Kim Arshi, one of the best and most experienced of the assistant circuit attorneys, resigned from the CAO Tuesday.
While she should have been enjoying maternity leave, her name was being dragged through the mud for repeatedly not appearing in court on a murder case assigned to her and having the ignominy of it being dismissed by a judge.
This whole mess, as it turns out, was not Ms. Arshi’s fault, and is certainly not a reflection on her conscientiousness. In fact, it’s doubtful Ms. Arshi even knew about this case because it was assigned to her after she began maternity leave.
The CAO, it appears, had been assigning cases to her while she was out on leave. Approximately 30 very serious felony cases, including a death penalty case, were transferred to her while she was away, knowing full-well that she wasn’t available to do anything on those cases. And, the CAO then didn’t even bother to take steps to provide court coverage on these cases!
While the press is just getting wind of this, many of the judges and practitioners in the 22nd Judicial Circuit were already aware this was going on. It is commonly believed that the cases were not assigned by the CAO to Ms. Arshi by mistake, but rather something more devious: these cases were being assigned to Ms. Arshi precisely because she was on maternity leave as part of a plan by the CAO. With the CAO being so understaffed, assigning cases to someone on maternity leave would effectively result in all those cases being placed on hold until Ms. Arshi returned, and so other assistant prosecutors would not have their workloads increased by having them parceled out to them. Presumably after Ms. Arshi returned, all those cases could then be reassigned to these other prosecutors, who would then be able to seek continuances to allow them time to prepare using the excuse that they had just been assigned the case.
That might seem like a clever tactic by the CAO to game the system except it deprives the accused of their rights to due process and to a speedy trial, and interferes with the administration of justice. Not to mention it throws one of their finest under the bus.
It seems like a good time to restart this blog. The courts are now beginning to open up following the Covid-19 pandemic closures, and that means things are happening in the 22nd Judicial Circuit.
Not that things ever stopped happening — lots of assistant circuit attorneys departed for various reasons over the last year, for example. I mention that specifically because “turnover” has been one of the CAO’s biggest problems since Kim Gardner took over leadership (and I use that word in an ironical sense) of the Circuit Attorney’s Office. Initially, Kim Gardner and her supporters used the turn-over-is-natural-in-a-new-adminstration excuse when almost every assistant trial attorney that was hired by her predecessor, Jennifer Joyce, left the CAO. When it was pointed out that some turnover was expected but that this level of exodus was unprecedented, Ms. Gardner blamed the attorneys who left: they just couldn’t work for a “reform prosecutor” bent on retooling the system. The fact that quite a few who left are now working in St. Louis County as prosecutors for another “reform prosecutor” belies that argument.
By my count, Kim Gardner has turned over her office at least three times in 6 years. There is presently no trial attorney left who was there before Kim Gardner took office.
If you Google “what are the signs of a poorly managed office,” you will see that the most prominent indicators are “employees fleeing” and “employee retention.” This only makes common sense: when employees are happy and satisfied with their work environment, they don’t leave. They leave, and in droves, when the workplace environment is toxic. The Circuit Attorney’s Office is a case study in poor management.
So what? You may wonder what’s the big deal if Kim Gardner is a terrible manager and runs a really poor office.
One result is you get murder cases dismissed by a judge because no prosecutor bothers — repeatedly — to show up to court or provide discovery to a defendant (as mandated by law).
It’s important to recognize, however, that the consequences of this level of turnover is not limited to a few isolated instances of attorneys not being prepared or not showing up. A more significant problem with turnover, one that isn’t as obvious or dramatic as the examples above, is the lack of knowledge and experience overall in the CAO. A good prosecuting attorney’s office needs skilled trial attorneys to handle cases, and that sort of skill is developed over time through experience. There is no shortcut. It takes, among other things, prosecutors who have prepared and tried many, many trials, typically by starting off with lesser felonies and progressing to more serious crimes as their experience grows. From that experience, they learn how to work up and prepare complex cases; how to cultivate and maintain relationships with witnesses and victims so that they will come to court when required; and, with time, will come to see “what a case is worth” (which takes into account the likelihood of conviction if the case went to trial, the sentence a judge or jury would impose if convicted, etc.) to allow effective and efficient plea bargaining. Without institutional knowledge and experience, all of that gets lost — and it translates into poor overall performance.
Another consequence of a toxic office environment is the effect it has on recruitment. Word has gotten out in the legal community of Kim Gardner’s ineptitude and the situation within the CAO. The CAO has been having a great deal of difficulty filling vacant positions. That office is routinely significantly understaffed. The CAO used to be, before Kim Gardner, the premier prosecutor’s office — an office that has produced some of the finest career prosecutors, a great many of whom moved on to the Attorney General’s Office or United States Attorney’s Office. It used to be an honorary distinction to have been an Assistant Circuit Attorney. Now, attorneys working in that office worry that it will be a stain on their resume.
I am not trying to denigrate the attorneys who presently work in the CAO. Personally, I have much admiration for them. They are working under awful conditions, trying to keep the ship afloat, overworked, with little guidance or assistance or training, and being poorly paid for their efforts. God bless them!
Unfortunately, things are not going to improve – not until there is a change in the leadership of the CAO. And that’s because all of the CAO’s problems stem not from the judges or the defense attorneys or phantom racists out to get Kim Gardner: they all stem directly from the management of the CAO by Kim Gardner.
