Chapter 4

St. Louis County Municipal Courts, For-Profit Policing, and the Road to Reforms

Thomas Harvey and Brendan Roediger

Ferguson has been described as a microcosm of modern inequality and injustice in the United States.¹ If this is true, the St. Louis region is rich in microcosms. In St. Louis County, Ferguson is simply one of dozens of virtually identical predatory localized criminal justice systems. These municipalities routinely and disproportionately stop, charge, fine, and arrest the poor and people of color. Moreover, these municipalities often unconstitutionally close courts to the public and incarcerate people for failure to make monetary payments without providing them counsel. These destructive policies not only disrupt families, they push the poor further into poverty; prevent the homeless from accessing housing, treatment, and jobs they desperately need to regain stability in their lives; and violate the Constitution.

Other ongoing violations of the most fundamental guarantees of the U.S. Constitution in St. Louis County municipal courts include denial of counsel, denial of pretrial release, and the operation of de facto debtor prisons. This destructive system has existed for decades, prompting municipalities to structure budgets around court fines while attorneys profit and the poor suffer. The St. Louis region is just now, in the wake of the tragic killing of Michael Brown, beginning the task of examining and reforming these practices.

The Structure of St. Louis County Police Departments and Courts

A detailed and comprehensive description of the municipal structure of St. Louis County and its historical development is beyond the scope of this chapter. It is a tragic and sordid history, from the Reconstruction Era split between the county and the city to the present. To this day, St. Louis City remains a completely independent “charter city” with no legal relationship to St. Louis County and its 90 municipalities.² By and large, each St. Louis County municipality, Ferguson included, was founded and incorporated as a segregated community.³ State law encouraged this proliferation of independent political entities with minimal state oversight by requiring virtually no prerequisites to incorporation.

As a result of this history, St. Louis County is now home to 90 distinct municipalities but only 58 independent municipal police departments.⁴ The vast majority of these police departments are not accredited nor meaningfully monitored by state government.⁵ Incredibly, in October of 2014, in the midst of a nationwide movement demanding police accountability and vigorous local debate over police training and oversight, the small St. Louis County municipality of Flordell Hills formed yet another St. Louis County police department. Just three miles from Ferguson, Flordell Hills is home to approximately 800 residents.⁶ On the first official starting day of the Flordell Hills Police Department, an officer was arrested by the St. Louis County Police Department for the theft of prescription drugs from an evidence locker.⁷

The vast majority of St. Louis County municipalities have their own municipal court. As of 2015, there are a total of 81 independent municipal courts.⁸ These are courts of “limited jurisdiction,” hearing only cases involving violations of the municipal ordinances of the village or city in which the court sits. These municipal ordinances are largely duplicative of state law, meaning that most unlawful activity can be charged either as a state misdemeanor offense or a municipal ordinance violation. The discretion to charge unlawful activity as a state or municipal offense is left primarily to municipal police officers at the time of arrest or citation. Fines resulting from municipal ordinance violations are paid into general revenue for the municipality. Fines resulting from state offenses are paid to the state school fund. For obvious reasons, municipal police officers overwhelmingly choose to charge individuals with municipal ordinance violations.

The position of judge or prosecutor in these municipal courts is a part-time position. In most municipalities, judges and prosecutors are hired directly by the mayor, with the consent of the city council or village trustees. Although 81 of the 90 towns have their own court, there are not 81 different judges and 81 different prosecutors for each of these towns. Only 55 people work as judges in the 81 municipalities that have courts.⁹ Similarly, although there are 81 prosecuting attorney positions available in St. Louis County, only 54 different people fill those roles.¹⁰ Many attorneys and firms serve multiple roles, with some serving as judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. Some are full-time prosecutors for felony and misdemeanor cases during the day and municipal judges during the evening. These conflicts not only run contrary to best practices, they are normally prohibited by the judicial cannon. Missouri has exempted part-time judges from those portions of the cannon and has developed no specific standards for prosecutorial conflicts.¹¹

