Judge hears wrongful conviction claim of Missouri inmate in prison for 33 years

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FILE - This undated photo provided by Kira Dunn shows Christopher Dunn. A hearing begins Tuesday, May 21, 2024, in St. Louis to determine if a murder conviction should be vacated for the Missouri inmate. Dunn has spent more than three decades in prison on a life-without-parole sentence for a 1990 killing, but St. Louis prosecutors now are convinced that he is innocent. (Kira Dunn via AP, File)

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Christopher Dunn, center, listens to Rachael Moore, special assistant with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, right, examine a witness on 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. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Martha Dunn, the mother of Christopher Dunn, listens to testimony during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate her son’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. (Laurie Skrivan /St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Tristin Estep, prosecutor with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, points to a map of North City as she cross-examines witness Eugene Wilson during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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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. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Booker Shaw, special assistant with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, left, sits next to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore, as he listens to witness testimony during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Judge Jason Sengheiser listens to testimony during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Laura Wilson listens in the gallery as her husband Eugene Wilson testifies during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Tristin Estep, a lawyer with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, asks witness Eugene Wilson to mark street lights on amp of North City during cross-examination on the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Christopher Dunn arrives in court on 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. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Booker Shaw, special assistant with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, listens to witness testimony during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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Rachael Moore, special assistant with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, questions witness Eugene Wilson during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore listens to witness testimony during the first day of the hearing to decide whether to vacate Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Carnahan Courthouse in St. Louis. Dunn, 52, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

By JIM SALTER

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Christopher Dunn has spent 33 years in prison for a murder he has claimed from the outset that he didn’t commit. A hearing this week will determine if he should go free.

St. Louis prosecutors are now convinced Dunn is telling the truth, but lawyers for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office want him kept behind bars. Dunn, 52, is serving life without parole at the state prison in Locking, Missouri. He wore a gray suit at the hearing Tuesday before Judge Jason Sengheiser.

A Missouri law adopted in 2021 allows prosecutors to request such hearings when they see evidence of a wrongful conviction. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore filed a motion in February seeking to vacate the 1990 guilty verdict, citing “clear and convincing evidence of Christopher Dunn’s actual innocence.”

Dunn was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers based largely on the testimony of two boys — 14-year-old DeMorris Stepp and 12-year-old Michael Davis Jr. — who said they witnessed the shooting. Both later recanted, claiming they were coerced by police and prosecutors.

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Booker Shaw, a private attorney working on behalf of the circuit attorney, said Tuesday in his opening statement that Dunn was at his mother’s house a few blocks away at the time of the shooting, watching TV with his mother and sister.

Assistant Attorney General Tristin Estep said neither police nor prosecutors coerced the witnesses to testify against Dunn, and evidence will show he was the shooter regardless of how their stories have changed.

“Over the past 34 years, Christopher Dunn has crafted a story, but not a convincing one,” Estep said.

In May 2023, then-St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed a motion to vacate Dunn’s sentence. But Gardner resigned days later, and after his appointment by Gov. Mike Parson, Gore wanted to conduct his own investigation. Gore announced in February that he would seek to overturn the conviction.

Dunn, who is Black, was 18 when Rogers was shot to death on the night of May 18, 1990. No physical evidence linked Dunn to the crime but the two boys told police at the time that they saw Dunn standing in the gangway of the house next door, just minutes before shots rang out.

Rogers and the two boys ran when they heard the shots, but Rogers was fatally struck, according to court records.

The judge heard a recorded interview from several years ago in which Davis said he and Stepp lied about Dunn being the shooter. Davis said they named Dunn because they believed he was in a rival gang and wanted to get him out of the neighborhood.

“It was just out of animosity that we said it was him, basically,” Davis said on the recording, which was made while he was jailed in California on an unrelated charge.

Another teenager at the scene at the time, Eugene Wilson, appeared in court on Tuesday. He said he was near Rogers when he was shot, and that it was dark and he couldn’t see the shooter. But Wilson testified that one person with a possible motive was a man who had been dating, and abusive, to Rogers’ mother. Rogers and Wilson had recently attacked the man in retaliation, Wilson said.

But under cross-examination, Wilson acknowledged and confirmed his previous testimony, that immediately after the shooting, Stepp yelled out, “It was Christopher Dunn.”

Another judge 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 then, 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.

The 2021 law has resulted in the the release of two men who each spent decades in prison.

In 2021, Kevin Strickland was freed after more than 40 years for three killings in Kansas City after a judge ruled he had been wrongfully convicted in 1979.

Last February, a St. Louis judge overturned the conviction of Lamar Johnson, who served nearly 28 years for a killing he always said he didn’t commit. In that case, another man testified that it was he — not Johnson — who joined a second man in the killing, a witness said police had “bullied” him into implicating Johnson, and Johnson’s girlfriend at the time testified they were together that night.

Still waiting for a hearing is a man who was nearly executed for a murder conviction.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion in January to vacate the conviction of Marcellus Williams, who narrowly escaped lethal injection seven years ago for the fatal stabbing of Lisha Gayle in 1998. Bell’s motion said three experts have determined that Williams’ DNA was not on the handle of the butcher knife used in the killing.