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Politically Speaking: How 12 St. Louis residents will decide Gov. Greitens’ legal fate

Gov. Eric Greitens' defense team outside the Carnahan Courthouse in downtown St. Louis following a hearing. March 26, 2018.
File photo I Carolina Hidalgo | St. Louis Public Radio
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Gov. Eric Greitens' defense team outside the Carnahan Courthouse in downtown St. Louis following a hearing on March 26, 2018.

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum, Jo Mannies and Rachel Lippmann break down all of the developments in the legal and political saga of Gov. Eric Greitens.

This week’s episode zeroes in on St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison’s decision to have a jury, rather than himself, decide whether Greitens is guilty of felony invasion of privacy.

In the past couple of weeks, Gov. Eric Greitens asked for his felony invasion of privacy trial to be decided by a judge, not a jury. Greitens' team also wanted one of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s attorneys to be bounced  — and for the entire case be thrown out. Burlison gave his answer on Monday: no, to all three requests.

More:  Jury will hear felony trial of Gov. Greitens

Other topics on this week’s show include:

  • Whether Greitens is helped or hurt by a jury trial, especially since St. Louis has voted traditionally for Democratic candidates.
  • Questions about whether Burlison can be impartial in the case, since his former boss, Gov. Jay Nixon, belongs to a law firm that employs two of Greitens’ attorneys.
  • How Greitens’ campaign just released radio ads claiming that liberals are “hell-bent” on stopping the governor’s agenda. That feeds into the narrative that Greitens’ allies are floating that he’s been besieged by left-of-center enemies, even though the governor’s loudest critics have been Republicans.

Follow Jason on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Jo on Twitter: @jmannies

Follow Rachel Twitter: @rlippmann

Jason is the politics correspondent for St. Louis Public Radio.
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
Rachel is the justice correspondent at St. Louis Public Radio.

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