Missouri Judge Denies St. Louis City Prosecutor’s Request for Outside Prosecutors to Handle Death-Eligible Cases

A St. Louis Circuit Court judge has denied St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner​’s (pic­tured) July 2021 request for spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle three death-eli­gi­ble homi­cide cas­es in her juris­dic­tion. On October 15, 2021, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Hogan wrote that the con­flicts cit­ed by Gardner’s office in its request for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor were not ​“dis­qual­i­fy­ing” and there­fore that ​“the Court has no author­i­ty to appoint a special prosecutor.”

Gardner was elect­ed in 2016 and re-elect­ed in 2020 on a plat­form of crim­i­nal legal reform, includ­ing reduced use of the death penal­ty. She has said that she is per­son­al­ly opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and would care­ful­ly review indi­vid­ual death-eli­gi­ble cas­es. In her request for out­side spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle the three death-eli­gi­ble cas­es, Gardner blamed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for caus­ing court and tri­al delays and work­loads that were unman­age­able giv­en cur­rent staffing lev­els and exper­tise. Gardner argued that the sit­u­a­tion had cre­at­ed ​“an unten­able back­log of seri­ous cas­es requir­ing imme­di­ate atten­tion by experienced attorneys.” 

The court found that this did not con­sti­tute a ​“dis­qual­i­fy­ing con­flict” and that the more appro­pri­ate course of action for the prosecutor’s office would be to seek assis­tance from the attor­ney general’s office. ​“This appears to be the prop­er mech­a­nism to pro­cure assis­tance for a pros­e­cut­ing attorney’s office that has no con­flict of inter­est but is unable to han­dle its case­load, due to the pan­dem­ic, staff turnover, or any oth­er rea­son,” Hogan’s order said. ​“To this court’s knowl­edge, how­ev­er, the cir­cuit attor­ney has made no request for assis­tance … to either the gov­er­nor or to the attorney general.”

“Disqualification is a ​‘dras­tic response’ to con­cerns that may be bet­ter addressed by case man­age­ment tools, espe­cial­ly giv­en the prosecutor’s statu­to­ry duties to com­mence and pros­e­cute the case,” Hogan wrote. ​“The Court finds that the pur­port­ed ​‘con­flict’ cit­ed by the Circuit Attorney is not a dis­qual­i­fy­ing con­flict under the Rules of Professional Conduct, and the Court has no author­i­ty to appoint a special prosecutor … .”

In a blog post, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty crit­i­cized Gardner’s actions as a way to main­tain her pro­gres­sive rep­u­ta­tion while still seek­ing the death penal­ty against Black defen­dants. ​“CA Gardner was elect­ed to rep­re­sent the peo­ple of St. Louis City,” the group said. ​“Her pur­suance of the death penal­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly upon Black men, does not rep­re­sent the peo­ple of St. Louis City. Despite this, CA Gardner con­tin­ues to try to hand death tick­et­ed cas­es to the AG and his office, who have con­tin­u­al­ly been proven unsuc­cess­ful, cost­ly to the peo­ple of St. Louis City, and re-trau­ma­tizes co-vic­tims of horrific crimes.”