ST. LOUIS — A Missouri prosecutor filed a motion Wednesday to vacate the conviction of a man imprisoned for more than 30 years for fatally shooting a 15-year-old boy, the second time in two weeks that a St. Louis has challenged a long-standing murder conviction.
Christopher Dunn, now 52, is serving life without parole for the 1990 murder of Ricco Rogers. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore said in a news release that the case against Dunn rested on testimony from a 12-year-old boy and another 14 year old boy. , both of which later recanted.
“The eyewitness recantations alone are sufficient to show clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence in this case,” Gore said. “Justice demands that Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction be vacated.”
A message was left Wednesday with Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office.
On Jan. 26, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell filed a motion to vacate the murder conviction of Marcellus Williams, 55, who narrowly escaped execution seven years ago for the fatal stabbing of Lisha Gayle in 1998. Bell’s motion said three experts determined that Williams was “excluded as the source of the male DNA on the handle of the murder weapon.”
The Innocence Project has worked on behalf of both prisoners in Missouri.
“We are grateful to the District Attorney for his commitment to pursuing justice in Chris’ case and look forward to presenting evidence of his innocence to the Court,” the Innocence Project and attorney Justin Bonus said in a statement.
In May, then-St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed a motion to overturn Dunn’s sentence. But Gardner resigned days later, and after his appointment by Governor Mike Parson, Gore wanted his office to conduct its own investigation.
Dunn, who is black, was 18 when Rogers was killed. Some of the key evidence used to convict him included testimony from two boys who were at the scene of the shooting. Both later recanted, saying they had been coerced by police and prosecutors.
A judge has previously heard Dunn’s innocence case. At a 2020 hearing, 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 — and not those like Dunn who are sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — have a “freestanding ‘ could make a claim of actual innocence.
A 2021 law allows prosecutors to seek trial dates in cases with new evidence of a wrongful conviction. The prosecutor’s request triggers a hearing before a judge, who will decide whether the conviction should be overturned and whether the prisoner should be released. The hearing dates for Dunn and Williams have not yet been set.
If Dunn is released, he will receive no compensation from the state. Missouri law pays exonerated individuals $100 per day of wrongful incarceration, but only to those exonerated by DNA evidence. The annual payment limit is $36,500.
The law led to the release of two men.
In 2021, Kevin Strickland was released after spending more than 40 years behind bars for three murders in Kansas City, after a judge ruled he was wrongly convicted in 1979.
Last February, a St. Louis judge overturned the conviction of Lamar Johnson, who spent nearly 28 years in prison for a murder he always said he didn’t commit. At a hearing in December 2022, another man testified that it was he – not Johnson – who joined a second man in the killing. A witness testified that police “bullied” him into implicating Johnson. And Johnson’s then-girlfriend had testified that they were together that night.