St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner may be called to testify in the perjury trial of the investigator she hired in the 2018 criminal case against then-Gov. Eric Greitens.
Attorneys in the case against William Tisaby confirmed during a hearing Friday that Gardner plans to comply with a subpoena. She is listed as a possible defense witness.
Gardner hired Tisaby for the invasion of privacy case against Greitens, a former governor and current Republican Senate candidate, after she said St. Louis police refused to handle the investigation. The department has denied that allegation.
Tisaby was charged in 2019 with six counts of perjury for lying during a deposition with Greitens’ defense team and a single count of tampering for failing to turn documents over to those attorneys. Issues involving Tisaby led in part to Gardner’s decision to drop the case.
Tisaby’s attorneys have tried multiple times to have the case thrown out, saying that the charging documents, filed by a special prosecutor, were insufficient. St. Louis Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach again rejected that argument Friday.
“We’ve been through this a couple of years ago,” he said. “It might not have been a typical document, but it was not insufficient.”
Hettenbach is considering a second motion to dismiss that argues none of the things about which Tisaby is accused of lying related to the facts in the Greitens case and therefore could not have impacted the ability of the state or the defense to make their case.
The judge has promised a quick ruling on that motion. Jury selection is set to start Thursday, with a pool of 42 jurors. Each side will have an hour to question jurors before the attorneys meet with the judge to pick a panel. The trial is scheduled for the week of March 28.
Follow Rachel on Twitter: @rlippmann