Not surprisingly, these courts do not reflect the communities in which they sit or the defendants brought before them. Of the 55 judges serving in St. Louis County municipal courts, only five are African American.¹² Of the 54 prosecutors, only seven are African American.¹³

The Municipal Court Experience for Defendants

All 81 St. Louis County municipal courts are part-time courts. Some meet only once per month while others meet weekly. The vast majority of court dates or “docket calls” are in the evening. These evening sessions are designed to process as many cases as possible, most often through guilty pleas. Often times there are more defendants scheduled for court on a given night than the space could conceivably accommodate. It is not uncommon for defendants to wait outside for significant periods of time before being allowed to enter the court, including during winter months where temperatures are commonly below freezing.¹⁴

It is difficult to adequately describe the typical night court session in St. Louis County. As mentioned, many of the villages, towns, and cities have no adequate space to hold court. Court sessions are held in police stations, gymnasiums, closed elementary schools, and even a church basement. Many of these courts are within walking distance from one another. On one stretch of Natural Bridge Road (a major east-west road in St. Louis County), you can drive through eight towns in just three miles and be subject to the jurisdiction of each of those courts. This means that if you have expired license plates, you run the risk of being cited for that infraction eight times within a span of three miles. One town, Charlack, is so small that “its police department, city hall, and jail are all contained in one modified single-family house. In fact, you can stand on the front lawn of the Charlack City Hall, look across Midland Boulevard, and see the Vinita Park City Hall across the street.”¹⁵

When faced with a traffic ticket or other petty offense, a middle-class person will typically resolve it by hiring an attorney and paying fines. If a person has the means to hire an attorney, that attorney enters his or her appearance and requests a recommendation for disposition of the charge from the prosecutor. In these situations, the prosecuting attorney almost always recommends that the charge be amended from a moving violation (such as a speeding ticket) to a nonmoving violation (such as littering) upon the payment of a fine and court costs that go directly to the municipality. For a simple speeding ticket, an attorney is paid $50–$100, the municipality is paid $150–$200 in fines and court costs, and the defendant avoids points on his or her license, as well as any possible increases in insurance costs. The process works for those with wealth: the attorney is paid for easy work, the town profits from the fines, and the defendant maintains a clean driving record. Often, neither the attorney nor the defendant even attends court. However, if a person cannot afford an attorney or pay the fines, prosecutors do not make any amendments and the outcomes are markedly different.

In contrast to middle-class people, people living in poverty can neither afford an attorney nor pay a fine. When faced with a traffic ticket or other petty offense, many poor people often end up pleading guilty, taking a conviction, having points assessed, and owing money. While some courts allow payment plans, others require immediate payment of all fines and costs. If a person cannot pay the amount in full before the court date listed on a ticket, he or she must appear in court again. Furthermore, under state law, failure to pay a fine within the time dictated by the municipal judge results in an automatic license suspension. The inability to pay the full amount, transportation issues, or the inability to secure child care or a night off from work can often lead to missed payments. Missed court dates and payments lead to an arrest warrant. As a result of the automatic license suspension, the next police stop likely results in incarceration on the arrest warrant and a new charge of driving with a suspended license.

Civil Rights Violations in St. Louis County Municipal Courts

Although indigent defendants routinely inform the court that they are unable to hire a lawyer or pay fines due to their poverty, few municipalities provide lawyers for those who cannot afford counsel. As a result, unrepresented defendants commonly plead guilty without knowing that they have right to consult with a lawyer. Defendants are also sentenced to probation and to the payment of unreasonable fines without a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver of their constitutional right to counsel. The lack of counsel also eliminates any meaningful adversarial testing of the cases that come before a court. Individuals routinely plead guilty to offenses such as “sagging pants” or “manner of walking” that would never pass constitutional muster. These pretextual stops that are the hallmark of racial profiling are never challenged.

