DANNY WICENTOWSKI
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.
The controversy surrounding increasingly embattled Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has scrambled political lines, with former allies calling for her removal and at least one fierce critic defending Gardner's handling of the case that sparked the maelstrom.
Over the weekend, 21-year-old Daniel Riley caused a car crash that left multi-sport athlete Janae Edmondson, 17, pinned between two cars. Both of her legs have since been amputated. Riley had violated his bond more than 50 times, but was still free.
Many city leaders and lawmakers have called for Gardner’s resignation. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones stopped just short of calling for Gardner to resign, saying yesterday that the circuit attorney had "lost the trust of the people" and "really needs to do some soul searching of whether or not she wants to continue as circuit attorney."
Jones said that Gardner needed to take accountability for where her office had faltered in the case.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has given Gardner until noon today to resign or else he says he will leverage a seldom-used state law to oust her from office. If Gardner resigns or is removed from office, Governor Parson would appoint a new circuit attorney for the city. (Jefferson City lawmakers were already considering legislation to give the governor power to appoint a special prosecutor for violent crimes in St. Louis.)
But not everyone thinks Gardner deserves the blame for Edmondson’s injuries. Riley's lawyer in the case is noted St. Louis defense attorney Terry Niehoff. Niehoff is no fan of Gardner's, writing in a recent blog post that she's incompetent and "has taken what was once one of the best prosecuting attorney offices in the state and through mismanagement reduced it to a barely functioning shell of its former self." However, Niehoff says in the same blog post that Gardner’s office is being wrongly accused of being responsible for Riley remaining on bond before his trial.
"This incident could very well mean the end to Kim Gardner’s stint as the Circuit Attorney for the City of St. Louis. And, if it does, the world will be a better place," Niehoff wrote. "However, I find it ironic that none of the genuine issues with her management has brought about her downfall, but what very well might is a situation where her office really did nothing wrong."
In fact, Niehoff wrote, the assistant circuit attorney who worked for Gardner did bring Riley’s bond violations to the attention of the judge — yet, after a bond hearing, the judge allowed Riley to remain free.
That echoes Gardner’s previous statement about the case, in which she blamed Judge Bryan Hettenbach for Riley being free on bond.
According to the statement, attorneys for Gardner's office asked that Riley's bond be revoked on December 12, 2021, but Judge Hettenbach denied the request.
When Hettenbach set the Riley case to go to trial in July 2022, prosecutor Natalia Ogurkiewicz asked for a continuance for reasons that Niehoff said on his blog were reasonable. A witness was not available to give testimony, and court records show that Ogurkiewicz was in trial for different cases the week before and the week after the date Hettenbach set. However, the judge denied the request for the continuance.
At that point, prosecutors dropped and refiled the charges against Riley — essentially starting the case from scratch with a new judge. On August 10, 2022, Gardner’s statement says, that judge allowed Riley to be released on bond despite the state's wishes otherwise.
However, a transcript of this August 10 hearing obtained by the RFT shows the judge asking Assistant Circuit Attorney Jonathan Phipps, "What does the state propose we do with Mr. Riley this time around?"
Phipps replies that he has reached a deal with Riley's defense attorney for Riley to be released on house arrest and GPS monitoring.
If Phipps made a case for Riley to be held in jail, the transcript doesn't capture it.
In interviews with the RFT, multiple assistant circuit attorneys were adamant that it is the responsibility of the judge, not prosecutors, to revoke defendants’ bond when they fail to adhere to the terms of the pretrial release.
"Who gave them bond to begin with?" asks an assistant circuit attorney. "It wasn't the prosecutor."
"All a prosecutor can do in respect to bond is make requests and recommendations," says another assistant circuit attorney.
As an example, one assistant circuit attorney cites a situation when a defendant is wearing an ankle monitor and ordered not to leave the house. If the ankle monitor registers a violation, a company called Total Court Service, which operates the monitors, emails court administrators, and prosecutors get a notification via Case.net about it. "We're the last party to find out when a violation has occurred," the attorney says.
