Tony Messenger, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist, often writes about what he sees as the various injustices in the justice system. In 2019, he won — deservedly — a Pulitzer Prize for his “bold columns that exposed the malfeasance and injustice of forcing poor rural Missourians charged with misdemeanor crimes to pay unaffordable fines or be sent to jail.”
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/tony-messenger-st-louis-post-dispatch
I think he did us all a great service in bringing those practices to light.
As someone who has practiced and continues to practice in the criminal justice system, I encounter things almost daily in that system that can be criticized and could be improved. But, I also recognize that the issues surrounding many of those problems are complicated. Most of these problems are not as obvious to the casual observer or as simple to solve as that problem Messenger won the Pulitzer for reporting.
Messenger’s latest crusade has been focused on various persons who have been convicted of murder, who have maintained their innocence, and who have the support of a “reform prosecutor.” For example, he has championed the release of Lamar Johnson who was convicted by a St. Louis City jury of murder in 1995, who has maintained his innocence and has the support of the Midwest Innocence Project and our own reform prosecutor, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.
And to be fair, there does appear to be some significant questions regarding Johnson’s conviction — it was based on the testimonies of a single eyewitness and a jailhouse snitch, and now that eyewitness has recanted, other persons have confessed to the crime, etc. Messenger has reported on some of this.
One of my concerns is that Messenger hasn’t been reporting the full story. He is writing as an advocate — advancing his narrative that Lamar Johnson is innocent and that a corrupt and rigid system is conspiring to keep an innocent person in prison — and presenting only some of the available evidence to support that narrative. There is much more to the story. For just one example, he leaves out that Johnson’s innocence claims have already been reviewed and denied by both state and federal courts numerous times.
But a more serious concern I have is that Messenger appears to misunderstand the very foundational principle of our criminal justice system. For example, Messenger writes that he is appalled that a St. Louis City Circuit judge, then a Court of Appeals, and then the Missouri Supreme Court all denied a motion for new trial that Circuit Attorney Gardner filed on behalf of Lamar Johnson. He says this shows that the judges found that “[p]rocess . . . was more important than justice.” No, Tony, that’s not it — that’s not it at all. What the Supreme Court justices understand and what you apparently do not, is the that the process itself (“due process”) is justice, and not some individual result.
Kim Gardner in filing a motion for new trial in the Lamar Johnson case after 25 years was using the wrong process (going about it the wrong way). That particular motion has a very specific time limit (a maximum of 25 days after a verdict is rendered). When it was first filed by Gardner, literally every criminal defense lawyer I know thought it was either a legal blunder or some sort of political move or both. No one who understood the criminal justice system thought that motion would — or even could — be granted. It had to be denied. Moreover, a circuit court loses jurisdiction to even grant any motion 30 days after the judgment is final. Honestly, this was a no-brainer.
Yet, Messenger seems to think that we should just disregard the rules of criminal procedure in order to get the result we want. Stop and think about that. Think about the implications of that. That is not justice — that is the very antithesis of justice. It is mob rule. It is autocracy. I decide what is or is not justice. With that perspective, the rule of law goes out the window. While it might seem benign in this case (I want the person I believe is innocent released), what about the situation involving a person you think is guilty? Damn the rules? What do we need a trial for, can’t we simply trust Gardner to decide for us?
Due process is a safeguard against all of that.
Frighteningly, Messenger’s view of how the criminal justice system should work (result over process) also seems to reflect the views of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the self-proclaimed “minister of justice.” Her use of the motion for new trial is an example of how she wants courts to bend or ignore the rules to get the result she wants. Her present battle with the Office of The Chief Disciplinary Counsel to keep her law license stems, in my opinion, from this misguided result-oriented view of “justice.” She believed Greitens was guilty, and she wasn’t going to be bound by doing things (the process) the so-called right way (i.e., legally and ethically).
If Messenger had bothered to actually read the Supreme Court opinion in the Johnson case that he criticized, he would have seen that the judges were aware of the problems with the Johnson conviction, but they all recognized that the Circuit Attorney was using the improper procedure to challenge that conviction. One justice suggested the use of an already existing process (a writ of habeas corpus) and the Chief Justice himself wrote that the legislature might want to consider providing an additional mechanism for challenging troublesome convictions. Which is precisely what the legislature did — enacted a law to provide a process prosecutors can use to have convictions reviewed.
That’s the system working at its very best to provide more due process to citizens.
I just wish Messenger better understood the criminal justice system so that when he gets on his soapbox to right injustices he actually knew what he was talking about. When I read his opinion on legal matters, I often feel like I’m listening to a sports commentator that really doesn’t understand the game or its rules.
