ST. LOUIS–A criminal justice legal system reform roundtable on “facing the challenges of today and building for the future” sounded more like a religious revival to support embattled St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner Tuesday night at Westside Missionary Baptist Church.
The event, which a spokesperson for her office said was scheduled before Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed suit in St. Louis Circuit Court to have Gardner removed, featured religious leaders and others, who alternately encouraged the audience to rally around and partner with Gardner’s office to address issues related to crime and the underlying contributing factors of it, including poverty and racism, while also calling out the effort to remove Gardner as a form of racial bigotry and character assassination.
Gardner’s office said the Circuit Attorney wouldn’t take questions from journalists due to the attorneyg litigation, but during the event Gardner herself made her most extensive comments about the matter, attacking Bailey as unelected, and other state officials, from Gov. Mike Parson to members of the state legislature, for lax gun laws and for authoring a bill that would allow for the naming of a special prosecutor to handle violent crime cases in the city.
“This quo warranto, what everybody is talking about, is baseless, it’s foolishness,” she said.
“It’s not about Kim Gardner, it’s about each and every one of you,” she said, adding that she plans to run for the office in 2024.
Last Tuesday, in a 121-page filing, the attorney general’s Office said Gardner has failed to comply with her discovery obligations to criminal defendants and their right to a speedy trial, refused to timely move for the disposal of evidence, “failed to appropriately fill vacancies and to staff her office to comply with her prosecutorial and administrative duties” in a way that “has created a toxic and dysfunctional work environment and unmanageable workloads,” among other allegations.
From the filing:
Since Gardner took office in January of 2017, "Respondent assumed office, 2,735 criminal cases have been dismissed by the court, excluding cases dismissed due to the death of the defendant...Of those 2,735 cases, the majority were dismissed due to Respondent’s failure to prosecute, her failure to comply with speedy-trial requirements, or her failure to comply with discovery obligations."
"For the years 2017 through 2020, Respondent either fired, or accepted the voluntary resignations, of at least 85 assistant circuit attorneys, which shows an extraordinary level of turnover caused by the toxic and dysfunctional work environment knowingly and willfully created by Respondent’s willful neglect or knowing or willful failure to properly manage her office."
Gardner and the moderator of the event, Redditt Hudson, a member of her staff, criticized media coverage of crime in St. Louis based off of police reports and she also blasted media coverage of turnover of staff in her office. She also said the attorney general’s process has been an attempt to intimidate those who work in her office.
Spectrum News reported last week that several attorneys in her office filed a motion to quash subpoenas in the matter, calling the requests for information "unreasonable, oppressive, overly broad, unduly burdensome, in violation of Missouri public policy, and nothing more than an inappropriate fishing expedition.”
City License Collector Mavis Thompson was the only elected official to speak besides Gardner Tuesday night. Thompson described the quo warranto filing “an extraordinary, extreme and virtually never-used process” which disenfranchises city voters.
Many of Gardner's elected allies have been critical of her in the wake of her office's handling of the case of Daniel Riley, an armed robbery suspect who repeatedly violated terms of his bond who is accused of being behind the wheel of a car in an accident that left a Tennessee high school volleyball player without the use of her legs. Gardner has said the court should be held accountable for not revoking Riley's bond, while the court record and the Attorney General's filings take issue with whether Gardner's office officially asked the court to revoke the bond.
Mayor Tishaura Jones, a once-close Gardner ally, has called for her to do some "soul-searching" about whether to remain in office, but has not called for Gardner's resignation. A Jones spokesperson said her office was not invited to Tuesday night's event.
Gardner has until April 11 to respond in court to the Attorney General’s updated filing.
Gov. Parson told reporters earlier Tuesday that Bailey has been “doing a pretty good job of presenting the case” for Gardner’s removal and that he’s been in touch with the mayor’s office about what would be in place in the event he has to name a new circuit attorney.
“I don’t think it’s going to catch any of us off-guard and again I’ll be working with St. Louis and the powers that be to see how we move forward, if that day comes…..we’ll be prepared for that. That’s not something I’m going to do on my own without getting input from the city of St. Louis,” he said.