The prosecuting attorney, who wished to remain anonymous, specifically criticized Hettenbach, saying that Hettenbach, unlike many other judges, automatically sets all cases on his docket to go to trial without first setting any hearings to determine if that is actually feasible. The attorney says other judges set a motion hearing two weeks prior to the trial's start date for all parties to conference, determine if relevant witnesses are available, and if a jury trial can proceed. "Hettenbach just picks a trial date," the prosecutor says.
According to the prosecutor, Hettenbach schedules multiple trials for the same date, a practice that emerged as a reaction to backlog issues created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But when this "cattle call docket" occurs, the prosecutor says, "it's a shit show."
A spokesperson for the 22nd Circuit Court says that the court is not commenting at this time.
A review of Hettenbach's current docket shows that he does have eight jury trials all set to commence on Monday, February 27.
Of those eight defendants whose cases are set to all go to trial on the same day, three of them have multiple violations of their GPS monitoring — more than 40 combined, with the bulk of those coming from Verzell Jones, who in May 2021 was charged with statutory rape.
Court records show that Jones was released on bond over the objections of Assistant Circuit Attorney Jonathan Phipps. A GPS monitoring device was placed on Jones, but between May 2021 and February of this year, 27 violations were recorded in Jones' case. There were an additional nine instances of a dead battery in the monitoring device, which one assistant circuit attorney tells the RFT counts as a violation of a defendant's bond.
Also scheduled to start trial in Hettenbach's courtroom the same day as Jones is Aquette Jackson, who is facing charges of arson and harassment. She has four GPS monitoring violations.
Assistant Circuit Attorney Scott Swiney sought to have Jackson's bond revoked in June 2022, writing in a court filing that Jackson "had still not complied with the new conditions and is considered a 'no show.'"
However the judge denied that request on July 25 when Jackson showed up to a hearing with her attorney but, according to court records, no prosecutor made an appearance.
Ward 16 Alderman Tom Oldenburg, who has called for Gardner to resign, tells the RFT that it's ridiculous to say that a judge is to blame in the Riley case.
"The courts don't have a documented pattern of a lack of oversight," he says.
Oldenburg is hardly alone in calling for Gardner to resign.
Ward 20 Alderwoman Cara Spencer and Ward 28 Alderman Mike Gras as well as many business leaders have called on Gardner to resign.
State Representative Rasheen Aldridge (D-St. Louis) called Gardner's handling of the Riley case, "The straw that broke the camel's back."
Gardner, elected in 2016, is no stranger to scandal. Calls for her to leave office began almost as soon as she assumed the role of circuit attorney — although before this week they came mostly from the political right.
When asked why this time is different, both UMSL political science professor Anita Manion and former Democratic primary candidate for attorney general Elad Gross cited Gardner's tone-deaf initial statement in the early days of the fiasco.
The statement her office released Tuesday said, in part, that it is "unfortunate that there are those who choose to twist the facts to take advantage of this situation for their own selfish motives."
Manion also cited the fact the victim, Janae Edmondson, was from out of town, and the case was drawing bad press both locally and nationally.
The reverend and activist Darryl Gray says he thinks something needs to be done to strengthen Gardner's office, but she shouldn't resign.
"I think that people in Jefferson City who want to take away control from Black elected officials are using this latest tragedy to divide the Black community," Gray says.
Gray believes the calls for her resignation stem in part from bills making their way through the state legislature to strip Gardner of her authority and appoint a special prosecutor to handle violent crime. He says there is a belief in the air that "if she resigns…that may make those bills go away."
However, Gray is skeptical of this thinking, in part because if Gardner resigns, the governor would nevertheless appoint her replacement.
"The GOP will be getting their way without a vote of the people," Gray says.
This story has been updated with additional information about the August 10, 2022 hearing referenced in the story.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that State Representative Raychel Proudie (D-Ferguson) called for Gardner to resign. Proudie criticized the February 21 statement put out by Gardner's office but did not call for her to resign.
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