Embattled
Democratic
prosecutor Kim Gardner is refusing calls to resign after a repeated bond violator allegedly ran over a teenage girl with a car and caused critical injuries resulting in “amputated” legs over the weekend.
Missouri
Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced his plans to oust Gardner, a St. Louis circuit attorney, on Thursday after she ignored his request to resign over “willful neglect” of her duties.
“On February 18, 2023, Janae Edmonson, a sixteen-year-old athlete, was walking back to her hotel in downtown St. Louis when she was run down by a speeding vehicle and lost both her legs. One was severed, and the other maimed. Ms. Edmonson survived the crash due to her father’s quick action and emergency medical training, but both of her legs were amputated,” Bailey
wrote
in a statement.
DEMOCRATIC PROSECUTOR OUSTED BY DESANTIS WILL NOT BE REINSTATED: FLORIDA JUDGE
The Republican attorney general said the driver of the vehicle, Daniel Riley, is a “dangerous gunman who should have been in jail” and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. He gave Gardner a 24-hour ultimatum on Wednesday to step down before filing a “quo warranto” suit for her removal.
Riley was charged by Gardner’s office in 2020 with first-degree robbery and armed criminal action for stealing a firearm from a victim at gunpoint, but such charges were later dismissed and refiled, but not before he committed “54 separate violations” of pretrial bond conditions, Bailey said.
“The Circuit Attorney dismissed and refiled that case on July 18, 2022, but not before Riley — who was out on bond — earned 54 separate violations for failing to comply with the pre-trial bond conditions. After the Circuit Attorney refiled the case, Riley earned 50 more violations. The Circuit Attorney never filed a motion to revoke Riley’s bond,” Bailey said of the Democratic prosecutor.
I was the first elected official to my knowledge to publicly call for Kim Gardner’s resignation…more than two years ago July 13th, 2020. Woke prosecutors have no place in our system of Justice. Blood is on her hands and it’s now much worse than then. #moleg pic.twitter.com/yWKX6WBp2n
— Ben Baker (@BenBakerMO) February 23, 2023
Bailey’s announcement garnered support among some Republican state lawmakers, such as state Rep. Ben Baker, who demanded in a tweet that the so-called “woke” prosecutor must resign. He previously called for her resignation after she took legal action against
Mark and Patricia McCloskey
, the couple who gained attention for waving firearms at Black Lives Matter protests during the St. Louis demonstrations in 2020.
Gardner, a former state representative, defended her office in a statement Wednesday, saying that “judges have the sole authority to determine the bond conditions of a defendant” and claiming that her office had “asked on several occasions for higher bonds” in Riley’s case but was denied.
“On Nov. 6, 2020, when the robbery case was filed against Riley, Judge Bryan Hettenbach released Riley on a personal recognizance bond with GPS monitoring,” Gardner said in a separate statement,
according
to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, though it appears her office did not present any opposition to the judge’s decision to place Riley on house arrest with a GPS tracker and curfew.
Gardner also said prosecutors asked for a bond revocation on Dec. 12, 2021, but that Hettenbach denied the request.
While the above claims from Gardner were corroborated by Riley’s defense attorney at the time, Terry Niehoff, her
added claim
that Riley’s robbery case was dropped and refiled because the victim died before trial appears untrue. A judge’s order from the day showed the victim was alive and present for the hearing and that prosecutors weren’t ready to proceed, and a local NBC affiliate
interviewed
the victim’s father, who confirmed his son is alive.
Gardner
said Wednesday
she is sending her “personal deepest sympathy” to Edmonson following the brutal injuries she sustained but contended Bailey’s ultimatum was a “political stunt.”
Her office’s apparent blame-shifting toward the judiciary is also stirring up problems over which judge would decide Bailey’s request to remove Gardner. City judges on Thursday asked to be excluded from making a decision over Gardner,
according
to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The state Supreme Court will decide whether to grant the request and appoint a judge from a separate jurisdiction.
Efforts to remove the Democratic prosecutor mirror similar instances in California, where constituents
voted to remove
former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D) after he faced criticism for being soft on crime.
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More recently, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) successfully led the effort to oust a Democratic state attorney for vowing to ignore certain abortion-related laws. A judge
ruled
last month to deny the former official’s request for reinstatement.
The Washington Examiner contacted Gardner’s office for a response.
