ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis judge is weighing arguments to decide if a convicted killer will be released from prison.
Christopher Dunn has been locked up for more than 30 years after being convicted of murdering a teenager in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood in St. Louis.
As the hearing entered day two, the case continued to hinge on the testimony of witnesses who both state and defense attorneys have called unreliable.
DeMorris Stepp was one of two eyewitnesses to the 1990 murder of 15-year-old Recco Rogers.
Stepp initially testified that Dunn was the gunman on that fateful night, but he has since recanted his statement, and then walked that back, saying he didn't know who the gunman was.
However, the state may have thrown a curve ball by declining Stepp to the stand.
"This court will see the evolution of Chris Dunn's story,” Assistant Attorney General Tristin Estep said. “Over time, he or people working for him inside or outside of prison, have cultivated the current version of Dunn's lies."
Nicole Bailey, a childhood friend of Dunn, testified that it wasn't possible for Dunn to have pulled the trigger because he was at home talking to her on the phone at the time Rogers was killed.
"I was a child,” Nicole Bailey said. “I tried to tell them then he couldn't have been there. I was on the phone with him. Anybody that knows us at that time we talked on the phone for hours all the time. I would've known if Chris was upset."
Throughout the trial, Assistant Attorney General Tristin Estep argued that Christopher Dunn was in fact the gunman who killed 15-year-old Recco Rogers based on his 1991 conviction in the case, along with changing stories from both Dunn and his family as to where he was the night of the shooting.
"An innocent man’s best defense is the truth,” Estep said. “You've just heard lies from Christopher Dunn. He's never told you where he was that night."
Dunn's defense team has maintained that there was no credible testimony or physical evidence placing Dunn at the scene of the shooting since two eye witnesses, who were 12 and 14 at the time, have since recanted their testimony.
"There remains no evidence upon which a reasonable jury could return a verdict of guilty,” St. Louis Prosecutor Gabe Gore said. “In fact your honor, in this case there simply remains no evidence at all."
A decision on Dunn's future won't be made immediately.
The presiding judge will now review all the testimony heard over the past two days before issuing a written brief with his decision.
At this time, it's unclear what the deadline is for that decision.