Twenty-three years ago, Linda Dickerson-Bell sent a teenager to prison for life. Michael Politte, then 18, was on trial in Washington County, Missouri, accused of beating his mother to death and then setting her body ablaze.
The defense case was minimal, at best. Politte’s overworked public defender took just a half-day to present his case, and failed to poke holes in supposedly scientific evidence that would soon be thoroughly disproved. Dickerson-Bell had many questions, but everyone else seemed so certain, and she went along with it. Politte was sent away to prison for life without any chance of parole.
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But Dickerson-Bell was plagued with doubts, tormented by the idea that she’d sent an innocent kid to prison. Almost two decades after Politte’s trial, she got in touch with his lawyers—and spoke out about her qualms about the case.
This Tuesday, she’s hosting a rally outside the Washington County prosecutor’s office, hoping to force that office to pursue a wrongful conviction case on Politte’s behalf, or at least hear her out. “I’ve done numerous emails to the gentleman,” she says of prosecuting attorney John Jones IV. “He has failed to respond to any of them. I have personally visited his office twice.” He refused to meet.
“I’ve told him, ‘You do what you should do, but at least have a conversation with me, or I’m going to speak to every single person who will listen to me and tell them how you’re not doing what you should be doing,’” she continues. “So I’ve given him months and months and months to try to do that. He has chosen to ignore me, and so now I feel like standing in front of his office might keep him from doing that.”
Jones did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Complicating Dickerson-Bell’s efforts is the fact that Politte was released from prison three years ago—despite originally being slapped with a sentence that seemed to foreclose the possibility. His lawyers were pursuing an innocence claim when Missouri enacted criminal justice reforms for people who’d been sentenced as juveniles, including Politte, allowing them to make their case before the parole board. Politte was granted parole, and his freedom.
But that’s only true to a point. Unless the court takes action, he will remain on parole for life, subject to quarterly check-ins and required to get his parole officer’s permission any time he leaves the state, something he has to do as a construction foreman. Politte chafes at the rules, but says, “It does beat being in prison.”
“He’s out of jail, yeah, but his life is still controlled by the state, which should have never been involved in the first place,” Dickerson-Bell says. “We made a mistake. And, I mean, it’s hard to admit when you make a mistake, but when you’re dealing with someone’s life and the rest of their life, it shouldn’t be that hard.”
Politte’s lawyers at the MacArthur Justice Center have continued to seek to prove his innocence, which would allow him to clear his name and be free of parole’s restrictions. Their lawsuit outlining the case for his innocence remains pending in federal court. And separately, Jones’ predecessor in the prosecutor’s office, Josh Hedgecorth, brought a case using the state’s then-nascent wrongful conviction law, which allows prosecutors to reopen a case when they believe justice has not been served.
But Hedgecorth’s efforts became caught up in jurisdictional complications. The Missouri Supreme Court found that he didn’t have the right to pursue the case, even though his office had prosecuted it, because the trial took place in St. Francois County (it had been moved to avoid pre-trial publicity). Perhaps surprisingly, the state legislature moved quickly to address that flaw in the original law, but by that time, Hedgecorth had lost his reelection bid. The man who beat him, Jones, has shown no interest in resuming the wrongful conviction case.
Megan Crane, the co-director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office, has long pushed for Politte’s innocence along with the Midwest Innocence Project. She is not involved with the rally, but, reached for comment, said she believes Jones has a duty to take action in Politte’s case.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” she says. “Mike has now been 26 and a half years without justice, and sure, he’s been home three years on lifetime parole, but he still doesn’t know who killed his mother, and he and his family haven’t seen justice for that.”
Notes Politte, “The only way to open up an investigation is to overturn my conviction. So to get to the real perpetrator, we have to overturn my conviction.” He adds, “They stole my life. Quite frankly, I feel like the state of Missouri owes me something. They owe me something, and they owe my mother something.”
By pure coincidence, Dickerson-Bell and Politte found themselves at the same social gathering some time after his release. He recognized her right away, despite the 20 years since his trial. “We were both much younger back then,” he says.
She was worried that he’d be angry. He wasn’t. “What happened to me is not the fault of her,” he says. “It’s the fault of due process, and it wasn’t followed.” He won’t be at the rally Tuesday, but that’s only because he has to work.
As for Dickerson-Bell, friends have wondered why she won’t let the case go. It was so long ago, and Politte is now out of prison. Why make a nuisance of herself at the prosecutor’s office? Even her husband has questioned her refusal to give up the quest.
She was not swayed. She reminded her husband that they had recently become grandparents. “Let’s just say, 20 years down the road, this is our grandson. Would you not hope that someone would do this for your grandson?” Her husband, she says, got it.
The rally will take place in front of the Washington County Courthouse, 102 N. Missouri Street, Potosi, Missouri, from 11 a.m. to noon. That’s three years to the day that Michael Politte was released on parole.