Under existing Missouri law, defendants are entitled to a hearing to determine their ability to pay if they raise the issue of their poverty to the court.¹⁶ Further, prior to any finding of contempt or revocation of probation for failing to pay, defendants are again entitled to an inquiry into their ability to pay. In Bearden v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that courts are required to make an affirmative finding that a person has the ability to pay a fine before it may impose incarceration for a person’s failure to pay.¹⁷ Despite the clear legal requirements, these hearings rarely occur. As a result, defendants are regularly incarcerated for their poverty. In fact, the practice of incarcerating debtors is at the core of the St. Louis County municipal court system. Individuals are threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement at the mercy of local officials until their frightened family members can produce enough cash to buy their freedom or until officials decide, days or weeks later, to let them out for free. As previously mentioned, no municipality holds court on a daily basis, and some courts meet only once each month. A person who cannot pay the bond and is arrested on a warrant in one of these jurisdictions may spend as much as three weeks in jail waiting to see a judge.

Conditions of Incarceration

Once locked in jail, impoverished people owing debts to municipal courts endure grotesque treatment. Imprisoned persons report the following:

• Defendants are kept in overcrowded cells and denied toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap.
• Holding cells smell of excrement and refuse and walls are smeared with mucus and blood.
• Women are not given adequate hygiene products for menstruation.
• Defendants are unable to change clothes and are without access to laundry. They are forced to wear the same underwear for weeks on end.
• Defendants endure days and weeks without being allowed to use a shower that is covered in mold and has gnats emanating from the drain.
• Defendants must step on top of other inmates, whose bodies cover nearly the entire uncleaned cell floor, in order to access a single shared toilet.
• Defendants huddle in cold temperatures with a single thin blanket even as they beg guards for warm blankets.
• The food has virtually no nutritional value and inmates lose significant amounts of weight.
• Defendants suffer from dehydration out of fear of drinking foul-smelling water that comes from an apparatus on top of the toilet.
• Defendants develop illnesses that go untreated and ignored as well as infections in open wounds that spread to other inmates.
• Defendants are routinely denied vital medical care and prescription medication, even when their families beg to be allowed to bring medication to the jail.
• Defendants must listen to the screams of other inmates languishing from unattended medical issues as they sit in their cells without access to books, legal materials, television, or natural light.
• Perhaps worst of all, defendants have no knowledge of when they will be allowed to leave or see a judge.

These physical abuses and deprivations are accompanied by other pervasive humiliations. Jail guards routinely taunt impoverished people when they are unable to pay for their release, telling them that they will be released whenever jail staff “feels” like letting them go. Jail guards also routinely and pervasively laugh at the inmates and humiliate them with discriminatory and degrading epithets.¹⁸

The “Muni Shuffle”

The “muni shuffle” is a term used locally to describe being transferred from one town’s jail to the next as a direct result of poverty and the inability to pay large fines for petty violations. It is common for the poor in the St. Louis region to have warrants for their arrest in multiple jurisdictions as a result of their inability to pay these fines. When they are arrested on one of these warrants for allegedly failing to appear to pay their fines, they are held by that town until it extracts as much money as possible from them, and then they are subsequently released, most often without ever seeing a judge. The amount needed to secure release is often negotiated and reduced over a period of days with the police, jailers, or court clerks. The form of this extraction is “cash bond” but it is important to note that this is not bond in the traditional legal sense.

This “release” is in name only because upon being told the first town is finished with them, defendants are informed that the next town has a warrant for their arrest or “hold.” This warrant, again, is not for a new offense but rather for the failure to pay fines. Instead of being freed from incarceration, they are simply moved from one jail to another until every town with the means to hold them has squeezed as much money from them as is possible. In this sense, the “release” from custody is simply the beginning of a Kafkaesque journey through the debtors’ prison network of St. Louis County.

Justice by the Numbers: Planning for Warrants and Counting on Revenue

Municipal governments, police, courts, and jails are each active components of the localized criminal justice systems that destroy the possibility of trust between citizens of St. Louis County and their government. Nationally, advocates have drawn increased attention in recent years to the dangers of an increasing profit motive in the criminal justice system. In the St. Louis area there can be no doubt that policing and fining is largely motivated by revenue. City officials encourage this practice by prospectively budgeting for increased revenue from fines.¹⁹ There are no police in the room when elected officials set the budget, over the course of the year the police issue the requisite number of tickets so that the courts can assess the requisite amount of fines to reach the budgeted figure. Likewise, judges increase fines and “court fees.” Implicitly or explicitly, police and courts respond to meet the numbers.

