WARRENTON — It was late September and Judge Jason Lamb decided there would be no more delays.
Lamb is the presiding judge in the 12th Judicial Circuit, which includes Warren, Audrain and Montgomery counties. In Warren County in particular, there had been years of delays in cases, in part because Prosecuting Attorney Kelly King would overcharge and then refuse to work with defense attorneys on reasonable plea bargains.
Six or seven cases would be scheduled for trial on the same day; sometimes, none of them would move forward because the cases weren’t ready to prosecute.
The delays came to a head, with defense attorneys exercising their client’s right to a speedy trial. More often than not, those trials were still being delayed, often by King.
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So it would be on Sept. 25, when six cases were set for trial. One of them was for a woman named Brittany Nipper, whom I wrote about in August. For more than five years, she’s had the dark cloud of a felony domestic violence charge hanging over her head. She asked for a speedy trial. She had shown up for court only to have the trial canceled. Her attorney says there is no evidence to support the charge.
The weekend before the latest scheduled trial, King asked for another delay. In fact, she did so in five of the six cases scheduled for trial, explaining to Lamb in court briefs that only one — a second-degree murder case involving the death of an infant — would move forward that day.
Lamb said no. He told King to be ready to go to trial on all the cases. King, who is leaving the job voters elected her to do to take a job as a Missouri deputy attorney general, threw the equivalent of a legal temper tantrum.
She dismissed all the cases, including the murder trial. That case, involving the death of an infant in June 2015, is a stark example of how delayed justice in Warren County means no justice at all. The charges weren’t filed until three years after the baby died, allegedly from head trauma. King filed second-degree murder charges against Charles Anthony Holiday. He’s been in the Warren County Jail since November 2018, with the case never making it to trial.
King dropped the charges on the eve of trial and then almost immediately refiled them, re-starting the clock in the case. Holiday, who has pleaded not guilty, is still jailed. His attorney, Leah Chaney, successfully got the judge to issue a $50,000 bond earlier this month, in part because of the delays. Anthony, who has not been convicted, has been in jail for nearly five years.
When a court system is so clogged that it can’t move cases, it risks trampling the rights of defendants.
It also delays justice for victims, like the mom of a Warren County sex assault victim who complained to me recently about the ongoing delays. The woman’s daughter was 9 when she was assaulted and is 16 now. When I first wrote about her, there was no end in sight for the delays. That changed this month, when Lamb acted by appointing a senior judge — Richard Zerr of St. Charles County — to handle the case, which is now scheduled for trial on Dec. 20.
Other cases that had long been delayed also are finally moving through the system, in part because Lamb asked the to provide extra prosecutors and guidance for the people King left behind to handle the backlog.
“Judge Lamb called in late September asking for help,†said Darrell Moore, executive director of the prosecution services office, which provides training and other help to county prosecutors. “It’s like when the governor’s office called and asked us to help in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.â€
That, of course, was when former ºüÀêÊÓƵ Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner had created similar delays in the city — and often followed an identical practice to King by dropping cases on the eve of trial and refiling them. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey made statewide headlines by helping push Gardner out of office. In King’s case, he offered her a job.
But now that King is gone, defense attorneys who practice in Warren County — and Moore, a former elected prosecutor in Greene County — say things are starting to improve. There are cases, he says, where it’s obvious that plea bargains are necessary, and he and his fellow prosecutors are making the sorts of offers that will dispose of cases through guilty pleas to more appropriate charges.
“We will provide assistance and try to get the docket under control,†Moore says. “Many of these cases just needed attention.â€
Massive delays caused by prosecutor are affecting crime victims, woman says.Â