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St. Louis Jail Fills as Judges Get Tough on Bail | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

Published

2 years ago

April 12, 2023

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click to enlarge DOYLE MURPHY The City Justice Center on Tucker.

The jail population in the city of St. Louis is up 28 percent since the start of the year as judges are allowing fewer defendants to go free on bond in the wake of the firestorm that followed the maiming of Janae Edmondson downtown in February.

Daniel Riley, the 21-year-old accused of causing the crash that cost Edmondson her legs, was free on bond when he struck the 17-year-old, despite having violated the terms of his bond dozens of times. The Circuit Attorney’s Office and Judge Bryan Hettenbach came under intense public scrutiny, including from each other, for Riley not being in jail at the time of the crash. As a result, some activists and court watchers say that both prosecutors and judges are now afraid of the potential backlash that will come if someone they let free on bond commits a heinous crime.

“They’re competing to be tough on crime, both the circuit attorney’s office and the judges,” says Mike Milton, the founder of Freedom Community Center, an organization dedicated to restorative justice. “They are afraid of negative backlash. They know that the world is looking at St. Louis, looking at them right now.”

Milton says that his organization coordinates volunteer court watchers and monitors the rate at which judges grant defendants bond. He says he’s seen a “huge amount of bond revocations happening for the smallest of things,” including defendants being a few minutes late to a hearing or for miscommunication between a defendant and the third-party company that operates ankle monitors.

This tougher line, Milton says, inevitably means a more crowded jail. At the start of the year, the city jail had 484 detainees awaiting their day in court. As of Tuesday, there were 621 individuals detained in the jail.

Sarah Nixon is the pretrial organizer for Freedom Community Center and is often in court during bail hearings. She says that at the start of the year a number of reforms related to bail proceedings had been implemented in the city circuit court as it emerged from the way business was done during COVID-19. Detainees were being brought into court in person and given time to meet with pretrial services to complete a public defender application. They were better able to communicate with their defense attorneys and contest the arguments the prosecution was putting forth during bail hearings.

Nixon says she was at Riley’s initial appearance in court when he was allowed to remain free on bond.

“In that moment, I had no idea what I was witnessing would come to mean,” she says. “Since then, all of the progress that we’ve been pushing for has been rolled back.”

She describes what’s happened as “something that has just occurred in the background, quickly and quietly.”

According to court data, 65 percent of all initial bond hearings in February resulted in a judge denying bond of any type, up from 54 percent in January. March data is not yet available.

One judge, Michelle Woodiest, denied bond to about 53 percent of individuals who appeared in her courtroom at the start of the year. That number spiked to 90 percent in the later part of February and was at 78 percent for all of March, according to data from the Freedom Community Center.

Joel Currier, spokesman for the Circuit Court in St. Louis, said in a statement that the six weeks since the Janae Edmondson crash is too narrow of a time frame to draw relevant conclusions regarding bond hearings.

“The judges serving the 22nd Judicial Circuit’s bond divisions carefully review a variety of factors when deciding whether to release defendants awaiting trial in accordance with Missouri Supreme Court rules,” Currier said “The Court invites members of the public to observe the bond review process for themselves and always welcomes feedback.”

Nixon says she has heard judges explicitly refer to the Riley incident as the reason that they would take a tougher line on bond.

She adds that getting tougher on bond means denying bond to people who are highly unlikely to be a danger to the community. Nixon specifically cites the case of a single mother facing an assault charge who had no criminal history as well as the support of her family and her church but who was nonetheless denied bond.

After the public feud between judges and the Circuit Attorney’s Office about who was responsible for Riley being free on bond, Nixon says she’s seen plenty of examples of prosecutors going out of their way to be stringent in regards to bond — and making sure their doing so is clear in the record.

She recounts one recent instance when she saw a prosecutor file a motion to revoke the bond of someone who had not yet registered with the company that provides ankle monitor services. However, that person had yet to even be released from the city jail.

“The judge denied the motion to revoke the bond because the person hadn’t even been released. They were like, ‘This person hasn’t gotten released. Of course, they couldn’t get the GPS monitor.’”

She adds, “You’re seeing this almost wholesale rejection of bond by the prosecutor’s office.”

We welcome tips and feedback. Email the author at [email protected] or follow on Twitter at @RyanWKrull. Coming soon: Riverfront Times Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting St. Louis stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

Published

7 months ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

Published

7 months ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

Published

7 months ago

May 21, 2024

Natural Bridge

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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