Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey has, for the second time in two months, refused to release a defendant whose murder conviction was overturned, NBC News reports.
Christopher Dunn was sentenced to life without parole in 1991 for killing 15-year-olds in May 1990. Dunn, who was 18 at the time of his arrest and has always maintained his innocence, was convicted mainly on the testimony of two teenage witnesses who, according to NBC, later recanted their testimony and said they had been coerced by prosecutors. There was no physical evidence linking Dunn to the crime, and his mother and sister testified he was home with them at the time of the killing, watching television.
A St. Louis Circuit Court judge overturned Dunn’s conviction earlier this week after Dunn’s attorney filed a motion to vacate his guilty verdict in February. The Midwest Innocence Project reports that Judge Jason Sengheiser found that Dunn’s lawyer “made a clear and convincing showing of ‘actual innocence’ that undermines the basis for Dunn’s convictions,” and ordered the state to “immediately discharge Christopher Dunn from its custody,” according to NPR.
But instead of releasing Dunn at 6 p.m. Wednesday as ordered by the court, AG Bailey filed an emergency motion for a stay, which the state Supreme Court sustained. According to NBC, the judge now has until 5 p.m. Friday to file arguments opposing the stay, and Bailey has until 5 p.m. Monday to reply.
What’s even more baffling is that just last month, Bailey fought to keep another innocent person whose conviction was overturned from being released. Sandra Hemme, who was convicted of killing Patricia Jeschke in 1980, had her conviction overturned last month, also on evidence of “actual innocence,” according to KCUR, and Bailey appealed that ruling, and even after losing, prohibited the prison from releasing her.
Only after the judge who ordered Hemme’s release threatened Bailey with contempt of court did he allow her release, KCUR reports. Hemme, now 64, spent 43 years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit,
Instead of apologizing to two innocent people who, between them, spent 76 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit and releasing them as quickly as possible in contrition, an obsessed attorney general seeks to continue to subject them to the decades of injustice they’ve already suffered, like a modern-day Javert.
