ST. LOUIS—The St. Louis Circuit Attorney is asking the court to vacate the murder conviction of Christopher Dunn. 

Dunn was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. 

The petition to the court to vacate the conviction comes after Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore appointed Booker Shaw, a former federal judge, to review the case last summer. 

Ahead of her resignation, Kim Gardner petitioned the court to set aside Dunn’s conviction after witnesses came forward and said they were pressured to lie. When Gore took over for Gardner, he withdrew the motion and conducted a new review.

The case against Dunn rested on the testimony of two eyewitnesses, a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy, both whom later recanted their statements.

“The eyewitness recantations alone are enough to show clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence in this case,” Gore said. “Justice requires that Christopher Dunn’s murder conviction be vacated.”

Gore says Shaw, currently a partner with Thompson Coburn, has been working pro bono on the Dunn case review since mid-July. 

In the motion to vacate, the Circuit Attorney’s Office wrote Dunn’s “case presents all of the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction: witnesses who have now recanted—whose faulty eyewitness testimony under poor lighting and recall conditions already called their testimony into question—coupled with perceived police and family pressure. “

It also stated that in 2018, a Missouri judge ruled that “this Court does not believe that any jury would now convict Christopher Dunn under these facts.” However, 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.

A 2021 law now allows prosecutors to seek court hearings in cases with new evidence of a wrongful conviction. It has led to the freeing of at least two inmates in Missouri so far.

​​“My office is indebted to Booker Shaw, whose experience and  legal acumen were invaluable in helping conduct an exhaustive review of the facts of the case,” Gore said in a statement.

The next legal steps include the court ordering a hearing before a judge to consider the evidence presented at Dunn’s original trial, additional evidence presented in Dunn’s direct appeals and post-conviction proceedings and additional information and evidence presented at the hearing.