In Missouri, Attorney General Andrew Bailey is in a tough primary fight against a Trump lawyer who says Bailey is soft on crime.

Over the decades he spent in prison, sentenced to life for a fatal shooting in 1990, Christopher Dunn faced one obstacle after another as he sought to clear his name.

Last month, he ran into yet another. A Missouri judge had exonerated Mr. Dunn and ordered his release from prison. Dressed in a jacket and tie, Mr. Dunn was signing the last bit of paperwork when he overheard the warden taking a call, saying, “We were just about to release him — what do you want me to do?”

The state attorney general, Andrew Bailey, had intervened to keep Mr. Dunn, 52, behind bars. He was ordered to change back into his prison uniform and returned to his cell, leaving the St. Louis prosecutor, who had asked the court to clear Mr. Dunn, scrambling to free him.

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Weeks before trying to block Mr. Dunn’s release, Mr. Bailey moved to keep Sandra Hemme locked up after a judge ruled that she was innocent. Ms. Hemme, who had been in prison for 43 years, spent another month behind bars before the state’s highest court stepped in and ordered her release.

And in June, Mr. Bailey tried unsuccessfully to quash a motion by the St. Louis County prosecutor to exonerate Marcellus Williams, who was convicted of the 1998 murder of a local journalist and faces execution in September.

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