ST. LOUIS — Michael Davis Jr. was sitting in jail thousands of miles from ºüÀêÊÓƵ when he started thinking about Christopher Dunn, a man from his old neighborhood.
Davis was just 12 years old in 1990 when he gave the testimony that helped condemn Dunn to life in prison. Davis and a friend told police they’d seen him shoot 15-year-old Ricco Rogers on a darkened porch in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. A jury later convicted Dunn.
But in a recorded interview played Tuesday in a ºüÀêÊÓƵ courtroom, Davis said he wanted to set the record straight.
“I lied,†he said in a 2015 recorded interview. “I took a man’s life away, and I didn’t even see him do it.â€
Davis and his friend, DeMorris Stepp, now say they pinned the murder on Dunn because they didn’t like him. Davis believed Dunn was affiliated with a rival gang, he said, and had been making trouble in the neighborhood.
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But as an adult, Davis watched scores of men sent away to prison on murder convictions during his time in a California jail. Each time, he said, he thought about Dunn.
Now Davis and Stepp are key parts of an effort this week by a cadre of lawyers, including Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore, to free Dunn from prison. Dunn, 52, has spent almost 35 years in prison, but Gore’s office argues police and previous prosecutors got it wrong, and Dunn is innocent.
Gore’s team, which includes retired appeals court Judge Booker Shaw and several lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project, are making their pitch to a judge using experts and eyewitnesses who say Dunn could not have committed the murder.
Lawyers for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office are opposing the effort, arguing that officials did not make a mistake in convicting Dunn. They say the witnesses who recanted were coerced to do so, and the witnesses who testify on Dunn’s behalf have an incentive to free him. Dunn has crafted a tall tale from prison, they say, and is trying to avoid responsibility.
“Christopher Dunn has crafted a story, but not a convincing one,†said Assistant Attorney General Tristin Estep.
The first witness on Tuesday was Eugene Wilson, who spoke about what happened on the night of May 18, 1990, when Ricco Rogers was killed.
Dunn, Wilson and a few other teen boys — including Davis and Stepp, then 14 — were hanging out at a home on the city’s north side.
Wilson and Dunn spent time catching up because Dunn had recently been released from prison. Wilson told his longtime friend that the neighborhood had changed — the Bloods gang was taking over the area.
Davis and Stepp were affiliated with the gang, and they noted the color of Dunn’s shirt: It was striped in white and blue, a signature of the rival Crips gang, Wilson testified Tuesday.
Wilson said he did not believe Dunn was actually affiliated with a gang, but Davis said repeatedly in his 2015 interview that Dunn was a Crip.
Later that night, after Dunn had left, Wilson said he and some friends moved to a porch in the 5600 block of Labadie Avenue, where they scrounged up change to buy food at a nearby Chinese restaurant.
Wilson said he was approaching the home with orders of egg foo young when he heard shots ring out.
Everyone hit the ground. Wilson saw muzzle flashes from a gun and the silhouette of a man cloaked in shadow.
Ricco was shot in the head and died on the steps.
Wilson did not talk to the police that night, and he did not talk to investigators after that. He’d had bad experiences with police, he said Tuesday, so he tried to avoid them at all costs.
He said he didn’t even know Dunn had been convicted until 2017 when an investigator arrived at his house to ask about the shooting.
“I was shocked,†he said.
Lawyers with the attorney general’s office worked to poke holes in Wilson’s testimony, noting discrepancies between his words and a previous affidavit he signed with the investigator who had shown up at his house.
They also pointed out that he had several opportunities to speak with the police over the years but didn’t reach out. Instead, he was making himself part of an effort to free his friend, which gave him a potential incentive to lie, they said.
But Wilson said he felt he needed to speak out during this week’s hearing because his friend was not a killer.
“He’s not that type of individual,†he said.
Lawyers working to free Dunn also read a deposition of an inmate housed at the ºüÀêÊÓƵ jail with Stepp in the 1990s. The inmate, Curtis Stewart, said he heard Stepp tell someone on the phone he didn’t see Dunn shoot Ricco.
“I’m getting a deal out of it,†Stewart recalled Stepp saying.
Stepp, who was convicted of first-degree murder in a separate case in 1997, is expected to testify Wednesday. Lawyers are also expected to call people to testify that Dunn was at home during the shooting and experts to speak about the reliability of eyewitness identifications.
When the testimony is complete, Judge Jason Sengheiser will consider Dunn’s claim and issue findings at a later date.