On Friday afternoon, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced her office had reached an agreement with former St. Louis Alderwoman Kacie Star Triplett and would not press criminal charges.
Triplett admitted to misusing between $8,000 and $18,900 in campaign contributions in a consent order filed February 26 with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
Joyce told The American that Triplett’s confession in the stipulation made her liable for prosecution of a misdemeanor offense. However, she said, Triplett has no prior record and there is no clear victim, since Triplett misused campaign funds, not public money.
In lieu of prosecution, Joyce got Triplett to agree to pay “$22,000 in restitution for breaking the community’s trust.” The Circuit Attorney’s Office is collecting the restitution and the money will go to the St. Louis Public Schools.
The agreement was signed on March 6, and Joyce said Triplett already started making payments.
An initial payment of $3,000 was received March 6, Joyce said. Subsequent payments of $550 monthly was first received March 28. Payments are considered late if not received by the 5th of every month.
“If she had not made these payments on time, today I would have been announcing that I was bringing charges against her,” Joyce said.
Triplett waved the statute of limitations clause, according to which many of her actions would no longer be punishable, so if she violates the agreement she could be prosecuted for a wider range of misdemeanors than if she had not agreed to restitution.
Triplett previously stipulated that she misused campaign funds to pay for the basics, as well as frills, of her personal life. She admitted to paying $4,450 in mortgage fees, at least $2,763 in “food, beverage and entertainment,” $1,925 in credit card debt, at least $1,068 in “salon and spa services,” at least $1,021 from miscellaneous stores, more than $1,000 in phone bills, more than $640 in students loans and more than $450 in utility bills from her campaign funds
She also took at least $4,284 in cold cash from the campaign committee.
“Regrettably, my mistakes resulted not from need, but from greed and selfishness,” Triplett wrote in an open letter in February, when her stipulation was first reported. “I fell into a behavior in which, if I desired something that I could not afford, I used my campaign funds to buy it. This was wrong.”
Triplett did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
