ST. LOUIS—Six weeks after taking over what he described as “a law office in distress”, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore told reporters Wednesday that prosecutors there still have an unsustainable caseload, but that the work to stabilize the office is well underway.

Gore was sworn in on May 30 as the full-time replacement for former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who resigned under pressure from the state legislature and a lawsuit from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey seeking her removal.

What You Need To Know

  • The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office is getting help from the U.S. Attorney's Office and prosecuting attorneys in St. Louis, St. Charles and Franklin counties

  • The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office would normally have roughly 60 attorneys on staff. By this fall there will be approximately 45

  • The office has 3,000 felony cases pending, not including homicides

  • Clearing the backlog of penidng warrants also means making faster decisions about whether or not charge a case. Gore says it is now the exception, not the rule, for a charging decision to wait more than a day

In a news conference Wednesday, Gore praised help coming from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Prosecuting Attorney’s offices in St. Louis County, St. Charles County and Franklin County and elsewhere, along with 14 attorneys hired since he took office. He was set to interview another potential hire Wednesday afternoon.

While the new hires have all come with previous experience, including at the Circuit Attorney’s Office, Gore hopes to hire a handfull of new attorneys out of law school this fall to build toward the future. He then expects to have roughly 45 attorneys on staff, still short of the full-strength number, approximately 60 attorneys.

Gore said the office’s homicide prosecutors are each still holding between 60-65 cases at a time, a figure he described as “unsustainable”, but said the unit was at a point where it had more lead time than it did when he arrived.

“You had trials coming up, you had cases pending and they were kind of coming at us fast and furious and we were having to deal with them and kind of triage. In just six weeks we’ve kind of gotten to the point where we are getting out ahead of it a bit more,” Gore said. Whereas prosecutors had days to prepare for a trial previously, it’s more like a month now, with the goal of a 2-3 month period.

Clearing backlogs

In addition to a backlog of 250 homicide cases pending trial, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office has 3,000 other felony cases pending. When Gore came on board, there were 4,500 warrant applications pending from police. Gore said 2,500 have been cleared in six weeks. In some cases there were duplicate applications. In others, the evidence or witnesses necessary to make a case were no longer there to move forward.

Gore hopes to have the remaining 2,000 warrant applications, which he said would require a more complex review, cleared by the end of the year.

To avoid future backlogs, Gore said the office moves to make faster decisions on charging cases the rule and not the exception.

“Currently, what we’re doing in our cases is we’re making charging decisions on cases on the day that they’re submitted. It is the exception, the rare exception where we take a case and take it under advisement and continue to consider it for more than just a day and submit it,” he said.

Christopher Dunn case

Gore this week announced that Booker Shaw, a former federal judge, will review the 1990 murder conviction of Christopher Dunn. Ahead of her resignation, Gardner petitioned the court to set aside Dunn’s conviction after witnesses came forward and said they were pressure to lie. 

Gore withdrew the motion after he took office. 

“I, on the day I was sworn in had never undertaken such a review, I could not make those representations to the court. Kim Gardner was no longer Circuit Attorney obviously so it was necessary and required that we withdraw the motion to vacate and that I conduct my own review,” Gore said.

2024

On the day he was sworn in, Gore said he didn’t want the distraction of thinking about running for the office in 2024 to keep him from focusing on the work at hand. He was appointed to fill the remaining of Kim Gardner's term. On Wednesday, it sounded like not much has changed on that front.

Gore said the work in getting the office to where he wants it to be “will never be done” but did take stock of the work done so far.

“In terms of returning the office to the place where we are once again an effective part of the criminal justice system in the city of St. Louis, I feel like stabilizing the office we are getting there. I feel like we’re close to being there already. I would certainly hope that by the end of the year we are there.”