St. Louis prosecutor seeks to free man imprisoned 33 years for murder, citing evidence of innocence
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St. Louis' top prosecutor has asked a court to set aside the conviction of a man who has spent 33 years in prison for a killing he says he didn't commit, after witnesses who testified against him later said authorities had pressured them to lie. In her request to overturn Christopher Dunn's first-degree murder conviction, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner cited “clear and convincing evidence” that he had not been involved in the 1990 shooting death of Ricco Rogers. “We are hopeful his wrongful conviction is set aside for the sake of Mr. Dunn, his family, and the people of the City of St. Louis,” Gardner said in a statement Monday.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis' top prosecutor has asked a court to set aside the conviction of a man who has spent 33 years in prison for a killing he says he didn't commit, after witnesses who testified against him later said authorities had pressured them to lie.
In her request to overturn Christopher Dunn's first-degree murder conviction, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner cited “clear and convincing evidence” that he had not been involved in the 1990 shooting death of Ricco Rogers.
“We are hopeful his wrongful conviction is set aside for the sake of Mr. Dunn, his family, and the people of the City of St. Louis,” Gardner said in a statement Monday.
Gardner filed a motion with St. Louis Circuit Court on Friday to vacate Dunn's conviction. It wasn't immediately clear if the state attorney general's office would oppose the motion. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Andrew Bailey didn't immediately respond to a Monday request for comment.
Dunn, 51, who is Black, was 18 when Rogers was killed. Among the key evidence used to convict him 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.
A judge has heard Dunn's innocence case before. At an evidentiary hearing in 2020, Judge William Hickle agreed that a jury would likely find Dunn not guilty based on new evidence. But 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.
Dunn's attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project say he should be the third.
“We are confident that when faced with such evidence, any Court will find, as Judge Hickle did nearly three years ago, that Christopher Dunn is innocent,” the group said in the news release.
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