"Perfect" Justice

In Missouri, it’s not guilt that keeps you in prison; it’s the fear that your innocence might expose flaws in the justice system.

Missouri justice doesn’t have to be perfect; it only has to look perfect. That’s the illusion Attorney General Andrew Bailey is determined to preserve, even if it means keeping innocent people behind bars. In Bailey’s twisted logic, acknowledging the justice system’s failures, especially those involving wrongful imprisonment, would erode public confidence and undermine the rule of law. It’s a stunning display of anti-logic: better to protect a lie than to correct an injustice.

By this reasoning, once someone is convicted, no matter how flimsy the evidence, how unreliable the witnesses, or how overwhelming the exculpatory evidence is, it’s better to keep them locked up than to admit a mistake. In this system, the illusion of justice is more important than justice itself. And if an innocent person gets crushed under that illusion? Too bad. In Missouri, they’re expected to “take one for the team.”

Christopher Dunn took one for the team.

Mr. Dunn spent more than 30 years in prison for a murder two judges now agree he likely didn’t commit. The original case was a farce: no physical evidence, a single uncorroborated witness, and testimony that has since been recanted. Yet in the eyes of Missouri’s top law enforcement officer, releasing Mr. Dunn would be too disruptive, not to the facts, but to the fiction. In an act of Orwellian cruelty, the Attorney General is now fighting to send him back to prison. Why? Because nothing says “trust the system” like punishing an innocent man.

Some argue that making it easier for prisoners to petition for innocence could overwhelm the courts. Indeed, the floodgates may open, and our current justice system is not equipped to handle that kind of traffic. That being the case, one would think it’s time to overhaul the system; to put in place a process to efficiently vet applications for innocence. From a moral perspective, isn’t that the crisis we should be dealing with?

Instead, our current crop of political leaders would rather pretend the problem doesn’t exist. They’d rather throw away the key than advocate for a justice system that actually works.

Here’s the tragic reality behind all the Christover Dunns of the world: hundreds of innocent people are exonerated in the U.S. every year. And that’s just the ones who manage to claw their way back into the light. Countless more never get the chance. Wrongful convictions are not rare anomalies. They’re built into the machinery, produced by forced confessions, faulty forensics, suppressed evidence, lazy investigations, and prosecutors more concerned with winning than with truth.

If anything erodes public confidence in the justice system, it’s not the admission that innocent people are in prison; it’s the refusal to let them out.

A justice system that can’t admit its own failures isn’t just broken; it’s corrupt. And a government that prioritizes appearances over truth doesn’t deserve our confidence. It deserves a brutal reckoning.

The question facing Missouri isn’t whether the system might lose credibility by admitting a mistake. The real question is: How much credibility has it already lost by refusing to?