ST. LOUIS — New faces swept in to help mop up ºüÀêÊÓƵ courts on Wednesday, the first day in six years Kimberly M. Gardner was not the top prosecutor in the city.
Lawyers from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office walked the halls and sat at counsel tables, handling the daily docket of newly arrested defendants and watching over proceedings.
“It’s a new dawn breaking in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and across the region and state,†Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch.
Still, many of the problems from Gardner’s tenure remained.
In one three-year-old murder case, a staffer recently hired by Gardner as a special prosecutor told a judge he needed to dismiss and refile a murder charge for a second time because prosecutors weren’t ready to proceed.
Sturgeon Stewart, 51, was set to face trial next week in the deaths of two people during a 2020 home invasion. But prosecutor Rufus Tate said key DNA evidence had not yet been prepared by law enforcement’s processing lab.
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“In three years they haven’t run the DNA?†asked Judge Rex Burlison.
Tate responded that the lab was understaffed and had a backlog. Burlison appeared perplexed and shook his head.
Gardner resigned unexpectedly on Tuesday after months of pressure to step down. Her resignation left city and state officials scrambling to determine who would lead prosecutions in the city. Republican Gov. Mike Parson asked Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s Office to send staffers to help handle cases in the short term.
Parson later appointed his own general counsel to lead the office for a few days until Parson could name a permanent replacement. He expects to announce his selection before the end of this week.
Dismissing and refiling cases was a common tactic during Gardner’s tenure as a way to delay trials and move them to the back of the docket when prosecutors weren’t ready to proceed. Chronic understaffing left attorneys with crushing caseloads. Prosecutors regularly failed to turn over evidence and prepare prosecutions on time.
Gardner’s resignation also scuttled two legal efforts against her.
Late Tuesday, Judge Michael Noble dismissed an attempt to hold Gardner in contempt of court after her assistants failed to show up for a pair of hearings in an assault case. And on Wednesday Bailey dropped a lawsuit he filed in February seeking her removal.
“We accomplished (our) mission,†Bailey said in an interview.
But for defendants like Stewart and Charl Howard, 49, the dysfunction left over from Gardner’s tenure are still keeping them waiting for their day in court.
Howard was arrested Nov. 13, 2018, and charged with killing 71-year-old Gregory Stevens, who was found stabbed 38 times inside his Hyde Park home. Howard sat in jail for nearly four years while his case was delayed 25 times during the COVID-19 pandemic, then delayed again when prosecutors dismissed and refiled the charges in May 2022.
The case was set for trial again in December, but it was delayed once again. He was released from jail on bond, and he was set to face trial in April. But prosecutors at the last minute said they planned to call a new witness at trial. Defense attorneys argued the revelation “fundamentally changes the trial†and asked for more time to prepare.
At long last, Howard’s trial was set to begin Tuesday morning. But at 9 a.m., the courtroom was still empty. Attorneys were back in Judge Bryan Hettenbach’s chambers discussing how to proceed.
By noon, Gardner announced she was resigning.
Howard’s case was dismissed altogether, but prosecutors said they plan to refile it again. His attorney Brian Horneyer said Wednesday he hoped prosecutors would drop it for good.
“We are extremely disappointed that the state has chosen to delay this case for the second time,†he said. “Mr. Howard hopes the state will choose not to pursue this matter any further given the clear evidence of his innocence.â€
Stewart faced similar issues in court Wednesday afternoon.
He has been facing first- and second-degree murder charges, as well as charges of robbery, kidnapping, burglary and assault, since September 2020. Police said he forced his way into a home with an accomplice, Floyd Willis, then exchanged gunfire with someone inside the home. Both Willis and the the person inside the home, Roy Griffin, died.
On the morning six months ago when the trial was slated to bein, prosecutors dismissed and refiled the case because they weren’t ready to proceed.
Then, last week, prosecutors appeared in court again to say they weren’t ready to begin. Burlison, the judge, gave prosecutors two weeks to prepare. If they didn’t have the case ready, he said, it would be dismissed altogether.
But prosecutors beat Burlison to the punch on Wednesday. Tate said prosecutors planned to dismiss and refile the case once again, so Burlison couldn’t dismiss it altogether.
Stewart’s lawyer, Adofo Minka, had filed a motion to dismiss the case altogether, but the maneuver by prosecutors made that motion moot.
“I have no ability to stop the state from (dismissing) the case,†Burlison said.