Sheriff’s Lawyer Tries to Quash Suit Against Him — By Blaming Sheriff’s Own Deputies

Vernon Betts’ deputies somehow failed to serve their own boss with key legal paperwork

Sep 28, 2023 at 6:30 am

RYAN KRULL

Sheriff Vernon Betts at the Carnahan Courthouse downtown.

Normally, when people sue someone in St. Louis, they hire the St. Louis City Sheriff’s Department to serve their target with the lawsuit — whether that’s directly handing the suit to them or to a representative who agrees to accept service on their behalf. The sheriff in St. Louis, like sheriffs around the country, is paid to perform that function by many private litigants.

But what happens if you hire the sheriff’s office to serve a lawsuit on the sheriff himself? As one prominent local attorney learned in recent weeks, that could complicate things.

Attorney Jerryl Christmas says he believes the office engaged in shenanigans with the lawsuit he filed. "I'm trying to get to the bottom of this," Christmas said.

Christmas is representing deputy Steve Chalmers in his discrimination lawsuit against Sheriff Vernon Betts. The suit alleges that Betts demoted Chalmers because he showed Betts insufficient political support — more specifically, that Chalmers didn't put out a single yard sign for Betts' re-election.

Betts was later caught in a recorded phone call referring to Chalmers by a number of racial slurs as well as saying the deputy "didn’t get out there and help me do what he should have been doing.” Audio of that call was released by the RFT in February.

Christmas filed the suit on Chalmers’ behalf last September. That month, Christmas paid to have a process server with the Sheriff's Office serve a summons to Betts. Typically, a deputy then goes out and serves the actual summons.

In this case, though, someone just popped the lawsuit in the mail — a process that is allowed, but only in very specific circumstances. And now Betts’ attorney is using the specter of improper service — improperly done, again, by Betts’ staff — to say the lawsuit against him cannot proceed.

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Assistant City Counselor Thomas Wahl, who is Betts' attorney in the matter, filed a motion arguing that the summons should be quashed because Betts was improperly served.

At a hearing Wednesday on the matter, Judge Michael Stelzer asked Christmas, "Why didn't you just have a process server drop it off?"

Christmas brought with him to court the paperwork and the receipts showing that he paid for Betts to be served the summons in the normal manner, by a deputy.

"Something is going on in the sheriff's office, which is a problem,” Christmas said. “I am just trying to figure out how I requested it this way, and then they in turn served him by mail.”

Judge Stelzer said that he didn't want to get into any potential impropriety by Betts' office but instead to focus on the argument raised by Wahl. The judge agreed that the lack of service to date is a problem and said that Christmas will now have to try again to serve the sheriff, either again attempting to use the regular channels or via a special process server.

"I don't know what they're doing in the Sheriff's Office," Christmas said after the hearing. "I think what it shows is that they can't be trusted."

He added, "No one can explain why the sheriff was served by mail. It's a mystery."

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RYAN KRULL

Attorney Jerryl Christmas outside the Civil Courts Building downtown.

Betts attended the hearing, and the RFT reached out to him for comment afterwards. We'll update the story if he responds.

Christmas told the RFT he can't help but wonder if the deputy who wound up tasked with serving their boss the summons feared retaliation for doing so — that Betts would shoot the messenger, so to speak. He theorized that fear may have led a deputy to put the summons in the mail, not knowing that it would have a big impact on whether the case could proceed.

For what it's worth, Chalmers alleges in his lawsuit that as retaliation for not supporting Betts politically, he was demoted from the Civil Process Servers Unit to the Security Unit.

"Serving process in the sheriff's office is a plumb job," Christmas says.