With the 22nd Judicial Circuit essentially shut down, there has been very little to report.
Catherine Dierker came to her senses and has left the Circuit Attorney’s Office. She is now with the City Counselor’s Office.
Apparently, Kim Gardner has recently gotten 2 pieces of hate mail.
Interestingly, she released them as a campaign ad.
And, Robert Taaffe is going through serious jury-trial-withdrawal symptoms. Pray for him.
Stay healthy.
No, this is not a post about a Star Wars movie. It’s about the only chance we have to get a leader with competence in the Circuit Attorney’s Office. I had hoped that ex-judge Jimmie Edwards would run against Kim Gardner, but that never came to fruition.
As the filing date (March 31) for the City primary has come and gone, the only competent person who has filed for the job of Circuit Attorney is Mary Pat Carl.
I know that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement from me, but let me be clear: Mary Pat is a solid, competent prosecutor. Her main liabilities are that she was one of Jennifer Joyce’s insiders and Jennifer’s chosen successor (whom she endorsed in the last election). I’m sure Kim Gardner will use that, along with her patented they’re-out-to-get-me-because-I’m-a-black-female-reformer shtick, to try to frame the upcoming campaign as a choice between onwards-with-the-enlightened-reforms with Kim vs. go-back-to-racist-mass-incarcerations with Mary Pat. She will try to make it (literally) a black or white issue.
In speaking with Mary Pat, I can say that she does realize that times are changing and does embrace many of the reforms needed in our justice system. But I think at this point — at this point — reforms need to take a backseat.
The critical issue for this election is competence.
The sad truth is that the CAO is a shell of what it used to be. It’s a ship whose captain and officers are blatantly incompetent, and that is kept afloat only through the heroic efforts of its inexperienced crew. It’s a crime what Kim Gardner has done to the CAO.
But there is hope.
An election is coming, and a new captain at the helm can save the ship. So, I am asking people to send Mary Pat contributions to help save the CAO. That’s what this election really comes down to and what’s at stake: saving the Circuit Attorney’s Office.
Send your contribution to:
Friends of Mary Pat Carl, P.O. Box 21822 , St. Louis, MO 63109.
I’ve sent mine. Send yours now.
I wonder if all those judges who voted to get rid of centralized docketing in all criminal cases at the beginning of this year are now beginning to wake up to the advantages it offered the 22nd Judicial Circuit. Think how much easier it would be to resume operations post-COVID emergency if centralized docketing were still in place.
The St. Louis Circuit Court ruled yesterday that the Sunshine Law applies to Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. She can no longer keep secret her numerous contracts for legal representation, and must turn them over to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Oh, don’t think you’ll be seeing them soon.
There will be the inevitable appeal filed by Ms. Gardner. That will eat up a lot of time. Her appeal will eventually be denied — just as all the writs and appeals she has filed since taking office have been denied. Then she will ask for transfer to the Missouri Supreme Court. She will keep doing whatever she can to avoid following the Court’s ruling. She will fight it to the bitter, bitter end. That’s part of her standard operating procedure.
And as she fights the Court’s ruling she will tell the public — as she did in this article — that she has done nothing wrong and is cooperating. Her office in a statement about the Court’s ruling said that she has provided “the available requested documents as we do with all requests to our office.” If that were true, of course, then the Court would not have needed to issue an order; the issue would have been moot. If it were true, the Sunshine case would not have been ongoing for almost a year. If it were true, the contracts would still not be kept from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
This is precisely the same tactics we saw in her handling of the Greitens trial. There she hid evidence, failed to disclose evidence, and obstructed the defense and Court at every step while publicly proclaiming her innocence and victimhood. It ended with the Greitens case dismissed, her chief investigator indicted for perjury, and her reputation in legal circles in ruins.
The ironic part of this is that Gardner publicly described the Greitens defense team as using a “scorched earth” strategy.
The reality is, like in the Sunshine case, she fought her opposition every step of the way to prevent them from simply getting discovery that the law required to be turned over.
The Sunshine case is an outgrowth of Greitens. Ms. Gardner has entered into numerous contracts with private, outside law frims, from Washington D.C. to Kansas City, to help her deal with the problems she created for herself by her actions in Greitens. This includes issues raised during Greitens, during the subsequent grand jury investigation of her and her office and subsequent indictment of her hand-picked investigator Tisaby, her dealing with ethical complaints arising from her handling of Greitens, political lobbying, etc.
She understandably doesn’t want us to see what all these various law firms have been doing for her or how much it’s costing the taxpayers. That’s why she’s been fighting and will continue to fight the disclosure of these contracts. It’s not going to cast her in a good light. That’s why she wants to keep the public in the dark.
Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is in the news again.
This time the Missouri Attorney General (AG), Eric Schmitt, wrote a letter to Ms. Gardner asking for a list of inmates released from City jails due to the COVID-19 emergency. Apparently, AG Schmitt is concerned that alleged violent offenders have been released and that Ms. Gardner’s office has not taken appropriate steps to stop those releases (and in some cases have consented to them) and that proper statutory protocols, like notifying victims of the release, have not been followed.
The Attorney General’s letter is included in the news report.
Ms. Gardner responded with her own letter. The upshot of her letter is that the AG is acting on misinformation and questions why she is being singled out.
My take on all of this is that the AG got wind of potentially violent offenders being released in the City — not from Farmington or Scott County or even St. Louis County. Just from the City. So the AG looked into it and saw that indeed some persons charged with violent offenses, including some with significant criminal histories, were released. Ten of them were identified in the AG letter. So, the AG wrote Ms. Gardner of what appears to be valid concerns. That’s his job.
My question is: why won’t Ms. Gardner just provide the AG with the list of people released? Why not just say, “Here, these are the persons we released, and if you have any questions or concerns let me know and we can clear it up?”
I bring this up because it seems Ms. Gardner’s default position when questioned is to (1) vehemently deny any fault, (2) bring up how she is being singled out and take offense at any suggestion of impropriety (I’m the victim here, how dare you!), and (3) at the same time refuse to cooperate with anyone questioning her.
We saw this in the Tisaby probe by the Special Prosecutor.
Why not just cooperate? Be transparent. If the Special Prosecutor wants anything, tell them that your files are open. Come look at whatever you like. I have nothing to hide. If the AG wants a list of released inmates, give them the list. Give them the evidence that you’ve been doing your job. How isn’t that to your advantage? Let them see for themselves that you’ve done nothing wrong. If you haven’t done anything wrong, act like it. Don’t expect that they’ll simply take your word for it. That’s not how credibility works.
Ms. Gardner unfortunately continues to fail to realize a simple truth: your credibility is determined by your actions, not your words.
