St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabriel Gore says he has begun to build a prosecutor’s office that the city can be proud of.
“The office when I took over was a law office that was in distress,” Gore said Wednesday at a press conference marking nearly six weeks in office. “We have begun the process of restoring the office.”
Gore was sworn in as circuit attorney on May 30, after Kim Gardner resigned. She had been under fire for mismanaging the office, letting caseloads grow to a point that staffers faced contempt charges because they could not make court hearings.
The understaffing issues on the legal side had been well-documented. There were just 21 attorneys on the trial staff when Gore took over. None of them has left, and Gore has hired 14 other experienced prosecutors, for a total of 35. Dozens of attorneys from outside law firms, other prosecutor’s offices and the U.S. attorney’s office are also lending a hand.
“One thing I was very encouraged by is the dedication and the quality of the attorneys that were in the office,” he said.
But Gore said he had not thought as much about the state of the administrative and support staff side.
“I’ve been spending a tremendous amount of my time working on matters that aren’t visible to the public,” he said. “We’ve got huge needs in terms of IT infrastructure, for example.”
Caseload reductions
Gore said when he first took over, there were more than 4,500 cases waiting for charges to be issued and 250 pending homicide cases. By reopening the warrant office for the first time since the pandemic, he said, the number of cases in a status known as pending application of warrants is now around 2,000.
Partnerships have been key to stabilizing the office, Gore said. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has lent a staffer to run the warrant office, and other prosecutors from the county have made court appearances for the circuit attorney's office. Prosecutors from Franklin County and the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services are also helping issue charges.
Jane Darst, a member of St. Charles County Prosecutor Joe McCulloch’s staff and a former first assistant in St. Louis, is helping with the administrative side, Gore said. And the attorney general’s office has agreed to submit briefs in all cases where the defendant had appealed.
“This is exactly the type of collaboration that I knew would be necessary for us to begin rebuilding the circuit attorney's office. And I am happy to report that we have received it,” Gore said.
Getting the number of pending homicide cases down has been more of a challenge, Gore said. Attorneys from the private sector and the U.S. attorney’s office have agreed to handle up to 20 cases on a rolling basis, but assistant circuit attorneys are still carrying caseloads of 60 to 65 homicides.
“Right now, the attorneys are going above and beyond to carry these caseloads,” he said. “We’ve got to get the number of attorneys up to a level where we can have reasonable caseloads, and where we can be really effective on all our cases.”
Christopher Dunn case
Gore on Wednesday also explained why he chose to have a review conducted of the case of Christopher Dunn.
Dunn was 19 when he was convicted of the May 18, 1990, murder of Ricco Rogers based solely on the testimony of two adolescent boys who later recanted. In 2020, a judge in Texas County, where Dunn is in prison, ruled that “this court does not believe that any jury would now convict Christopher Dunn under these facts.”
But the Missouri Supreme Court has held multiple times that it will only recognize freestanding innocence claims in death penalty cases and refused to consider Dunn’s. Freestanding innocence claims are those that do not require an underlying finding that the defendant’s constitutional rights were violated in the process.
As one of her last acts in office, Gardner filed a petition to vacate Dunn’s conviction, saying there was clear and convincing evidence of his innocence. It is the same process that freed Lamar Johnson and Kevin Strickland.
But Gore withdrew the petition on June 8.
“I, on the day I was sworn in, had never undertaken such a review. I could not make those representations to the court. It was necessary and required that we withdraw the motion to vacate and that I conduct my own review,” he said.
Gore said he was honored that former Judge Booker Shaw, now at Thomson Coburn, agreed to conduct that review.
Rachel Wester, Dunn’s attorney at the Missouri Innocence Project, said she understood Gore’s desire for an outside review.
“We are very encouraged by the appointment of Judge Shaw, and we are confident that faced with all the facts and evidence that any independent review will find that Mr. Dunn is innocent,” she said.
