ST. LOUIS • For a few moments Thursday night, as activists urged consolidation and law students spoke of their ideas for reforming the municipal courts, the setting seemed apropos.
In a courtroom of the Missouri Court of Appeals downtown, Scotland County Associate Circuit Court Judge Karl DeMarce queried the speaker in front of him:
“The question that keeps troubling me is why should the reform come from the top down? Why shouldn’t it come from the people themselves?” DeMarce asked, giving a public hearing on municipal court reform the distinct feel of oral arguments.
David Leipholtz, of the organization Better Together, which is urging consolidation, had a ready answer: The citizens no longer believe in this system, where 90 municipalities run 81 different courts and 29 mayors were last elected with 100 votes or less.
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The idea of some mandate to preserve the status quo, Leipholtz said, is “just not true.”
DeMarce is one of five members of a working group tasked with exploring changes beyond those addressed in this fall’s sweeping municipal court reform legislation. Thursday’s hearing was the second of three stops on a listening tour that will end in Kansas City in December.
The area’s municipalities have spent the last year under fire for abusive ticketing and court practices that disproportionately penalize low-income and African-American people.
The state’s top court has asked the working group to consider consolidation of the courts, as well as rule changes that would prohibit prosecutors and judges from serving in multiple municipal roles.
The group also is looking at arrests and incarceration on municipal violations, and enforcement issues that arise if you can’t use a warrant as punishment for nonpayment.
A final report is due to the court by March 1.
Unlike the first hearing, in Springfield, Mo., which was sparsely attended, the hearing in St. Louis drew about 70 people. Most who spoke were familiar faces in the reform movement. Their message: The current system cannot be fixed. Consolidation is the only way to restore justice.
Michael Jones, a lawyer, said that when he tells out-of-state lawyer friends about the system here “they look at me like I have horns coming out of my head.”
He urged the working group to prohibit the role-switching that an ongoing Post-Dispatch investigation highlighted, in which a municipal attorney can have five or six jobs as judge, prosecutor or defense attorney in several neighboring cities.
Activists with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment and Decarcerate St. Louis highlighted communities such as Pagedale, which have turned to code enforcement violations, in lieu of ticketing, to pad their budgets and skirt revenue limits established for municipalities.
A class action lawsuit has been filed over the issue.
“Municipalities are being very creative in finding new ways to pass along a poverty tax,” Rosalyn Brown of Decarcerate STL said in a press conference before the hearing.
Brown, 48, of Pine Lawn, said she had been arrested because of a political grudge, then slapped with 33 code violations — each carrying a $100 fine — on a home that she doesn’t even own.
Ultimately, she said, the charges were thrown out, but only once an attorney became involved.
Only three people spoke in favor of maintaining the current system. Two were judges.
Michael Gunn, the judge in Manchester, warned the group not to strip attorneys of their livelihood before determining whether a conflict existed.
Mark Levitt, Rock Hill’s judge, said enough remedies already existed to cap fines and curb ethical violations.
The two left after taking their turns to speak, about halfway through the hearing.
Jennifer S. Mann
Jennifer S. Mann is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Jeremy Kohler
Jeremy Kohler is an investigative reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