None of this is lost on the community. Local wisdom is always ahead of the game. The people who have suffered under this system for the past 50 years do not need to look at the town budget or the attorney general’s racial disparity report. They know that police work has come to mean issuing tickets, not investigating or preventing serious or violent crimes. They know they are being stopped, ticketed, and fined in order to fund their very own town. The Department of Justice Pattern and Practice Report on the Ferguson police and municipal court was not news to the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have had to navigate this system.

And it is not only the citizens who know this. Former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch has said on more than one occasion that he knows there are tiny towns requiring police to meet quotas.²⁰ While he blames government leaders instead of the police, the point remains: the problem starts with the city leaders setting a budget, continues when law enforcement overpolices a region for profit, and culminates in the courts where judges and prosecutors legitimize this system.

Policing and fining for revenue, combined with the fact that cities hire poorly trained officers and fail to demand any level of accountability, leads to a toxic mix when police stop African Americans in St. Louis County. While the population of the city of Ferguson is 67 percent Black, 85 percent of all vehicle stops, 93 percent of all arrests, 88 percent of the use of force cases, and 92 percent of all warrants issued involved African Americans.²¹ Racial profiling data from the attorney general demonstrates definitively that Black drivers are targeted by police throughout St. Louis County.²² Ferguson is the rule and not the exception. Police interactions with the community are further exacerbated by a court system that fails to provide counsel and routinely produces guilty pleas, ensuring that the actions of officers will never be scrutinized.

All of this leads to there being over 700,000 active warrants for arrest in a region of approximately 1.2 million people.²³ There are currently over 450,000 outstanding warrants for arrest in St. Louis County alone, which has a population of just over 900,000.²⁴ By comparison, there are just over 40,000 warrants for arrest in Cook County, Illinois, a region that comprises the city of Chicago and whose population exceeds 5 million.²⁵

At the time of Mike Brown’s death, there were more warrants for arrest than people living in the city of Ferguson. In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations.²⁶ That is equivalent to 90 arrest warrants issued per day.

The stops, arrests, fines, and warrants all add up to a substantial revenue source for the region. Overall, it is estimated that St. Louis’s municipal courts earn over $50 million in revenue per year. In Ferguson, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of $2,635,400.²⁷ Budget documents show that this was an increase of more than 40 percent from 2010.

Missouri places a statutory limit of 30 percent on the amount of revenue individual municipalities can earn from their courts. In spite of that, several courts exceed that limit and do so with impunity. Eight communities exceed the limit, one collecting as much as 66 percent of its revenue from fines and fees.²⁸ When asked by the press about the reliance on fines and fees to fund their government, officials routinely respond by claiming the enforcement of these ordinances is about public safety, not revenue.

Inside the Numbers in Other St. Louis County Municipalities

As noted, Ferguson is far from the exception. Here is a summary of data from other select St. Louis County municipalities:

Pine Lawn

The city of Pine Lawn has a population of 3,275 people and a poverty rate of 38.7 percent.²⁹ 1.5 percent of the city’s population is considered white, 96.4 percent of the population is considered African American, 0.09 percent of the city’s population is considered Asian, and 2.02 percent of the city’s population is considered as “other.”³⁰ Out of the city’s 3,908 vehicle stops, 841 stops were of white drivers and 2,982 of the vehicle stops were of African Americans over one year. Many drivers are not residents.³¹ The search rate among whites was 4.88 percent and among African Americans it was 5.94 percent. The contraband hit rate was 19.51 percent among whites and 10.17 percent among African Americans.³² The arrest rate was 5.95 percent among whites and 10.4 percent among African Americans.³³

The city of Pine Lawn has revenue from fines and fees totaling $1,841,985. The cost to the city to run its municipal court was $453,125, with net revenue of $1,388,860 dollars from fines and fees.³⁴

