As someone running in his first political race, St. Louis Circuit Attorney, Gabe Gore, finds himself in an enviable position. He has no Democratic challenger in the primary. Because the city is overwhelmingly Democratic, he’s heavily favored to win in the general election.
Three days after former Circuit Attorney, Kim Garner, resigned from office, Gov. Mike Parson appointed Gore after 18 candidates, including five judges, applied for the position. He’s been in that position for approximately one year.
Since he’s not consumed in a heavily competitive contest, Gore instead seems to be focusing on informing voters of what he’s accomplished in a year’s time. That includes what progress he’s made in hiring more staff and wading through the huge backlog of cases awaiting warrants and/or pending homicide prosecutions.
Last week, Gore held a press conference at the Carnahan Courthouse to “update the community on the progress” he’s made and his “vision for the future.”
He also attended the St. Louis Board of Aldermen’s budget hearing recently, where he requested an additional $538,000 to boost staffing and efficiency within his office. He wants to hire an attorney specifically charged with combing through wrongful conviction claims; two data analyst people to help make “data-driven” decisions regarding prosecutions. Gore said he also wants to give retired Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice George Draper some help by hiring an attorney who’ll work full-time with Draper’s conviction integrity unit where he also serves as chief training officer.
Additionally, Gore asked for an increase in his annual budget to address antiquated office infrastructure which includes an upgraded IT system that will need significant maintenance, upgrades and security improvements.
During a brief conversation with the American, Gore succinctly described his first year.
“It’s a work in progress. It’s been good…things have gone as well as could be expected. We’ve made tremendous progress, but we still have a long way to go.”
Indeed. Gore’s major challenge when he took office was addressing an office severely understaffed, with attorney’s exiting fast, mostly due to the intense media scrutiny of Gardner. There were just 22 attorneys on staff when he took over.
During the press briefing, Gore stated that he’s made33 new hires, with plans to hire more and that he’s reduced the warrant office’s backlog from 6,700 cases to under 2,700—a 60 percent drop.
Although his office has prosecuted more than 1,000 cases in the second half of 2023 than Kim Gardner did in the same span of 2022, Gore emphasized that the caseload for his attorneys is still double what it was roughly 10 years ago.
Gardner reportedly resisted offers for help from attorneys outside her office. Gore, on the other hand, welcomed them. The US Attorney’s Office took 20 homicide cases and private sector attorneystook30 cases. “So,” Gore told members of the press, “we had essentially 50 cases that were handled outside of our office.”
When Gore replaced Gardner, there were 250 homicide cases pending. That number today, he said, is around 237. This leads to an obvious question: Why, with more attorneys than his predecessor, has the caseload only been reduced by less than 15 cases?
“Yes, I had help (that) she didn’t. In that first year,” Gore responded. “We had basically an extra fulltime homicide prosecutor that permitted us to move and resolve 70 homicide cases in one year. That’s a lot! But you have to take into account that those 250 cases that were pending when we got here represented a homicide caseload that didn’t reflect keeping up with making charging decisions on homicides as they were occurring.
“So, that 250 number was probably somewhat understated. We know that there were at least nine applications for warrants that hadn’t been reviewed and there were other investigations that were still being conducted. So, the cases we resolved were being replaced rather rapidly. So, the rate of prosecutions was faster.”
Gore added that the police department’s homicide division came to him with 20 additional homicide cases that they said were declined by the previous administration. He said police felt they had sufficient evidence to move those cases forward and they wanted to have them resubmitted to his office.
“We’ve been reviewing and working with them on that, seeing if there is additional investigation and evidence that can be developed to support the charges” Gore said, adding: “Already, that’s resulted in five additional homicide cases out of those that were previously declined.”
The help Gore received from the private sector and other agencies will soon be going away; he won’t have that in his second year. Therefore, the challenge, Gore asserts, will be trying to figure “out how to make it without that support going forward.”
He doesn’t paint a rosy scenario.
“We’re dealing with basically double the caseload. On the backlog, I tell people it’s not going to be (resolved) at the end of this year or the end of 2025. But we’re indicting more in a timely manner…we’re getting investigations done and making more charging decisions. But as we’re moving more (pending) cases, more cases are being added.”
Gore said he’s shifting into campaign mode even though he’s basically running unopposed. What’s more important, he added, is that the community knows what he’s done and what he plans to do in his second year in office
“We’re having an active campaign but it’s important that I’m out in the community so people will know they’re not voting for me just because I’m the only name on the ballot.
“I want them to have an understanding of what our office is doing and what I’m all about so they’re actively supporting our work in this office.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.
