The release of Christopher Dunn was more than three decades overdue. The 52-year-old Missouri man walked free from a Missouri prison this week after spending most of his life behind bars for a 1990 murder he did not commit.
Last week, The Root reported on the story of Dunn who was unjustly held in prison despite two judges separately ruling him innocent. Originally scheduled for release on July 24, Dunn’s family was shocked to learn their loved one would not be freed, even after a St. Louis Circuit judge found there to be insufficient evidence to hold him further, according to USA Today.
His wife, Kira Dunn, spoke to NPR, saying her husband was dressed in civilian clothes when he was ordered to return back to his cell on that Wednesday night. “The sheer and pointless cruelty is mind boggling,” she said. “If you know a little about the story, you know we’ve had a lot of disappointments where we thought we’d finally get his freedom, and it was snatched away,” she continued.
The Midwest Innocence Project, an organization working to help free Dunn announced on X, “…at the Attorney General’s request, and less than an hour before Chris’ scheduled release, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed the order to release Chris, and requested additional briefing.”
Corrections Department spokesperson Karen Pojmann told AP News that Dunn was in the middle of signing his release papers when news of the immediate stay took affect. The cause of the stay was Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey. He had been fighting against Dunn’s release, and directly following the judge’s ruling, Bailey filed the appeal which kept Dunn locked up.
During a press conference after his Tuesday release, Dunn called that experience “testing.” He continued saying, “To hear the decision by the judge and then be prepared to leave on Wednesday, only to be brought back to prison. It was torture.”
With the help of his family and the many advocates rooting for him, Dunn said he never gave up hope that he would one day be free. “My family never gave up,” Dunn said. “It’s easy to give up in prison when you lose hope. But when the system throws you away, you have to ask yourself if you wanted to just settle for it or fight for it.”
This wasn’t the first time Attorney General Bailey appealed the immediate release of a person whose murder conviction was overturned. Last month, 64-year-old Sandra Hemme was released from prison after Bailey challenged her overturned murder conviction, according to NBC.
On July 26, a court also denied Bailey’s efforts to block an evidentiary hearing to hear the case of Marcellus Williams, who is scheduled to be executed in Sept., according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Innocence Project cites new DNA evidence that could help exonerate Williams of a 1998 murder he insists he did not commit.
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Publish date : 2024-08-03 00:35:00
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