ST. LOUIS, Mo. (news agencies) — The Missouri Supreme Court has blocked the immediate release 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 to be released by 6 p.m. CDT Wednesday and threatened the prison warden with contempt if Dunn remained imprisoned. But the attorney general has been fighting his release.
Corrections Department spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said Dunn was signing paperwork to be released when the Missouri Supreme Court issued a stay, blocking his freedom. His wife was en route to pick him up.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser’s decision to release Dunn came after he overturned Dunn’s murder conviction Monday, citing evidence of “actual innocence” in the 1990 killing. He ordered Dunn’s immediate release then, but Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey appealed, and the state Department of Corrections declined to release him.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore 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.
A court filing said 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. 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.”
On Wednesday, Sengheiser said the prison in Licking had until 6 p.m. CST to release Dunn, or he would hold an order for the warden to be held in contempt of court.
“Barring a new court order that supersedes the current court order, Mr. Dunn will be released before 6 p.m.,” Missouri Corrections Department spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email to media, later texting that she expected him to be released in about an hour.
“It shouldn’t be this hard,” said Dunn’s attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Projec
Dunn’s wife told the news agencies she couldn’t believe the news.
“I’m over the moon,” Kira Dunn said as she headed to the prison.
“We’re so grateful to the judge. We’re so grateful that he didn’t allow his ruling to be disrespected that way and he put his foot down and said, ‘You will respect the rule of law and you will respect a court order.’”
She said her husband looks forward to being freed after decades of longing to embrace his family for as long as he wants and having “a say in his own life.”
“He wants to just feel free ground against his feet. He wants to walk barefoot. He wants to open and close doors as he chooses. He wants to select the temperature of his shower. He wants to go out in the middle of the night and look at the stars and just sit there. And, he wants to sleep in a real bed,” she said.
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. Dunn was represented by the Midwest Innocence Project.
But 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. She was released later that day.
The judge also scolded Bailey’s office for calling the Chillicothe warden and telling prison officials not to release Hemme after he ordered her to be freed on her own recognizance.
Dunn was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1990 shooting of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers. Gore’s office examined the case and filed a motion in February seeking to vacate the guilty verdict.
