St. Louis NAACP leaders and black ministers believe the “biased” actions of a St. Louis circuit judge – and the special prosecutor he appointed – have put St. Louis residents’ public safety at risk.
In a March 13 letter, they asked the Missouri Supreme Court chief justice to remove Circuit Judge Michael Mullen and Special Prosecutor Gerard Carmody from their involvement in a grand jury case, regarding a former investigator for Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.
“It’s time to put aside politics, the good ole boy connections, the opposition to change and restore some semblance of impartiality and fairness to this ‘so called’ investigation,” according to the March 13 letter to Chief Justice Zel M. Fischer from the presidents of the St. Louis NAACP and Missouri Missionary Baptist Convention.
The grand jury investigation is reviewing whether Gardner’s investigator William Tisaby lied under oath last spring during then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens’ felonious invasion of privacy case.
Carmody, of the local law firm Carmody MacDonald, has ties to one or more of Greitens’ defense attorneys – who Gardner alleges threatened to “ruin” her if she tried to prosecute the former governor. Greitens’ lawyers denied the claim, according to the Associated Press. Mullen appointed Carmody as special prosecutor overseeing the investigation but did not require Carmody to complete a conflict-of-interest statement, according to a spokesman for the circuit court.
On Feb. 20, Mullen approved a search warrant that Carmody issued to seize Gardner’s email server and thousands of documents that Gardner said are not related to the Tisaby case. The release of these files puts people’s privacy at risk, Gardner said. On March 12, Mullen rejected Gardner’s motion to quash the search warrant and said in a hearing that he thought her office was “playing games.”
Gardner’s attorneys appealed within hours of Mullen’s decision. In the short amount of time it took for them to file the appeal, the police and Carmody seized the circuit attorney’s email server – knowing an appeal was underway, according to Gardner. The Court of Appeals ordered a halt on the search warrant that evening.
The letter from the St. Louis NAACP and ministers criticized Mullen for approving a search warrant that is a “seemingly boundless aid abet the ‘night riding’ tactics of opponents of the circuit attorney’s reform efforts.”
“Judge Mullen and Gerard Carmody have illustrated through their behavior that they cannot work past their bias that is driven by their past professional relationships and personal disdain for the circuit attorney to be fair and impartial in performing their duties on behalf of the people of the City of St. Louis,” the letter states. “Therefore, they should be replaced by the Court.”
Court rules prohibit Fischer from commenting publicly on the NAACP and ministers’ letter or even reviewing it outside of a court setting because the grand jury case is underway. Mullen and Carmody are not able to comment on the letter because of a gag order Mullen issued on March 5 for involved parties in the Tisaby case. The Court of Appeals ruled on March 12 that Gardner was not a party in the case.
St. Louis NAACP President Adolphus Pruitt told the St. Louis American that Gardner has shown strong leadership in dealing with misconduct in the police department, in promoting fairness and equity in the court, and in pushing forward progressive criminal justice reform.
“All of those go against the norm – and the norm being inequity for people of color,” Pruitt said. “She is fighting for the people who are marginalized. That brings us under unprecedented attack from who those want to keep the status quo.”
And while the vast majority of police are law abiding, Pruitt said, there are some who aren’t.
“Kim’s commitments in weeding them out of the criminal justice system, it rubs them the wrong way,” Pruitt said. “They have declared war on her and made no secret about it. It’s their intent to make sure she doesn’t get re-elected.”
In Gardner’s motion to quash the search warrant, she said that there is more to the investigation than the perjury charge – it is more pushback from the police department. Gardner, the first African-American woman to be elected to her position in St. Louis, ran on a promise to “reform a broken system,” the motion states. Since she began her term on January 1, 2017, she claims she has been under “a near-constant barrage of criticism” from the police department for her decisions, including to seek first-degree murder charges against former police officer Jason Stockley for the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. In August 2018, her office angered the police department when she placed 28 city officers on an “exclusion list,” based on the officers’ “veracity,” it states. Such lists, known as a “Brady list,” are commonly kept by prosecutors to protect the credibility of their witnesses.
Recently, the circuit attorney accused the police of obstructionwhen her investigators attempted to obtain a drug test from an officer who fatally shot and killed a colleague on January 24. Police Chief John Hayden angrily responded at a press conference saying that Gardner’s accusation was “insulting.”
“The department’s animosity toward the circuit attorney’s efforts resulted in the unprecedented appointment of this special prosecutor,” Gardner’s motion to quash the search warrant states. “Now, the unelected special prosecutor is using the warrant to usurp the power of the St. Louis-elected circuit attorney.”
Pruitt said that the community plans on showing who has the power – and it’s the people who elected Gardner. At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19, black ministers throughout the city and community members will gather at the West Side Missionary Baptist Church, 4675 Page Blvd., for an open prayer service for Gardner.
“Prayer is strong form of action,” Pruitt said. “And it’s the faith leaders’ way of preparing people for action after prayer.”