For the 2014 fiscal year, 708 warrants were issued. Outstanding warrants total 20,525.³⁵

St. Ann

The city of St. Ann has a total population of 13,020 residents with a poverty rate of 14.6 percent.³⁶ Of its population, 69.52 percent of the residents are white, 22.11 percent are African American, 2.2 percent are Asian, and 6.16 percent are classified as “other.”³⁷ There were 7,331 vehicle stops among whites and 3,934 vehicle stops among African Americans over one year. The search rate among whites was 5.62 percent and among African Americans it was 14.16 percent. The contraband hit rate among whites was 16.02 percent, 10.23 percent among African Americans, 33.33 percent among Asians, and 7.14 percent among other groups.³⁸ The arrest rate among whites was 6 percent and among African Americans was 17.51 percent.³⁹

The city of St. Ann has revenue from fines and fees totaling $3,415,671. The cost to the city to operate its municipal court is $332,313, leaving net revenue of $3,083,358 that the city derives from fines and fees.⁴⁰

The total number of warrants issued by the city for the 2014 fiscal year was 5,964.⁴¹

Maplewood

The city of Maplewood has a population of 8,046 and a poverty rate of 19.9 percent.⁴² 74.14 percent of the city’s population is white, 17.2 percent African American, 3.47 percent Asian, and 5.18 percent of the population can be classified as other.⁴³ There were total of 2,011 vehicle stops among white residents and 1,647 vehicle stops among African American residents over one year. The search rate among whites was 2.88 percent and among African Americans was 6.8 percent.⁴⁴ The arrest rate among whites was 1.7 percent and among African Americans was 3.7 percent.⁴⁵

The city of Maplewood has revenue from fines and fees totaling $837,774. The cost of the city’s municipal court is $255,462, with net revenue from fines and fees totaling $582,312.⁴⁶

The city of Maplewood issued 1,251 warrants in 2014 and 3,106 warrants remain outstanding.⁴⁷

Municipal Court Injustice and Its Toll

As a result of collaboration with social workers, the authors have seen firsthand how charges stemming from poverty in municipal courts prevent homeless and poor clients from gaining access to housing and jobs, cause children to drop out of school or change school districts midyear, and create or exacerbate health concerns. Individuals who are not homeless routinely lose housing and jobs as a result of contact with the police and courts. When they are stopped by municipal police and detained on a warrant, they miss work. Those who are lucky enough not to be fired as a result of the missed shifts are often fired as a result of missing additional shifts to go to court. Once people on the margins are unemployed, it is only a matter of time before they lose housing. Even if they find a job two weeks later, the loss of income is enough to push them into poverty and homelessness.

While the damage to housing and jobs is grave, the psychological damage is truly devastating, leading to anxiety, depression, and even suicide. The case of Nicole Bolden, a client of the nonprofit law firm Arch City Defenders, is illustrative.⁴⁸ Bolden, a single mother of three and a resident of Florissant, was arrested after a traffic accident on unpaid debt owed to four different St. Louis municipalities. She had already resolved all of her cases but still owed money to the towns: Florissant, Hazelwood, Dellwood and Foristell for fines. When a police officer initially arrived on the accident scene, he determined that Bolden was not at fault but still arrested her for warrants stemming from the outstanding debt. She was first taken to Florissant, where she was told she would have to stay in jail until her debt was paid. Bolden’s mother, who lives on a fixed income, paid Florissant, but because Hazelwood claimed that Bolden owed it $150 in unpaid debt, she was held in Florissant for an additional 22 hours. Desperate to leave, she paid Hazelwood $120 from her child support card. She still wasn’t free, however, because she still owed money to both Dellwood and Foristell.

Authorities in Hazelwood transferred Bolden to the Dellwood police, who kept her at St. Louis County’s jail for 20 hours because they don’t have their own jail. Her cousin eventually gave them $150 but she still wasn’t free to go home because she owed $1,758 to Foristell.

