Missouri man who maintains innocence in mother’s killing released after 23 years in prison
A Missouri man who maintains he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his mother more than two decades ago was released from prison Friday on parole, the Midwest Innocence Project announced on social media.
Michael Politte walked out of the Jefferson City Correctional Center more than two months after he was granted parole.
Now 38, Politte was convicted of second-degree murder in 2002, four years after he found Rita Politte’s body burning on the floor of their Hopewell home in eastern Missouri. He was 14 when his mother died. Politte and his sisters have maintained he is innocent.
The Midwest Innocence Project has set up a GoFundMe to help raise money for Politte following his release. The fundraiser had received $2,658 of its $5,000 goal as of Friday afternoon.
Missouri has a narrow compensation law, only allowing for payments to prisoners who prove their innocence through a specific DNA testing statute.
In court filings, Politte’s attorneys argued he was convicted based in part on discredited fire investigation techniques and an incompetent new public defender at trial.
Jurors who convicted Politte have raised concerns about their decision in recent years. Two believe he is innocent and should be freed to correct “this wrong,” while others have said he deserves a new trial based on evidence they never heard.
One of the jurors, Linda Dickerson-Bell, of Bonne Terre, in an affidavit said she learned through an MTV documentary series, which featured Politte’s case, that there was not gasoline on his shoes.
She called that evidence the “nail in the coffin” for her at trial. “After learning about the new evidence, my guilt has only grown,” she wrote. “I now firmly believe ... that we made a terrible mistake.”
In the past six months, two other Missouri men who were wrongfully convicted have been released from prison.
Kevin Strickland, who served the seventh longest wrongful conviction in U.S. history, was released in November after spending 43 years in prison.
Earlier this month, Keith Carnes walked out of a Missouri prison days after Jackson County prosecutors said they would not retry him in a 2003 murder because of insufficient evidence. Carnes spent 18 years in prison.
