April 7, 2016
We all need to do everything we can to ensure that every individual in every case in our system of justice is treated with respect and his or her case adjudicated fairly and impartially under the law. Until that is true in 100 percent of our courts, we cannot rest. Even a perception of justice denied anywhere should concern us all, no matter who or where we are.
— Missouri Chief Justice Patricia Breckenridge, State of the Judiciary Address, January 2016
Chief Justice Breckenridge provides the right framework for court reform that works. However, the Supreme Court’s Municipal Work Group report fails to convert her aspirations into reality. In reality, it will result in no meaningful reforms at all. Nothing will work, short of significant municipal court consolidation, making it capable of active oversight.
The recommendations of the work group rely on the good faith of the very bad actors who have created the present problem. Over the past 18 months, reports issued by the Department of Justice, the Ferguson Commission, Arch City Defenders, Better Together and St. Louis University have detailed St. Louis County’s broken municipal courts system. In vivid detail, these reports uncovered a court system utilized not to pursue justice but to pursue municipal revenue at the expense of justice.
Of the 35 recommendations of the work group, more than half primarily require the independent actions of individual municipal courts (11), municipal prosecutors (5), municipal law enforcement agencies (1) or municipal governments (2). These are the very same actors who the work group describes as being driven by “perverse financial incentives,” rather than the provision of justice. It is disheartening and illogical that the work group expects the reform to be effected by the very same actors who followed these perverse incentives in creating today’s crises. If these individuals and municipal bodies were able to prevent abuse of the courts, the work group would not exist.
Yet, it is worse than that. The work group points to the complete inability of the current actors and municipal bodies to implement and sustain meaningful reforms. For example, the work group calls for municipal courts to “comply with their obligations under the Missouri Constitution, state law, and Supreme Court rules” and for court personnel to be informed of “their obligations to collect only those costs, fees, and surcharges which are authorized by law.”
How can a system of courts that must be reminded to follow the law be entrusted with its own oversight? It cannot and it should not. It is not good practice and in practice, it has not resulted in justice. The 81 municipal courts must be properly overseen. They must be consolidated into a manageable, professional, full-time system.
The work group cautions the Supreme Court against consolidation, citing political concerns and reasoning that “from a long-term perspective, there would likely be a negative impact on the perception of the role of the judicial branch.” The St. Louis municipal court system is already perceived as predatory and mercenary. There is no place further down for that perception to go. It is a reality.
The court must do everything it can, as Breckenridge stated, “to ensure that every individual in every case in our system of justice is treated with respect and his or her case adjudicated fairly and impartially under the law.” Within the current system, this cannot be assured. The Supreme Court has the authority and responsibility to consolidate the municipal courts.
Opinion by Dave Leipholtz, Director of Community Based Studies at Better Together, appearing in the on April 7, 2016.