ST. LOUIS — Recently retired Missouri Supreme Court Justice George Draper III is one of very few who have served at every level of Missouri’s current court system – and now, he’s returning to his roots in the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore announced during a news conference Tuesday that Draper has joined his administration. He will serve as the office's chief training officer.
“It is a rare honor to have a man of Judge Draper’s impeccable character and vast legal expertise return to his roots in this office to train our team,” Gore said. "He will provide our attorneys with an incomparable education that not only will promote excellence while they are in this office but also serve them well for the rest of their careers."
Draper worked in the office from 1984 through 1994 before he was appointed as the first Black associate judge in St. Louis County’s 21st Judicial Circuit.
“My initiation into the profession and service to our community was through this office, so this is a homecoming of sorts for me. I am excited to step into a new role as a mentor and help shape the next generation of trial practitioners,” Draper said.
He will begin his new role in the office on Oct. 23.
Former Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Draper to the state’s highest court in 2011, making him one of three Black judges to have ever served on the court. He served until September – retiring one day before he reached the court’s mandatory retirement age of 70.
Nixon is a member of the Dowd Bennett law firm, where Gore worked before Gov. Mike Parson appointed him to serve as the city’s circuit attorney following the resignation of Kim Gardner in May.
Draper is the latest former assistant circuit attorney Gore has added to his administration’s arsenal of seasoned prosecutors and judges to work alongside new blood.
Draper has spent his lengthy legal career addressing inequalities and advocating for racial equality on the bench and the bar.
During his State of the Judiciary address in January 2020, then chief justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri Draper talked about his racial heritage, saying he is the “great-grandson of a North Carolina slave girl and a union soldier on my mother’s side, and a dark-skinned Black man from Florida and third-generation German immigrant woman from New Jersey on my father’s side.”
During that speech, he recalled how his parents met in college at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and came to Missouri in 1949 so his father could teach at Lincoln, the “separate but equal law school the Missouri legislature had created a decade earlier for Negroes.”
“Then, and as chief of the criminal division in the attorney general’s office in the 1950s, he was prevented from dining in certain restaurants here in Jefferson City,” Draper told the assembly.
“While these reforms are important to improving our criminal justice system, one additional segment needs your attention,” he said. “I spent a decade as a prosecutor in the city of St. Louis, serving as first assistant in my last year before becoming a trial judge.
“In most of my cases and those of the prosecutors I supervised, opposing counsel was a public defender. Speaking from the perspective of both a former prosecutor and a former trial judge, I can tell you the system simply does not work without a sufficiently funded and staffed public defender system.”
Then, during a September 2020 address he gave during the first joint annual meeting of the Missouri Bar and the Judicial Conference of Missouri, he said, “It is my hope for people of color to be as overrepresented in our professions as they are in our prisons.”
Draper is married to former St. Louis County Judge Judy Draper. They have one daughter, Chelsea Westin Draper, who served as deputy chief of staff to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell before being appointed as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the civil division of the Eastern District of Missouri.
Here is a timeline of Draper’s career according to 5 On Your Side’s news partners at the St. Louis American:
- July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2021: Served as chief justice
- November 2012 retained at the general election for a 12-year term
- October 2011: Appointed to the Missouri Supreme Court
- July 2005 through June 2006: Served as chief judge for the Missouri Court of Appeals
- November 2002 retained at the general election for a 12-year term
- May 2000: Appointed to the Missouri Court of Appeals
- June 1998 Appointed as circuit judge in the 21st Judicial Circuit
- November 1996 retained at the general election
- July 1994 Appointed as associate circuit judge in the 21st Judicial Circuit
- 1984 to 1994: Office of Circuit Attorney, City of St. Louis, serving as First Assistant Circuit Attorney from 1993 through 1994
- 1981 through 1982: Law clerk, Judge Shellie Bowers, District of Columbia Superior Court