When Deandre Pointer appeared in front of a Jackson County judge in June 2023, his world was bright.
After years of protesting his innocence of murder charges and failing to convince any court, Pointer cut a deal to trade his sentence of life without parole for a 23-year term on two counts of second degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action.
He had been in custody for 21 years and thought the deal would mean he’d served enough time to be released in 2024.
“The only reason why I took this plea was that my father was sick,” Pointer said in an interview with The Independent at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.
But when a Missouri Department of Corrections record clerk finished processing his paperwork, Pointer’s world turned dark.
Instead of being given almost 7,000 days of credit for time served on all four charges, Pointer was allowed credit only for 557 days jail time before his 2005 trial on three of the four counts.
He is not eligible for release until 2044.
As a result, he is back in court seeking a ruling that the records clerk made an error. For himself, and others who feel they have been short-changed on their time-served credits, the outcome of those cases will determine if they go home or stay in prison.
Over almost 20 years in state prison, Pointer, 52, maintained hope he would find a way out. He worked in the license plate factory, paid his attorney out of the 80 cents an hour he earned, maintained contact with his family and became an ordained minister.
“I never took anxiety meds,” Pointer said in an interview with The Independent. “Never in my life. Now, you know, I have to take anxiety meds just to have a functional day.”
Pointer’s situation is tied to how parole dates are initially calculated, something that happens within 90 days of a person arriving to serve their sentence. Other people in custody complain that the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole’s new interpretation of parole policies that state how much time must be served for one particular charge — armed criminal action — pushed their possible release date back, in some cases a decade or more.
Advocates say there could be hundreds of others across the 19 adult prisons who thought they’d served enough time to be eligible for parole but were suddenly and unexpectedly years away from being released.
Kent Gipson, an attorney from Kansas City who represents Pointer in his court battles, has handled several cases challenging the reinterpretation of how much time must be served for an armed criminal action charge.
“You get your sentence reduced, and then they recalculate it and say that you have to do more time than you did before you got your sentence reduced,” Gipson said. “This can’t be right.”
Gipson called the Board of Probation and Parole’s change to armed criminal action sentences “egregious,” because “those guys actually had parole hearings scheduled, and they took them away from and said, ‘Sorry, we’re moving it back 15 years because we’re changing this rule.’”
The board was using its authority and did not change how much of a life sentence must be served, even if those charged with armed criminal action think it was changed, Steven Mueller, operations manager for the board, wrote in an email.
“There is no maximum release date on any life sentence and release is at the discretion of the board,” he wrote.
For several months now, Pointer has been waiting for a court ruling in two cases challenging the calculation. Meanwhile, prisoner advocates are hopeful a working group empaneled by Gov. Mike Kehoe will address the issue.
Kehoe directed the group to bring “clarity, transparency and accountability” to the parole process.
Parole policy or rule changes that would extend the time to be served for particular crimes or sentences should be forward-looking, applying only to new convictions, Clifton Davis of the Missouri Justice Coalition, a group that advocates for better treatment of incarcerated people, testified at the working group’s June 13 public hearing.
“While (armed criminal action) carries a minimum, internal practices often add years that were not imposed by the sentencing court,” Davis said. “We ask that this working group ensure that the board’s decision reflects legislative sentencing intent, not internal enhancements.”
The calculation
Under the Missouri criminal code, second-degree murder since 1994 has been considered a dangerous felony, with a requirement that the offender serve at least 85% of their sentence before being considered for release.
For a 23-year sentence like Pointer’s, that is a little more than 19.5 years.
When Pointer pleaded guilty and was resentenced, he had been held for 6,929 days, or 18.9 years.
In the calculation Pointer received on his return to prison, he found he was being required to serve 18 of the 23 years, or until 2039, on the armed criminal action charges. That was done based on the 2019 parole regulation revisions.
But that isn’t his release date, just the date that he will finish those charges. The second-degree murder conviction carries a requirement that he serve 85% of the 23-year sentence, with a release date in 2044.
The change impacted anyone who had a parole hearing on an armed criminal action conviction scheduled after Sept. 1, 2019, moving their hearing date a decade or more into the future. Those who received a hearing, and a release date, before the revisions were issued went home.
Advocates are uncertain how many other incarcerated people are serving sentences that extend beyond the time they were told to expect parole when they arrived in prison.
Pointer’s charges
On June 12, 2003, Pointer was at his rented home in Kansas City when Eddie Hall, who he was allowing to stay with him, arrived with a woman named Angela Ray.
After they smoked crack cocaine, according to court records, Hall pulled a gun, forced Ray to have sex, then bound and strangled her. Hall disposed of Ray’s body with Pointer’s help, prosecutors claimed in court documents, by loading her into the trunk of her rented car, driving to an undeveloped area and setting it on fire.
Five days later, Hall and Pointer were home when Bobby Roby, a cousin of Pointer, 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.
Hall then strangled Roby to death and forced the woman to go with him to dump the body in a pond by threatening to kill her children. They then returned to Pointer’s home, where he had been tied to a chair.
About 12 hours later, Pointer went to a police division station and reported both murders. When police returned to his home, they arrested Hall and freed the woman.
The initial court filing on Hall names Pointer as a victim. In an interview with The Independent, he said he didn’t go to police immediately after Ray’s death because of fear of violence from Hall or his friends.
Ray was killed, Pointer claims, because she had testified against one of Hall’s friends.
A year later, the woman involved changed her story and accused Pointer of participating in her rape and the choking death of Roby.
Pointer was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
The charges were later amended to add second-degree murder for the death of Ray.
After his October 2005 trial, Pointer said, prosecutors offered him a deal of 18 to 20 years in prison if he would testify against Hall. But Pointer says he was forced at gunpoint to help dispose of Ray’s body, and was tied to a chair during Roby’s murder. So he believed he was innocent and was unwilling to admit to committing a crime.