Foristell police finally came to St. Louis County jail days later at 4:00 am Sunday morning to pick her up. Foristell doesn’t have a jail, so they held her in the St. Charles County jail. When she asked when her court date was, no one knew. When a caseworker asked how she was doing, she told them she was tired and “couldn’t take it anymore.” This earned her suicide watch. By the time Bolden finally got out of jail, she was despondent, and hadn’t slept in days.

Every year, thousands of St. Louis County residents experience the same ordeal, buying or waiting their way out of jail after jail. Some never make it out. One man, 24-year-old Charles Anthony Chatman Jr., hanged himself in March 2013 after being held on traffic warrants in Jennings.⁴⁹ He was left unmonitored after being placed in solitary confinement. He was found dead 45 minutes later. Chatman was doing the muni shuffle. He and his family had paid $750 in bail to two municipalities but needed $850 more to be released from Jennings. Perhaps most cruelly, because Jennings rents jail space to towns too small to have their own jail, Chatman was “released” from Jennings’ official custody but not the physical space of their jail after he paid the initial bond.

Similarly, 26-year-old Dejuan Brison attempted to hang himself in the Jennings city jail in October 2014.⁵⁰ Brison was arrested on a warrant for failing to appear in court in a shoplifting case and awaiting transfer to another municipal court. Bernard Scott, 44 years old, was found with a shoestring around his neck in a Pine Lawn holding cell in September 2014.⁵¹ Scott was taken to the hospital, and recovered at a rehabilitation center. Scott had been held on warrants for failure to appear to pay fines. That same month, Jenny Newman, 37, was found unconscious in the Des Peres jail an hour after arrest on warrants for failure to appear to pay fines. She died three days later.⁵²

Efforts at Transforming the System

Arch City Defenders’ White Paper

On August 12, 2014, Arch City Defenders’ white paper on St. Louis County municipal courts was initially posted to its website.⁵³ Providing the first comprehensive analysis of the broken municipal court system, it helped to shape a movement toward reform of the municipal courts that has come to include a comprehensive litigation strategy, policy advocacy, legislative proposals, and rule changes. This white paper was the foundation for the national exposure of this issue in a detailed report by the Washington Post.⁵⁴ The persistent protests in Ferguson demanding accountability and justice for the killing of Michael Brown brought increased attention to the myriad of injustices in the St. Louis region, including those discussed in the white paper.

Requesting Municipal Court Amnesty to City of Ferguson

Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics and Arch City Defenders sent a letter to the mayor of Ferguson on August 22, 2014, requesting that he commute all pending charges and remit all fines and fees in the city of Ferguson as a “first step towards reconciliation” within his community. The letter presented the legal authority under which the city could implement the suggested policy. The mayor never responded directly to the letter, but publicly refused to consider amnesty.

Proposal to the Supreme Court of Missouri

In September of 2014, Arch City Defenders and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics articulated to the Supreme Court of Missouri one of their long-standing proposals to proportion fines to income at the outset of a case. Unlike the current practice, where no inquiry is made into a person’s ability to pay fines, this rule change would require courts to make a determination of an individual’s income at the time of assessment. This single important change could have an enormous impact on the lives of the poor in the St. Louis region and could save courts untold time from processing payments, issuing warrants, and unconstitutionally incarcerating people because of their inability to pay.

Litigation Attacking Illegal Fees

Arch City Defenders, Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics, and the Campbell Law Firm filed class-action lawsuits against Ferguson as well as Beverly Hills, Fenton, Jennings, Pine Lawn, Wellston, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Velda City. The lawsuits call for a judgment that the fees violate state law, an accounting of who paid the illegal fees and how much, and reimbursement to defendants who were forced to pay the fees to avoid jail time or warrants. The suits also include a claim under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, the state’s consumer fraud statute, alleging that the cities attempted to deceive defendants into paying the fees.

