The St. Louis Municipal Court adopted a new rule today to take into account people’s ability to pay when doling out fines for minor traffic and municipal offenses.
For months, activists and local attorneys from public interest law offices have urged the courts in both St. Louis City and St. Louis County to establish payment plans and fine alternatives. The idea is to help keep impoverished residents out of a cycle of debt due to minor offenses, such as parking or speeding tickets.
Professor Brendan Roediger, with the Saint Louis University Legal Clinics, said the city’s court and elected officials reached out to the clinic for reform suggestions, and they listened.
“It’s wonderful,” Roediger said. “I think it demonstrates that some of this can be fixed quickly.”
However, the municipal county courts have contended that making such changes to the court system will be a “hard, long process,” he said.
“The city is serving 10 times as many people as the municipal courts,” he said, “and it managed to do it rather quickly and in a common sense way.”
The administrative order, entered today by Presiding Judge Gordon Schweitzer of the St. Louis City Municipal Court, gives judges the ability to determine the fine payment and payment schedule for municipal violations based on offenders’ ability to pay.
The St. Louis Municipal Court has a special needs docket, payment plans, and alternatives to fines and incarceration, like community service, for people who cannot afford to pay. Judges will not impose the fine payment date for four weeks, allowing defendants to receive another paycheck before having to settle their debt with the court. Judges may also allow additional time for a defendant to make payments.
In the county, a reform committee – headed by attorney Frank J. Vatterott, a municipal judge in the City of Overland – is currently reviewing similar ideas to implement in the municipal courts.
According to Thomas Harvey, executive director of the Arch City Defenders, the current bench warrant system in the region leads poor residents into a “black hole” of court debt. First, they get tickets for traffic or other minor infractions. Since they can’t pay them, they don’t go to court for fear of getting thrown in jail – subsequently getting warrants for failing to appear. Having warrants, they can’t get jobs, drivers’ licenses or sometimes aid from homeless shelters, he said.
“The fines should not be as high as they are, and they should proportioned to income,” Harvey said. “You wouldn’t have near as many problems as you have now.”
Harvey has presented the idea of holding a hearing to consider evidence of a defendant’s ability to pay fines and court costs prior to assessing fines.
In the municipal courts, Vatterott said this was unrealistic.
“If we held a hearing on whether or not they could pay, that would… we just can’t do that,” said Vatterott, in an October interview with the St. Louis American. “It would take 10 times as long in court. These are people’s courts. If everyone had a hearing, you would be there until 5 a.m.”
In most St. Louis County municipal courts, the judges and prosecuting attorneys are part time, and they only come to the court for a few hours each month. Roediger said one of the benefits of having full-time court judges is that it prevents the excuse that there isn’t enough time to give appropriate punishments. Roediger said he personally supports a unified judiciary with full-time courts, judges and prosecuting attorneys.
“It’s their job to follow the constitution,” he said. “That raises the question whether you should have court for only two hours each month.”
Under the constitution’s equal protection clause, it states that people can’t be incarcerated due to their inability to pay, he said. “To prevent that is to take the time to figure out the ability to pay for each individual,” he said.
Jeff Ordower, executive director of Missourian for Reform and Empowerment, said he hopes the city’s rule will help set a precedent in all of St. Louis County. He believes the municipal courts have the ability to make this change as well, despite their common resistance to the idea.
“Judges are getting paid,” he said. “They should be running a court. It’s a question of whether you believe courts are places of justice or are places that just collect fines from people who can’t pay.”
St. Louis City Mayor Francis G. Slay said the point of police issuing tickets is to change behavior, “not break the bank for poor and working class people.”
“A $100 fine for someone working a minimum wage job is a real burden,” Slay said in a statement. “For them, the punishment far exceeds the severity of the crime.”