The legal roundtable reconvened this week with St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and plenty of local and regional topics to discuss. On the docket for local news: unconstitutional red light cameras, dual investigations into the shooting of Mansur Ball-Bey and eleventh-hour charges against Ferguson protesters and journalists. In national issues, the panelists covered the shooting of two Virginia reporters and arguments that U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s takedown of Todd Akin was illegal—and asked, should prosecutors be elected or appointed?
Dual review of officer-involved shootings
The St. Louis city police and the circuit attorney’s office continue to scrutinize the shooting of Mansur Ball-Bey—simultaneously.
Until she accepted then-police chief Dan Isom’s request to independently perform investigations of police misconduct, Joyce said, police shootings in the city were investigated solely by the department’s internal affairs division. When her office accepted that responsibility, it investigated instances of police shootings or excessive use of force after police investigations had concluded. It was the way her office investigated the deaths of VonDerrit Myers Jr. and Kajieme Powell, she said—following the police department’s initial internal inquiry.
With the death of Ball-Bey, however, Joyce decided to change that policy and conduct the investigation of the shooting concurrently with police. “It’s been over a year since Mr. Powell was killed, and that’s just too long,” she said.
Joyce said she recognizes that in the current climate, the community wants answers to officer-involved shootings quickly. She insisted that though her office now prizes speed, it does not sacrifice meticulous and thorough investigation.
“I don’t know that there is any benefit, really, to waiting until the police are finished, and there’s lots of reasons why we might want to get that done faster,” Joyce said. Witnesses are more likely to talk early in the investigation; there is less time for witnesses to forget or alter details of the event; and it gives the media, attorneys, and police union fewer opportunities to spin the story.
“I think it’s important that whenever we have police officers accused of wrongdoing or in a situation where they have used force in a way that has injured or killed somebody, that we have an outside entity or person review the circumstances of that to make sure that no crime was committed by the officer,” Joyce said.
At the same time, she noted that her purview as city circuit attorney is limited: though her office investigates allegations of police misconduct when they are brought to attention, bigger reforms in officer training or department policies are the responsibility of a civilian review board.
“It’s outside of my scope to say, you know, ‘this was a lawful shooting, but the training was wrong.’ My scope is very narrow: was a crime committed, and is there evidence to prove it?”
A stop sign for Missouri’s red light cameras—for now
Many must have cheered when the state Supreme Court struck down St. Louis’ red light cameras, declaring them unconstitutional. But Bill Freivogel said not to get too excited: the decisions on St. Louis and St. Peters cameras read like a guidebook for how red light cameras can be constitutional. So they’ll likely be back soon.
Mark Smith, meanwhile, spoke to common driver grievances: “I know people are saying, ‘oh, we’re doing this for safety,’ but it seems like a clear revenue generator.”
No vote needed for stadium
Early this month, circuit judge Thomas Frawley denied that voter approval was necessary for funding St. Louis’ hypothetical new football stadium with tax dollars. In the ruling, Frawley declared that the initial city ordinance was “too vague to be enforced,” Freivogel said.
“The way I read it is: that’s out. That whole requirement of a vote. It’s not just out in this instance—it can’t be enforced.”
Since the ruling, a number of legislators have declared that they won’t appropriate money for any bonds for the stadium. That may be a problem for Gov. Jay Nixon, who strongly backs the riverfront stadium plan, down the line—but for now, Nixon has shrugged off criticism.
Eleventh-hour Ferguson charges are legally justified, but questionably timed
The decision to file charges against Huffington Post and Washington Post reporters for trespassing, and against protesters for interfering with police activity, is legal, said the roundtable panelists—but badly timed.
Joyce said there were two issues to consider: First, why charge the reporters on the last possible day before the statute of limitations ran out? But second, why should reporters be exempt from laws simply because they are reporters? “They’re not that special,” she insisted.
Freivogel agreed, to an extent. The first amendment doesn’t protect anyone—including journalists—from violating another general law, like trespassing, he said. “But, you know, this is a time when it really makes sense to just, I think, take it a little bit easy if you’re the prosecutor.”
Speaking of prosecutors—should they be elected? Joyce gives a hearty “yes”
The legal roundtable also touched on a recent Daily Beast article on the danger of electing prosecutors. The author indicated that 95 percent of America’s elected prosecutors are white and argued that because prosecutors behave somewhat differently during elections, seeking more convictions and tougher sentences, perhaps the U.S. should rethink that arguably democratic practice.
“Oh, I thought the article was really, really lame,” Joyce said as the panelists pointed out several inaccuracies.
“I think it’s really important for prosecutors to be elected,” she continued, noting that appointment has its own set of ethical dilemmas with which government has to contend. “I’ve been doing this for over 15 years now and there’s been many times in my tenure that I’ve had a difference of opinion from the mayor as to what action should be taken, whether it’s to prosecute someone or to not prosecute someone.” If she had been appointed by city government, she said, those decisions would inevitably have been influenced by her relationship to the mayor.
“Everything I do makes somebody mad. That’s just the way it is.” But, Joyce said, she is held accountable and made vulnerable by elections, when voters, if they do not like her, can force her out of office.
She said that one of the best ways to alleviate the underrepresentation of minorities in prosecutorial positions would be to encourage more African Americans to become lawyers.
Amendment 5 and felon-in-possession laws not in conflict
Voter approval of Amendment 5, which broadened gun rights on paper in Missouri, did not change the substance of Missouri’s laws limiting gun ownership in the case of convicted violent felons. In fact, panelists said, voter approval of Amendment 5 didn’t change much of anything.
The Missouri Supreme Court upheld Amendment 5 last month but preserved the felon-in-possession laws already on the books, Freivogel said. Those restrictions were already subject to strict scrutiny, the toughest constitutional test in government—requiring a “compelling government interest” to which the law must be narrowly tailored.
Joyce was not happy with the amendment itself, saying that it did nothing to weaken the state’s restrictions on gun ownership—and thus was rather pointless. “Why are we amending the Constitution for no reason? As an attorney, that kind of offends me. I don’t think you should amend the Constitution unless you have a really good reason to do so. It shouldn’t be window dressing, it shouldn’t be political purposes.
“We’re going to see what the Supreme Court does, but hopefully they’ve painted themselves into a corner, legally, where it’s going to be difficult for them to strike our current felon-in-possession law,” she said.
Smith agreed with Joyce that Amendment 5 had been a futile exercise, but considered it par for the course for the legislature. “One of the frustrations with the Missouri legislature is that we’ve got some real problems in Missouri that need the attention of the legislature. And instead, they spend a lot of time…making sure sharia law does not get imposed in Missouri.”
St. Louis on the Air discusses issues and concerns facing the St. Louis area. The show is produced by Mary Edwards and Alex Heuer and hosted by veteran journalist Don Marsh. Follow us on Twitter: @STLonAir.