Editorial: Municipal courts charge $100 for Christmas gift of fake amnesty

Since the Aug. 9 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, St. Louis has become much more aware of a variety of problems with its patchwork of 81 different municipal courts, many of which exist primarily to raise money for cities to afford police departments and bolster other city services.

In turn, the police departments keep the courts full of fine-paying customers. The system supports a thriving industry of traffic lawyers, bondsmen, city prosecutors and municipal court judges, some of whom wear different hats depending on the court they’re working in.

Because black drivers are disproportionately stopped for traffic offenses, many of the defendants are poor and black. Some of them have been — and continue to be — jailed basically because they can’t afford fees stacked upon fees for warrants and underlying traffic and other municipal offenses.

That’s why cities and courts in St. Louis are talking about warrant forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a virtue. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. What’s happening in the 65 municipal courts participating in their warrant forgiveness is wrong in nearly every way possible.

In courts participating in this year’s program, defendants can get their outstanding warrants wiped out for $100. In part, the program is coordinated by the St. Louis Municipal Court Improvement Committee, a group run by the same cabal of municipal judges, prosecuting attorneys and city attorneys that have ignored conflict of interest and constitutional protections for our region’s most vulnerable citizens for decades.

This is a system where the attorney facing the judge in one court might have to deal with the same person as a prosecutor the next day in a different jurisdiction. Will one transaction affect the next? It’s impossible to know. The conflicts run rampant.

The fox is watching the henhouse.

Let’s do the math. There are about 250,000 outstanding warrants in St. Louis County. If the courts were to collect $100 for each one of them, they would reap $25 million from the very citizens whose rights the courts have been regularly violating.

Yes, the muny court industry is pretending to show that it has learned its post-Ferguson lesson by seeking $25 million from poor people. However, while the warrants would go away, the underlying charges that caused them to have to come to court in the first place would remain.

Never mind the region’s history of racial profiling, which is well-documented.

Never mind truly giving people a fresh start.

There is cash to be made here while pretending to reform.

What a joke, and not a very funny one.

Contrast the efforts of the 65 St. Louis County municipalities with the warrant forgiveness program underway in the city of St. Louis. In the city, until the end of the year, warrants can be wiped out — for free — as long as a citizen shows up to set a new court date for the underlying ticket.

See the difference?

Wiping the warrants out for free is a recognition that at least some of them are likely the result of a broken system that preys on the poor. The ideal warrant amnesty program would be modeled on the court settlement for people who received unconstitutional red-light camera tickets. The tickets and the charges are wiped out. Some people who actually paid a red-light camera ticket can even get a refund.

Imagine that. If you live in Arnold or Ellisville or Clayton and got a ticket for being caught on camera running a red light, you may have a refund coming. But if you’re poor and black and live in Vinita Park or Dellwood or Ferguson, for a cool $100 your warrants can go away, but you will still owe later for a ticket that may or may not be specious.

The municipal courts in St. Louis County fall under the jurisdiction of the Missouri Supreme Court. Despite pressure from a group of St. Louis University law professors and the nonprofit legal advocacy group Arch City Defenders, the Supreme Court has yet to take serious action to bring the courts into compliance with the state constitution, returning their mission to one of justice, and not serving as an ATM for cash-strapped cities.

There is no better time for the court to act than now, before the municipal courts pull their latest oppressive trick, offering a Christmas gift of amnesty to people who have to pay $100 to receive it.