St. Louis Judge rules to free Christopher Dunn, who has been imprisoned for more than 30 years

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A St. Louis judge has ruled Monday that Christopher Dunn, who has spent more than three decades in prison for a killing he says he didn't commit, can be a free man again.

St. Louis Judge Jason Sengheiser ruled that St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Gabe Gore's office made a "a clear and convincing showing of 'actual innocence' that undermines the basis for Dunn's convictions because in light of new evidence" and Sengheiser found that "no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find Dunn guilty of these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt."

Dunn, who was then 19-years-old, was convicted of first-degree murder and received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the shooting death of Ricco Rogers, who was 14 at the time of the shooting in 1990.

Dunn's conviction was Rogers based solely on the testimony of two eyewitnesses, who were teenagers at the time, but they have since recanted their statements after admitting they were pressurized by prosecutors and police to say it was Dunn.

"The only witnesses who implicated Christopher Dunn are proven liars unworthy of belief," said Booker Shaw, a private attorney working on behalf of the circuit attorney, who spoke at Dunn's hearing in May . "No physical evidence from Christopher Dunn. Instead, he was convicted solely of the basis of recanted testimony."

Both St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore and his predecessor, Kim Gardner has both sought motions to release Dunn, with Gore filing a petition back in February to dismiss Dunn's murder conviction.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office opposed the effort to vacate Dunn's conviction. Lawyers for the state said that initial testimony from two boys at the scene who said Dunn was the shooter was correct, even though they later recanted as adults.

Dunn previously was heard by Missouri Judge William Hickle in the 25th Judicial Court in 2020, who ruled "this Court does not believe that any jury would now convict Christopher Dunn under these facts" but dismissed Dunn’s freestanding innocence claim on purely procedural grounds and a 2016 ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court only death-row inmates could make a "freestanding" claim of actual innocence, not those serving life in prison without parole.

Those grounds have since changed since the ruling, with a new law passed in the state of Missouri in 2021 now giving prosecutors the authority to seek a hearing if they have new evidence that the convicted person might have been wrongfully convicted. Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson were the first two to have benefitted from the new law after having their convictions overturned.

Dunn is expected to be released from the South Central Correctional Center in Licking, Missouri, with Judge Sengheiser ruling the state of Missouri "shall immediately discharge Christopher Dunn from it's custody."