunn was signing paperwork to be released, the Missouri Supreme Court issued a ruling that put his freedom on hold.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser overturned Dunn’s murder conviction Monday, citing evidence of “actual innocence” in the 1990 killing. He ordered Dunn's immediate release then, but Bailey appealed, and the state Department of Corrections declined to release Dunn.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore had filed a motion Wednesday urging the judge to immediately order Dunn’s freedom.
“The Attorney General cannot unilaterally decide to ignore this Court’s Order,” Gore wrote.
An attorney for the Department of Corrections told a lawyer in Gore's office that Bailey advised the agency not to release Dunn until the appeal plays out, according to a court filing. When told it was improper to ignore a court order, the Department of Corrections attorney “responded that the Attorney General's Office is legal counsel to the DOC and the DOC would be following the advice of counsel.”
Dunn’s attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, expressed her frustration.
“What is this bringing to taxpayers in Missouri? What is this use of our resources and our state’s time getting us?" she said. “All it’s doing is keeping innocent people in prison.”
Dunn’s wife said while driving to the prison that they were numb when he didn’t get out earlier this week.
“If you know a little about the story, you know we’ve had a lot of disappointments where we thought we’d finally get his freedom and it was snatched away," Kira Dunn said. “So we were just bracing ourselves.”
Dunn's situation is similar to what happened to Sandra Hemme.
The 64-year-old woman spent 43 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of a woman in St. Joseph in 1980. A judge on June 14 cited evidence of “actual innocence” and overturned her conviction. She had been the longest held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to the National Innocence Project, which worked to free Hemme.
Appeals by Bailey — all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court — kept Hemme imprisoned at the Chillicothe Correctional Center. During a court hearing Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman said that if Hemme wasn’t released within hours, Bailey himself would have to appear in court with contempt of court on the table. Hemme was released later that day.
The judge also scolded Bailey’s office for calling the warden and telling prison officials not to release Hemme after he ordered her to be freed on her own recognizance.
Dunn, who is Black, was 18 in 1990 when 15-year-old Ricco Rogers was killed. Among the key evidence used to convict him of first-degree murder was testimony from two boys who were at the scene of the shooting. Both later recanted their testimony, saying they had been coerced by police and prosecutors.
At an evidentiary hearing in 2020, another judge agreed that a jury would likely find Dunn not guilty based on new evidence. But that judge, William Hickle, declined to exonerate Dunn, citing a 2016 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that only death row inmates — not those like Dunn sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — could make a “freestanding” claim of actual innocence.
A 2021 law now allows prosecutors to seek court hearings in cases with new evidence of a wrongful conviction.
Although Bailey’s office is not required to oppose such efforts, lawyers for his office said at the hearing that initial testimony from two boys at the scene who identified Dunn as the shooter was correct, even though they recanted as adults.
He also raised opposition at a hearing for Lamar Johnson, who spent 28 years in prison for murder. Another St. Louis judge ruled in February 2023 that Johnson was wrongfully convicted, and he was freed.
Another hearing begins Aug. 21 for death row inmate Marcellus Williams. Bailey’s office is opposing the challenge to Williams’ conviction, too. Timing is of the essence: Williams is scheduled to be executed Sept. 24.
Steven Puro, professor emeritus of political science at St. Louis University, said Bailey is in a highly competitive race for the attorney general position with the primary quickly approaching on Aug. 6.
“Bailey is trying to show that he is, quote, ‘tough on crime,’ which is a very important Republican conservative position," he said. “Clearly, he’s angering members of the judicial system that he will have to argue before in the future. But he’s making the strategic notion that he needs to get his name before the voters and try to use that to win the primary election.”
Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court judge and chief justice, agreed, saying it seems this has become political for Bailey.
“But one of the things is that no matter what your beliefs are, if a court orders something to happen, it’s not your purview to say no," he said. "The court has to be obeyed.”
This story has been updated to correct the deadline that a court order says Dunn must be released from prison. It should have said 6 p.m. CDT instead of 6 p.m. EDT. This story has also been updated to correct that Dunn was represented by the Midwest Innocence Project, not the National Innocence Project.
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas; Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine contributed from Columbia, Missouri.
St. Louis prosecutor urges judge to take action freeing a man whose murder conviction was tossed
FILE - Christopher Dunn, right, listens to his attorney Justin Bonus from New York City during the first day of his hearing to decide whether to vacate his murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. A Missouri judge on Monday, July 24, 2024, overturned the conviction of Dunn, who has spent more than 30 years in prison for a killing he has long contended he didn’t commit. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool, File)
St. Louis prosecutor urges judge to take action freeing a man whose murder conviction was tossed
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak.
The vaccination drive was launched after health officials confirmed the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, in a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralyzed. The nine-day campaign by the U.N. health agency and partners aims to vaccinate 640,000 children, an ambitious effort during a war that has destroyed Gaza's health care system and much of its infrastructure. The third phase of vaccinations is in the north.
Israel, meanwhile, kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.
Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel's military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.
The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry says more than 94,000 people have been wounded.
Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A dayslong military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead. “They (Israeli forces) besieged the area and brought in bulldozers. As you see, they destroyed the whole area," said a resident, Mahmoud Al Razi.
On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reported shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who also holds Turkish nationality, died after being shot in the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she had posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.
The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area.
Her family in a statement said that “given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate” and urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation. They called the recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.
Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed 13-year-old Bana Laboom in the village of Qaryout.
The Israeli military said an initial inquiry indicated that security forces had been deployed to disperse a riot involving Palestinian and Israeli civilians that “included mutual rock hurling.” Security forces fired shots in the air, it said.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out negotiations by issuing new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.
Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continue between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team that was fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The blaze was sparked by a previous Israeli strike, the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.
Israel's military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel in several barrages, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the area of Qabrikha in southern Lebanon.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Jeffery from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Mourners carry the body of Palestinian girl Bana Bakr, 13, into the family house during her funeral in the West Bank village of Qaryut, south of Nablus, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Bakr was killed by Israeli fire, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Mourners take the last look at the body of Palestinian girl Bana Bakr, 13, at the family house during her funeral in the West Bank village of Qaryut, south of Nablus, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Bakr was killed by Israeli fire, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinian Barakat Jabr, 15, displays a photo of his sister Bana Bakr, 13, on his mobile phone in her bedroom at the family house, as he waits for her funeral, in the West Bank village of Qaryut, south of Nablus, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Bakr was killed by Israeli fire the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinians gather around the body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers while participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank, at the morgue of the Rafedia hospital, in the West Bank city of Nablus Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo)
Palestinians look at the body of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at the hospital morgue in Nablus, West Bank, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Ezgi Eygi, 26, died after being shot in the head on Friday, Palestinian doctors said. Witnesses to the shooting said the was fatally shot by Israeli forces in a moment of calm after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the northern West Bank. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Palestinians carry the body of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at the hospital morgue in Nablus, West Bank, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Ezgi Eygi, 26, died after being shot in the head on Friday, Palestinian doctors said. Witnesses to the shooting said the was fatally shot by Israeli forces in a moment of calm after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the northern West Bank. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Palestinian mourners gather around the covered bodies of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, and Bana Bakr, 13, at a morgue in Nablus, West Bank, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Witnesses said Eygi, was fatally shot by Israeli forces in a moment of calm after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces near Nablus on Friday. Bakr was also killed by Israeli fire the Palestinian health ministry said, while the Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident which happened during clashes between Palestinians and Israeli nationals in an area south of Nablus. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
