Veteran columnist Bill McClellan, a self-described St. Louis liberal, chides the recent “60 Minutes” portrayal of Kim Gardner as a progressive prosecutor who is bringing much-needed reform to a corrupt St. Louis system. Reality, McClellan assures us, is much more complicated than that.
“60 Minutes” reached out to an adversary of Gardner to present counterarguments to her public narrative. McClellan did no such thing. He has been quite clear about his sources: his own observations and those of his friends who were old hands in Gardner’s predecessor’s office, which happened to be the one Gardener was and is seeking to reform, and who quite understandably bailed out of the office, or were shoved out.
McClellan correctly notes that Gardner, as a first-time chief prosecutor, made some mistakes in her first high-visibility case against then-Gov. Greitens, which likely included the decision to prosecute the case in the first place. However, he doesn’t make the slightest inquiry into Gardner’s reasons for every other decision she made that he criticizes. No “repeated calls to Gardner were unanswered.” No advocate for Gardner’s new reform policies was interviewed or quoted. No identified African American St. Louisan was interviewed or quoted. No single decision that Gardner made was cited as reasonable or appropriate. No inquiry was made into whether there was any police or prosecutorial misconduct in any of the cases Gardner decided against prosecuting. No discussion of why there would be any need to reform the practices of the St. Louis City prosecutor’s office, or its judiciary, or its police department was ever had.
This is the “much more complicated reality” that McClellan assures us he is presenting to the St. Louis reader. The reform prosecutor movement is challenging and changing America’s criminal processing system in profound ways. These new criminal justice leaders are redefining the role of the prosecutor in the 21st century. They are trailblazers. They do not measure success by the length of a sentence, the number of convictions, nor the growing size of the prison and jail population. The St. Louis area is fortunate to have two of these new reform prosecutors in Wesley Bell and Kim Gardner. Like all public servants, they will make mistakes from time to time, particularly as they employ new strategies aimed at reforming provably failed criminal justice systems, all while enhancing the health and safety of every corner of the communities they represent.
For all of us, this is a new, challenging and complicated reality. It’s fine to talk to our friends about it, but we also need to begin inquiring, listening and learning from those who are forging this new reality. Their perspectives are just as important as ours, perhaps even more so.
The population of St. Louis City is now roughly 46 percent white and 46 percent Black. Gardner won her re-election in 2020 with over 60 percent of the vote. St. Louisans, particularly white St. Louisans, need to speak with people who look and think differently than them if we are ever going to break out of the awful groupthink straitjacket in which we’ve long been trapped.
Stephen F. Hanlon practices public interest and civil rights law, and is a professor of practice at Saint Louis University School of Law.