ST. LOUIS — On Tuesday, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey will be in a St. Louis courtroom for the first hearing in the process of seeking to remove Gardner from office.
Judge John Torbitzky has scheduled a case management conference for April 18 and “all motions pending before the court at that time will be heard.”
Those motions include Gardner’s motion to dismiss Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s quo warranto petition.
Gardner is a progressive Democrat who became the first Black circuit attorney when she was elected in 2016. She served in the Missouri House of Representatives from 2013 until she was sworn in as circuit attorney in 2017. She won re-election in 2020.
In 2019, Gardner announced a new approach to reducing crime and increasing safety in the city. The changes included changes to the charging policy, alternatives to prison time and adjustments to bail and bond practices.
The quo warranto process is the latest in a long list of high-profile incidents for Gardner since she took office in 2017.
In 2018, she gained national attention when she charged former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens with felony invasion of privacy. Her office dropped that charge a day after Greitens announced he was resigning.
The ex-FBI agent Gardner hired to investigate Greitens was charged with seven felonies, including perjury and tampering with evidence.
William Don Tisaby, 66, entered a plea of not guilty to all charges. He was accused of intentionally concealing documents and information from Greitens' defense team, including notes he and Gardner took during their interviews with Greitens' mistress.
She also drew the ire of police leaders in August of 2018 when she developed an “exclusion list” of officers who can’t serve as primary witnesses because of unspecified credibility concerns, which is still active.
In January 2020, she filed a federal lawsuit claiming city officials and the police union are conspiring against her. The lawsuit alleged civil rights violations as well as violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit months later.
In July of 2020, Gardner filed charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey after the couple pointed guns at protesters in front of their home. Gardner referenced their case in campaign fundraising emails before and after issuing charges, which eventually led to her being removed from the case. The McCloskeys pleaded down to lesser charges in the case.
On Feb. 14, a judge determined Lamar Johnson should be exonerated for the murder of Marcus Boyd, an outcome Gardner's office had been supporting for years.
The good news for Gardner's office was short-lived, though. Less than a week later, a man who was violating house arrest crashed into a 17-year-old girl visiting St. Louis for a volleyball tournament. The girl's injuries were so severe that her legs had to be amputated.
The 5 On Your Side I-Team found that the man accused of causing the crash had violated his GPS monitoring 40 times and that his case was delayed multiple times.
As Gardner heads into a fight to keep her job, her office is down to just three prosecutors after another attorney resigned last week.
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