Missouri DOC Chief Held in Contempt of Court for Keeping Exonerated Prisoner Locked Up
On August 7, 2024, the head of Missouri’s Department of Corrections (DOC) was held in contempt by a state court judge for refusing to release Howard Roberts, 82, after the prisoner’s conviction was overturned. State Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) had ordered Roberts kept behind bars at South Central Correctional Center in Licking. But in his contempt order, Senior Circuit Judge David C. Jones gave DOC Acting Director Trevor Foley until August 14, 2024, to release the prisoner or face fines of $1,000 per day.
Roberts was convicted of financial exploitation of an older or disabled person in 2016. Because the property at issue was worth $50,000 or more, he was found guilty of a felony and given a 20-year sentence. During a hearing in November 2023, attorney Jonathan Sternberg argued that Roberts received ineffective assistance of counsel during his 2018 trial. In June 2024, Judge Jones agreed that Roberts’ trial attorney failed to have records and testimony introduced which could have convinced the jury that he was operating a legitimate business with the funds he had received, and that he was innocent. Despite this, Bailey instructed DOC to keep Roberts incarcerated. The dustup marked the third time this year that Bailey has stepped between an exonerated prisoner and freedom.
The law that led to Roberts’ exoneration, SB 53 § 547.031, lets prosecutors move to vacate a judgement any time they have information that a convicted prisoner may be innocent or may have been erroneously convicted. Prior to Roberts, the most recent Missouri prisoner impacted by it was one on death row—Marcellus Williams, who has both a September 2024 execution date and a hearing the month before on new evidence that may exonerate him.
Christopher Dunn and
Sandra Hemme
On July 22, 2024, state court Judge Jason Sengheiser overturned the conviction of Christopher Dunn, 52, after he spent over 30 years in prison for the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Ricco Rogers—a crime that Dunn always claimed he did not commit. He was serving life without parole before Bell’s boss, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore, filed a motion asserting Dunn’s actual innocence based on new evidence.
Despite Bailey’s opposition, a three-day hearing was held in May 2024, at the end of which Judge Sengheiser concluded that no reasonable juror would convict Dunn, given the new evidence. Bailey appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, which stayed Dunn’s release just hours before he was set to walk free on July 24, 2024. But the high Court lifted that stay a week later on July 31, 2024, and Dunn went home.
Dunn’s case mirrors that of Sandra Hemme, 64, who was freed on July 19, 2024, after serving 43 years of a life sentence for a murder she didn’t commit. Despite a judge’s finding of her “actual innocence” and an order for her release, Bailey fought to keep Hemme imprisoned, too, until state court Judge Ryan Horsman threatened contempt. Hemme was released in time to reunite with her terminally ill father in his final days.
Lamar Johnson and Kevin Strickland
Bailey also opposed an SB 53 hearing for Lamar Johnson, who served 28 years of a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 1995 murder of Markus Boyd. The hearing was requested by former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, whom Gore replaced after Bailey demanded her resignation. Citing “constitutional error” and “clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence” due to false eyewitness testimony and prosecutorial misconduct, state court Judge David Mason exonerated Johnson in February 2023.
The first prisoner freed under SB 53, Kevin Strickland, 62, spent more than 40 years in prison for three Kansas City killings before Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, convinced by a case review, sought an evidentiary hearing under the newly enacted law. State court Judge James Welsh then ruled that Strickland, who had also maintained his innocence, had been wrongfully convicted in 1979. He was released on November 23, 2021.
It remains to be seen how many more exonerations Bailey will attempt to block, keeping innocent people unjustly imprisoned as he campaigns for re-election against civil rights attorney Elad Gross (D).
Sources: AP News, CBS, CNN, Kansas City Star, KOMO, KRCG, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Missouri Net, NPR News