“I told (the prosecutor) I would testify, but I do not want to take the plea for something I did not do,” Pointer said. “I testified, but I didn’t take the plea, because I wanted to keep my appeals open.”
Pointer was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to life in prison without parole on the first-degree murder charge and life in prison on second-degree murder and the two counts of armed criminal action. The terms were to be served consecutively.
Hall was convicted of a single count of first-degree murder in December 2005 and is now serving life without parole.
Conviction reversed
One of the most common ways to challenge a sentence or conviction, in addition to a direct appeal, is called post-conviction relief.
Defendants who plead guilty lose their direct appeal rights. A person in prison can have the conviction or sentence set aside by successfully showing the constitution has been violated, or an attorney has failed in some manner.
After his direct appeals were exhausted, that’s what Pointer did in October 2007. A public defender was appointed to represent him. But in February 2008, after finding that Pointer filed a document too late, the judge rescinded the appointment and dismissed the case.
In 2022 Gipson succeeded in reopening Pointer’s post-conviction relief case on the grounds that he had been abandoned by his public defender in 2008. That’s when negotiations began with the Jackson County prosecuting attorney’s office, ultimately leading to the original conviction being set aside so Pointer could plead guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action.
At the June 1, 2023, resentencing, Gipson conceded prosecutors had enough evidence to convict Pointer of the restated charges. And before he was formally resentenced, there was testimony from Myesha Robertson, the daughter of Bobby Roby, and Ruthie Kidd, the mother of Angela Ray.
They, too, thought Pointer would be released soon.
“It definitely infuriates me that after 20 years I stand here or sit here today only because you are remorseful for the position you put yourself in,” Robertson said.
She saw no justice in the resentencing, she said.
“Your actions have caused an indefinite void in my life,” she said.
Kidd said she believed in capital punishment and that Pointer should not be released.
“I feel it’s most unfortunate that I work every day, and my and others' taxes go to feed this man, clothe him, house him, cool him, exercise him, at our expense,” Kidd said. “He’s taken something from us … that he can’t give back, that we can never get back.”
Other cases
Steven Tyler Decker, like Pointer, feels he is being shortchanged on jail time credit.
In March 2021, Decker was charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurred at a Kansas City motel. After charges were reduced to second-degree murder, he was allowed to post a $50,000 bond while he waited for trial.
Before he could be tried, however, he was arrested on drug and weapons charges. The judge in that case ordered he be held without bond, but the bond in his earlier case was never revoked.
That, he said in a telephone interview from the Jefferson City Correctional Center, is the source of his complaint about how his parole date has been calculated.
”I should have been eligible for parole now,” Decker said.
He pleaded guilty in the drug case on Aug. 18, 2023, and was sentenced to five years on each of two drug counts and four years on unlawful use of a weapon, all to be served concurrently.
Then he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to seven years, to be served concurrently with his other conviction.
Under state parole regulations, Decker has 523 days of jail-time credit. When he was sentenced, the judge ordered Decker be given credit for time served from March 16, 2022, to June 13, 2025. But that came with a caveat — if the Department of Corrections didn’t allow it, Decker couldn’t file an appeal on that basis.
With 1,185 days in custody, Decker thought the guilty plea would position him for release. But the department did not allow the time he was in jail on the drug charges or the time he was held by the state on the manslaughter sentence.
“They never revoked my bond, so technically, I was still out on bond on the murder case” until the April guilty plea, Decker said.
Decker is eligible for parole in 2028. His security level was recently reduced and he’s seeking transfer to another prison.
On Aug. 1, 2019, James Dunn received notice his parole hearing would be held in two months. He had been in custody since 1996, when he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action. He was given consecutive life sentences.
At the time of his scheduled parole hearing, Dunn had completed 85% of the murder conviction and was approaching the three-year statutory minimum time for the armed criminal action charge.
A month before he was to go before the parole board, the department issued its revised guidebook for parole procedures. It required anyone serving a life sentence with eligibility for parole to serve at least 15 years, or half of what the statutes define as a life sentence.
Dunn was informed his hearing date had been changed to June 2036.
“I’d done the time that makes me eligible to be released, and they moved the goal posts at the last second,” Dunn said in a telephone interview from Jefferson City Correctional Center.
Dunn challenged the change but was turned down in Cole County Circuit Court, then lost again in his appeal.
In the interview, Dunn said he feels he has received the punishment he was due for his crimes.
“I have two granddaughters,” he said. “I don’t want anything special. I want to see my family, spend time with my mom while she’s still around, and my granddaughters, and just live a normal life.
“I’m not looking for an extravagant life when I get out here, I just want to get out of here.”
Fighting for release
Pointer is directly challenging his parole date calculation in Cole County, where he is being held, and in Jackson County, where he was sentenced.
In the Cole County case, Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe has been weighing his decision since April 24.
“It is simply shocking to the conscience that a state can, without consequence, require a prisoner to serve an additional 20 years beyond the maximum sentence imposed by the trial court’s judgment and sentence,” Gipson wrote in the petition in Jackson County.
The calculation is correct, Assistant Attorney General Andrew Clark argued in a filing in Cole County, “because his prior sentences were ordered to be served consecutively and he cannot receive credit for those offenses even though they were vacated and subsequently imposed concurrently.”
Hindsight provides a clarity that is not apparent as things are happening and for Pointer, the plea deal he was offered in 2005 to testify against Hall looks pretty good now.
“My oldest daughter, Monique, said, ‘Dad, I wish that you would have just taken the pleas that they offered you a long time ago,’” Pointer said. “Because if I would have taken the 20-year plea, I would have been gone, gone home, a way long time before now.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
