On the verge of re-instituting jury trials, the City is back to Phase 1 after two employees, one in the Civil Courts Building and the other in the Carnahan Courthouse, tested positive for the virus.
While the courts take a step back from opening, Governor Parson is trying to do a run-around Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. He believes that Gardner is not doing enough to combat violent crime, and is trying to get a resolution passed that would allow the Attorney General’s Office to have “concurrent jurisdiction” in homicide cases. In other words, the AG’s Office would essentially take over the prosecution of murder cases in the City.
Ms. Gardner, continuing her successful poor-Kim narrative, claims this is all a political, racist, and sexist plot against her and her reforms.
In all this chaos associated with the 22nd Judicial Circuit, I am reminded of a lesson from Book 1 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Chaos, he wrote, might be the best possible starting point for anything worthwhile.
The City of St. Louis spoke yesterday. We are going to get four more years of Kim Gardner. And, I’m not happy.
I chronicled many of the problems with Kim Gardner’s running of the CAO on my blog. I contributed a substantial sum of money to Mary Pat Carl’s campaign. I was also the treasurer of a Political Action Committee (PAC) that was trying to remove Kim Gardner. I did everything I could to get the word out about Ms. Gardner’s performance.
Yet, she was re-elected. A lot of well-meaning people voted for her because they want justice reform and she ran on a reform platform.
There was a lot of misinformation disseminated by dubious sources praising Ms. Gardner’s reform efforts. For example, someone calling themselves a “civil rights and criminal defense attorney” wrote this piece on the eve of the election:
Sounds like Ms. Gardner is doing a great job, doesn’t it? And, the praise coming from a “civil rights and criminal defense attorney” makes it seem more credible. But, as a real criminal defense attorney for the past 30 years, and as someone who is in the city courtrooms every single day that they’re open, I’ve never laid eyes on Ms. Merta. As far as I know, her only courtroom experience is when she was held in contempt of court, jailed for two days, and ordered to pay $775,000.00 to her old law firm for essentially stealing copies of that firm’s client files and refusing to return them. Oh, she’s also been to bankruptcy court because she later declared bankruptcy to avoid paying the $775,000.00.
Not only is her claim of being a “civil rights and criminal defense attorney” questionable, so is her understanding of the Lamar Johnson case. Her recitation of the evidence in that case appears to be a rehash of old Tony Messenger stories. I wonder if Ms. Merta knows that Lamar Johnson has had numerous appeals, post-conviction motions, and habeas corpus petitions filed in both state and federal courts. And, that the courts have repeatedly examined his innocence claims, along with all the evidence, and found his claims to be not persuasive. Any argument can sound good if you ignore all the contrary evidence and only present your favorable evidence in the best light possible.
And, that’s true of candidates too. If you don’t hear from credible sources the true information about a candidate, how can we expect a voter to make a sound decision?
People in the courthouse know what kind of job Kim Gardner has been doing, people who have worked for her know, elected officials know, everyone in law enforcement knows, any observant person around the courthouse will know. But, that knowledge did not get out to the public.
Why?
I think there are many reasons the people who know haven’t been publicly talking –and, they’re all self-serving reasons. I don’t blame the voters for re-electing Kim Gardner; I blame the people in the know who said and did nothing.
Tomorrow, August 4, 2020, is the primary election in the City. It will determine who is going to be the next Circuit Attorney. Please get out and vote. Elect Mary Pat Carl. End the madness.
