Yesterday Judge Noble dismissed two murder cases with prejudice (i.e., charges cannot be refiled) because the CAO had failed, after repeated orders to disclose and several years of delays, to provide required discovery to defense counsel.
This follows on the heels of the acquittal of three men just the day before who were charged with two murders. In that case, Judge Sengheiser had excluded the CAO from introducing into evidence various jail calls and other messages that inculpated the defendants, and permitted the defense to argue adverse inferences of the prosecution’s failure to investigate possible Brady material, including the victims’ phones and their Facebook posts.
And, all this comes after the Circuit Attorney herself, Kim Gardner, agreed to accept a reprimand from the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel for egregious discovery violations in the only case she has personally handled!
WTF is going on?
The CAO is a mess, and Kim Gardner created the mess. She took over what was at that time the top prosecutor’s office in the state, and with her “reforms” and lack of leadership, reduced it to a shadow of its former self.
As an ex-prosecutor, I know that the job of an assistant prosecuting attorney is difficult. A prosecutor needs good training, and that comes primarily from on-the-job apprenticeship (working with good, more-experienced prosecutors). But Ms. Gardner has fired or forced out all the career prosecutors, who were the backbone of that office, and who provided the institutional knowledge necessary for the successful operation of the CAO. The trial staff at the CAO are trying to figure things out as they go with really no guidance.
A prosecutor needs to work in concert with and to be supported by the police and other law enforcement branches (the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Office of the Attorney General, etc.). Yet Ms. Gardner has alienated those agencies whose assistance is essential for the successful operation of the CAO.
And a good prosecutor can only handle so many cases competently. In many ways, a caseload is a juggling act — you are trying to keep so many balls in the air. As the number of balls increases, it becomes more and more difficult to not drop one. The trial staff at the CAO is now a bit over 50% of what it was during the Jennifer Joyce era. The trial workload of the assistant prosecutors in the CAO — and particularly those with serious felony caseloads — is almost unfathomable. (And, it makes one wonder where the money allocated for the staff that isn’t there has gone. To pay Ms. Gardner’s outside legal expenses?). This only leads to burn out (how many murder cases can Chris Desilets try back-to-back?) or balls being dropped.
The point of my rant is that all the problems with the CAO stem from Ms. Gardner. She created the shit show, and her assistant trial attorneys are the ones who have to work the best they can knee-deep in it.
An assistant circuit attorney at work.