{"id":1485933,"date":"2022-05-20T13:30:17","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T17:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1485933"},"modified":"2022-05-20T13:30:27","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T17:30:27","slug":"no-justice-for-victims-defendants-may-walk-on-over-4000-solved-cases-while-st-louis-circuit-attorney-does-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/no-justice-for-victims-defendants-may-walk-on-over-4000-solved-cases-while-st-louis-circuit-attorney-does-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No Justice For Victims\u2019: Defendants May Walk On Over 4,000 Solved Cases While St. Louis Circuit Attorney Does Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">38<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fno-justice-for-victims-defendants-may-walk-on-over-4000-solved-cases-while-st-louis-circuit-attorney-does-nothing%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1485933&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-1027411000.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The St. Louis Circuit Attorney\u2019s office is sitting on over 4,000 solved cases \u2014 leaving thousands of victims and their families waiting for justice that may never come \u2014 according to a new report from local CBS affiliate KMOV.<\/p>\n<p>Josephine Cotton is one such family member \u2014 she lost her eight-month-old son Jyhaad to a drug overdose while the child was in the care of another relative. She says that authorities know exactly who was responsible for her son\u2019s tragic death, but Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has yet to bring that person up on any charges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was just heartbreaking to see my son lifeless at eight months,\u201d Cotton <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kmov.com\/2022\/05\/19\/victims-wait-justice-thousands-st-louis-city-cases-remain-limbo\/\">told KMOV<\/a>. Jyhaad\u2019s father, Joseph Cotton, echoed her sentiments: \u201cThey need to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cotton\u2019s case is just one of thousands \u2014 over 4,400, to be more precise \u2014 cases that are listed in the system as \u201cpending application of warrant,\u201d or \u201cPAWS.\u201d PAWS cases are \u201ccriminal cases St. Louis police have solved, IDed a suspect, and brought to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney\u2019s Office (CAO) for charges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the start of the pandemic, police officers would go to the St. Louis City courthouse themselves to apply for those warrants \u2014 but Gardner\u2019s office adopted an email system when COVID-19 began to spread and has not yet returned to in-person operations.<\/p>\n<p>KMOV reported that a tip led them to investigate a backlog in pending cases \u2014 and Criminology Professor Richard Rosenfeld said that even in the context of the global pandemic, the number was staggering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt needs to be addressed immediately,\u201d Rosenfeld told KMOV, saying that he had never seen such a failure to manage pending cases. \u201cNo justice for victims. I thought, this cannot be true. Can\u2019t be true. There\u2019s got to be a mistake here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rosenfeld reviewed the list of pending cases \u2014 which KMOV noted would \u201cspan the length of a football field\u201d if the pages were printed out and laid end-to-end \u2014 and said that even cursory glance showed that a number of them were serious felonies. And because no charges had been brought in even those cases, the alleged suspects had not been detained. Some of the cases date as far back as 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think the public is aware that there could be over 4,000 applications for warrants on some very serious offenses that are in legal purgatory,\u201d Rosenfeld said.<\/p>\n<p>KMOV reached out to Gardner\u2019s office and got only a brief statement in response claiming that staff \u201cwent fully remote to protect the safety of our staff and our police partners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The statement also claimed that the office was working to process the low-level offenses as quickly as possible in order to focus time and resources on the more serious cases.<\/p>\n<p>And while some might say that the backlog is the result of the office transitioning to remote work due to the pandemic, the problems in Gardner\u2019s office predate all of that. In 2019, police brought over 7,000 suspects to her office seeking felony prosecutions \u2014Gardner only took up 1,641 of those.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Why is crime proliferating, police recruitment\/retention down, cop morale sinking?<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49\ud83c\udffc Bail Reform and \u201csoft-on-crime\u201d prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p>St. Louis DA Kim Gardner: \u201cIn 2019, she prosecuted only 1,641 of the 7,045 felony prosecutions sought by the St. Louis PD.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SyfUVg4lHC\">https:\/\/t.co\/SyfUVg4lHC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JamesAGagliano\/status\/1524719326535856128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 12, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Gardner has made news several times since she took office in 2017 over an \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/news\/local\/crime-and-courts\/22-more-st-louis-police-officers-added-to-list-of-cops-on-prosecutors-exclusion-list\/article_56d644c6-e0a7-54ed-991f-64c51b30ac27.html\">exclusion list<\/a>\u201d kept by her office, to which she has periodically added. That list \u2014 which is not public \u2014 now includes the names of some 75 St. Louis police officers. Officers whose names are on that list, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/news\/local\/crime-and-courts\/another-15-st-louis-police-officers-added-to-top-prosecutors-exclusion-list\/article_ed63a124-4f75-523a-930c-b994e67fc6a0.html\">according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/a>, \u201ccannot seek charges against people they arrest, apply for search warrants or serve as essential witnesses in criminal cases.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And many suspected of committing crimes in St. Louis know exactly what is going on behind the scenes. KMOV reported that suspects are shrugging off arrests, telling police officers, \u201cOh, it\u2019s no big deal, I will just be PAW\u2019ed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd in fact, from our review of the list, there are some people who have been arrested, released, arrested again for a different crime and released again,\u201d KMOV reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The St. Louis Circuit Attorney\u2019s office is sitting on over 4,000 solved cases \u2014 leaving thousands of victims and their families waiting for justice that may never come \u2014 according<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1485944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1485933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1485944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}