Reform Prosecutor Kimberly Gardner Wins St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Primary Election

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion that was regard­ed by many as a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner (pic­tured) beat back a chal­lenge by the circuit’s for­mer chief homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor, Mary Pat Carl. Election returns from the August 4, 2020, Democratic pri­ma­ry in St. Louis showed Gardner, the city’s first African-American Circuit Attorney, with 61% of the vote, while Carl received 39%.

The race was a rematch of the 2016 pri­ma­ry in which then State Representative Gardner launched her bid to restruc­ture the St. Louis City crim­i­nal legal sys­tem and reform its pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al prac­tices. Carl placed sec­ond to Gardner in a four-can­di­date field in that election. 

Gardner’s win in the 2016 elec­tion put her in a pio­neer­ing first wave of reform pros­e­cu­tors. She has said that she per­son­al­ly oppos­es the death penal­ty but would care­ful­ly review indi­vid­ual death-eli­gi­ble cas­es. She has sought the death penal­ty three times. In November 2017, she autho­rized the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of Cornelius Green and Philip Cutler in the alleged mur­der-for-hire of Green’s preg­nant girl­friend. In August 2018, she approved seek­ing the death penal­ty against Ollie Lynch Jr. for three homi­cides. However, no death sen­tences have been imposed in St. Louis City dur­ing her tenure as Circuit Attorney. 

In a state­ment released by her cam­paign after the elec­tion vic­to­ry, Gardner said that she would con­tin­ue her efforts to ​“trans­form [the St. Louis City Circuit Attorney’s] office into one that is focused on com­mu­ni­ty well-being and treats every­one with dig­ni­ty” and promised to ​“work every day for a crim­i­nal legal sys­tem that is fair and just for all of St. Louis.” 

“Tonight,” she said, ​“the vot­ers of St. Louis used their voice to send a mes­sage that they want to con­tin­ue on the path of reform we start­ed four years ago.”

Gardner has been in the van­guard of the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al reform move­ment and has faced back­lash from police unions, hard-line pros­e­cu­tors, and politi­cians who are opposed to her policies. 

In July 2019, after the Midwest Innocence Project and Gardner’s new­ly cre­at­ed Conviction Integrity Unit devel­oped evi­dence that Lamar Johnson had been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der, she filed a motion in St. Louis City Circuit Court seek­ing to over­turn Johnson’s con­vic­tion. ​“When a pros­e­cu­tor becomes aware of clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence estab­lish­ing that a defen­dant in the prosecutor’s juris­dic­tion was con­vict­ed of a crime that the defen­dant did not com­mit — the posi­tion in which the cir­cuit attor­ney now finds her­self — the pros­e­cu­tor is oblig­at­ed to seek to rem­e­dy the con­vic­tion,” she wrote. The court denied the motion and Missouri’s Attorney General is oppos­ing Gardner’s appeal, claim­ing that revers­ing the con­vic­tion would under­mine con­fi­dence in the courts.

In January 2020, Gardner filed a fed­er­al law­suit under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 charg­ing the city of St. Louis and its police union with try­ing to ​“intim­i­date, silence, and side­line her” for push­ing reforms like ​“an inde­pen­dent team to inves­ti­gate all police-involved shoot­ings.” The law­suit said that Gardner had been elect­ed ​“on a promise to redress the scourge of his­tor­i­cal inequal­i­ty and rebuild trust in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem among com­mu­ni­ties of col­or,” but that ​“entrenched inter­ests in St. Louis … have mobi­lized to thwart these efforts through a broad cam­paign of collusive conduct.”

In June 2020, Gardner received death threats after President Trump tweet­ed that it was ​“a dis­grace” that she filed crim­i­nal charges against a white cou­ple who stood out­side their home bran­dish­ing guns when Black Lives Matter pro­tes­tors walked by. 

Gardner’s sol­id vic­to­ry showed that the back­lash had not res­onat­ed among vot­ers in the heav­i­ly Democratic city. ​“We are proud of our first term achieve­ment but know there is so much more work to be done,” Gardner said. ​“I am thank­ful for all of my sup­port­ers and all of St. Louis, as we con­tin­ue togeth­er in this fight for a bet­ter, safer, more just tomorrow.”