Supreme Court says wrong county’s prosecutor challenged conviction

A long ago change of venue in a murder case is now a hurdle for a man seeking to challenge his conviction.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Feb. 14 that the prosecuting attorney in Washington County cannot use a new state law to seek to vacate Michael Politte’s conviction for the murder of his mother. Politte maintains that he is innocent of the crime, while the prosecutor says the conviction was based on false evidence.

But while the murder took place in Washington County and that county’s prosecutor pursued the charges, the trial itself was held in neighboring St. Francois County on a change of venue — a common occurrence in rural Missouri.

State lawmakers recently passed a statute that allows “a prosecuting or circuit attorney, in the jurisdiction in which a person was convicted of an offense” to ask a court to vacate convictions they believe to be wrong. The Supreme Court unanimously interpreted that language to mean that the Washington County prosecutor has no authority to act in Politte’s case, even though his office secured the original conviction.

Judge Patricia Breckenridge wrote that the new statute “has a plain and ordinary meaning that permits no construction.”

“The statute authorizes only a prosecuting attorney in the jurisdiction in which a person was convicted of an offense to file a motion to vacate or set aside the judgment of conviction of such offense,” she wrote.

Washington County Prosecuting Attorney John Jones couldn’t be reached immediately for comment. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project, an attorney for Politte, declined to comment on the ruling.

In an interview, St. Francois County Prosecuting Attorney Blake Dudley said he was only familiar with the case from media coverage and that he would need to study it before coming to any conclusions.

“I’m sure I’ll be getting a call here from the Washington County Prosecutor’s Office sometime soon to give me a heads up on it,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll take a look at it and see what I think about it.”

Politte’s mother, Rita, died from a fire in her home in 1998, when Politte was 14. He was convicted of second-degree murder based on evidence that gasoline residue was on his shoes, tying him to the suspected arson. He was sentenced to life in prison. However, a later examination by a private forensic expert found no such gasoline, and the Missouri State Crime Lab eventually agreed that no ignitable liquids were identified on the shoes.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which had argued for the statutory interpretation the court adopted, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The case is State ex rel. Bailey v. Fulton, SC99813.

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