Writ of Prohibition

Under Missouri law, municipalities are prohibited from collecting more than 30 percent of their overall revenue from traffic-related adjudications in their municipal courts.⁵⁵ In order for the state to determine whether a municipality has exceeded the cap, municipalities are required to file a report with the state after the end of their fiscal year. Under a recent amendment to the law, any municipality that fails to timely submit such reporting “shall suffer an immediate loss of jurisdiction of the municipal court of said city, town, village, or county on all traffic-related charges.”⁵⁶ Many municipalities ignored the law and exceeded the 30 percent threshold or failed to report.⁵⁷ Arch City Defenders and St. Louis University Legal Clinics brought a writ of prohibition alleging that cases heard by the Village of Bel-Ridge Municipal Court after it failed to file a timely report were without jurisdiction. This matter is still pending as is a constitutional challenge to the law brought by the Missouri Municipal League.

Arch City Defenders and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics have also partnered to bring a class-action lawsuit against the city of Bel-Ridge, alleging it has been operating a court without jurisdiction since June of 2014 as a result of failing to timely file the required reports. Shortly after these cases were filed, the Missouri Attorney General brought a number of suits against other municipalities that were not in compliance and the Missouri State Auditor announced increased audits of municipal courts.

Debtors’ Prisons Lawsuits

Equal Justice Under Law, Arch City Defenders, and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics joined together to bring class-action lawsuits against Ferguson and Jennings alleging violations of the First, Sixth, Eighth, and 14th amendments. The suits allege that indigent people were jailed solely for not being able to make a monetary payment and were held in deplorable conditions in the Cities of Ferguson and Jennings until they or their family scraped together enough cash to buy their freedom. These cases are ongoing.

The Ferguson Commission

The Ferguson Commission was established by the governor of Missouri, Jeremiah (“Jay”) Nixon, in response to community demand to study and address the socioeconomic issues underlying community unrest following the killing of Michael Brown Jr. by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The governor specifically charged the commission with investigating the municipal court system. The Municipal Courts Working Group, which included the authors of this chapter, was tasked with making recommendations for the broader commission with regard to the courts. Ultimately, the Commission adopted municipal court reform and consolidation as a primary call to action in its final report.

Missouri Legislature

The Missouri Legislature has thus far largely ignored the crises brought to light by the killing of Michael Brown and the evolving nationwide Movement for Black Lives. Even the most conservative reforms, such as updating the law on “use of force” to comply with the Constitution, were rejected. Municipal court reform was the exception. Legislation was passed eliminating the separate offense of “failure to appear” and automatic license suspension for minor traffic violations. The legislation further limits the percentage of revenue a municipality may retain from traffic fines. Although heralded as comprehensive reform, the legislation does nothing to stop municipalities from engaging in predatory policing practices and incarcerating defendants as a consequence of their poverty.

Missouri Supreme Court

The Missouri Supreme Court amended Rule 37, the Supreme Court rule governing municipal courts, to clarify that no person can be incarcerated for failing to pay in municipal court without a judicial determination that nonpayment was willful. Further, the court exercised its authority over the municipal courts and transferred Appellate Court Judge Roy Richter to preside over the municipal court of Ferguson. In March and April of 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court requested public comment on the municipal courts. In May of 2015, the court announced the formation of a Blue Ribbon Committee to make recommendations on municipal court reform.

Reforms in Individual Municipalities

There are some early signs of meaningful reforms by individual municipalities. The city of St. Louis recalled over 200,000 outstanding warrants and proportioned fines to income for the poor. St. Louis County Presiding Judge Maura McShane ordered municipal courts to no longer exclude the public, a practice that is in clear violation of the U.S. and Missouri Constitutions. Ferguson has eliminated two ordinances charging fees not authorized by state law, eliminated the warrant recall fee, and created a new docket to address people who are struggling to make their payments.

Department of Justice Investigation and Report

At this time, the Department of Justice remains in active negotiations with the city of Ferguson regarding the resolution of the Department’s pattern and practice investigation.

