A Missouri man fighting a calculation that could keep him in state prison for more than 40 years on a 23-year sentence lost the first round of a court battle seeking to be released.
Cole County Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe last week refused to order the Missouri Department of Corrections to change how it calculated the time-served credit for Deandre Pointer, resentenced in 2023 for his part in two 2003 Kansas City murders.
Because his initial sentence was four terms to be served consecutively, Stumpe wrote, the department was correct to apply his time in state custody to only one of the terms imposed at resentencing, even if the new sentence called for the time to be served as a single, concurrent term.
“Put simply, Pointer has received all the jail time credit to which he is entitled…,” Stumpe wrote.
During an interview last year with The Independent, Pointer said he thought the work he had done to have his initial sentence overturned would also result in his release in 2024.
After years of protesting his innocence of the murder charges and failing to convince any court, Pointer cut a deal to trade his life without parole sentence for a 23-year term on two counts of second degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action.
He did it, Pointer said, to care for his family.
“The only reason why I took this plea was that my father was sick,” Pointer said.
Stumpe’s decision came in a case seeking a declaration that the department had improperly denied Pointer credit for the time served since his original conviction.
The decision will be appealed, Kent Gipson, Pointer’s attorney, said in an email to The Independent.
“I am obviously disappointed by the decision but I can’t say I am surprised,” Gipson said. “I can honestly say that in my 40-plus years as a lawyer, this case is the most bizarre and irrational situation I have ever encountered.”
How prison time was calculated
In June 2003, Pointer was sharing his home with a man named Eddie Hall. On June 12, 2003, Hall brought a woman to the home, smoked crack with her and then strangled her. Pointer helped Hall dispose of the body.
Five days later, Pointer’s cousin, Bobby Roby, and another woman arrived in the evening. Near midnight, according to the statement Pointer made to police, Hall again pulled a gun, tied Pointer to a chair with speaker wire, bound Roby with duct tape to a basement support pole and raped the woman.
Roby was strangled and Hall forced the woman to help him get rid of his body.
At his trial, Pointer contended he was a victim and was forced to help Hall in fear of his life. The jury found him guilty of one count of first-degree murder, a count of second-degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action.
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole on the first-degree murder charge and life in prison, with possibility of parole, on the other three counts. The counts were to run consecutively.
His efforts to get the sentence changed stalled in 2008, when a judge dismissed an appeal after rescinding an order for a public defender. Gipson successfully reopened the appeal in 2022 and, after negotiations, Pointer pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action, receiving the 23-year sentence on all counts to be served concurrently.
Because he was serving life without parole on the first degree murder count, Pointer never began his sentences on the other three counts.
The department awarded Pointer 6,929 days of credit toward one of the second-degree murder charges but only 557 days against the other three counts for the time he was held in the Jackson County jail from the time of his arrest in 2003 until his conviction in 2005.
The department calculated Pointer’s release date as occurring in 2044.
“Pointer argues it was wrong for the department to apply the credit from his vacated first-degree murder sentence first to the second-degree murder sentence,” Stumpe wrote. “But the department is required to calculate the time in that fashion.”
State law and prior court precedent mean that because Pointer had not begun serving any of the counts which had a possibility of parole, the department did not have to credit his prison time to all four counts, Stumpe wrote.
“Pointer had not yet started to serve his consecutive sentences for second-degree murder and armed criminal action and he cannot receive jail-time credit on those sentences now,” Stumpe wrote.
Along with challenging the calculation directly in Cole County, Pointer is asking the Jackson County courts to again vacate his sentence and re-impose it in shorter, consecutive blocks that total 23 years instead.
That case is months away from a final ruling.
This story was first published by the Missouri Independent.