Conclusion

From Reconstruction Era Black Codes through the Drug War and “broken windows” policing, the systematic overenforcement of petty offenses in Black communities has been an integral part of maintaining white supremacy in the United States. This practice is not limited to the present and it is not limited to the St. Louis region. The Department of Justice investigation, whatever its deficiencies, was historically significant in its recognition that police and local courts worked in concert to criminalize Black residents. While profit motive is certainly not a necessary component of this phenomenon, in Ferguson and elsewhere, it is apparent that there is money to be made from excessive fines, cash bail schemes, and exorbitant court costs. Progressive catchphrases such as “restorative justice” and “community policing” miss the point. In the St. Louis region the task will be to put an end to the policing of day-to-day life and to abolish profit-driven part-time courts.

Notes

1. Peter Dreier & Todd Swanstrom, Suburban Ghettos Like Ferguson Are Ticking Time Bombs, WASH. POST, Aug. 21, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/21/suburban-ghettos-like-ferguson-are-ticking-time-bombs/.

2. MO. CONST. art. VI, § 31.

3. Richard Rothstein, The Making of Ferguson, ECON. POLICY INST., Oct. 15, 2014, http://www.epi.org/publication/making-ferguson/#executive-summary.

4. BETTER TOGETHER, POLICE REPORT #1: REGIONAL OVERVIEW 5 (Apr. 2015), http://www.bettertogetherstl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BT-Police-Report-1-Full-Report-FINAL1.pdf.

5. BETTER TOGETHER, POLICE REPORT #1: LICENSURE AND ACCREDITATION 1–2 (Apr. 2015), http://www.bettertogetherstl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BT-Police-Report-2-Licensure-and-Accreditation-Full-Report-FINAL1.pdf.

6. Jennifer S. Mann, New Flordell Hills Police Force Off to Rough Star as Officer Is Charged with Stealing from Evidence Room, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Oct. 1, 2014, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/new-flordell-hills-police-force-off-to-rough-start-as/article_09030df7-6488-587f-b122-0d5ff9df50f6.html.

7. Id.

8. BETTER TOGETHER, PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS 5 (Oct. 2014), http://www.bettertogetherstl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BT-Municipal-Courts-Report-Full-Report1.pdf.

9. BETTER TOGETHER, PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS ADDENDUM 1 (Oct. 2014), http://www.bettertogetherstl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/BT-Judges-and-Prosecutors-Report-FINAL1.pdf.

10. Id. at 10–12.

11. See generally MODEL CODE OF JUDICIAL CONDUCT.

12. PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS ADDENDUM, supra note 9.

13. Id.

14. Both authors routinely represent defendants in municipal court and have personally witnessed this.

15. Radley Balko, How Municipalities in St. Louis County, MO., Profit from Poverty, WASH. POST, Sept. 3, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/.

16. Hendrix v. Lark, 482 S.W.2d 427, 431 (Mo. 1972).

17. Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660, 673–74 (1983).

18. The conditions of confinement as described by plaintiffs in Fant v. Ferguson, No. 4:15-CV-00253-AGF (E.D. Mo. filed May 26, 2015).

19. PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS, supra note 8, at 3.

20. Ryan J. Reilly & Mariah Stewart, Fleece Force: How Police and Courts around Ferguson Bully Residents and Collect Millions, HUFFINGTON POST, Mar. 26, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/26/st-louis-county-municipal-courts_n_6896550.html.

21. CIVIL RIGHTS DIV., U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, INVESTIGATION OF THE FERGUSON POLICE DEPARTMENT 4, 62 (Mar. 4, 2015), http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf.

22. Id.; Office of Mo. Att’y Gen. Chris Koster, Racial Profiling Data/2013, https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/public-safety/2013agencyreports.pdf?sfvrsn=2.

23. MO. SUP. CT., MISSOURI JUDICIAL REPORT SUPPLEMENT: FISCAL YEAR 2014, at 309 (2015), https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=83236.

24. Id.

25. Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart, Fugitive Warrants Unit, http://www.cookcountysheriff.com/sheriffs_police/ccspd_SpecialInvestigations_FugitiveWarrants.html (last visited May 28, 2015).

26. MO. SUP. CT., MISSOURI JUDICIAL REPORT SUPPLEMENT: FISCAL YEAR 2013, at 303 (2014), https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=68905.

27. INVESTIGATION OF THE FERGUSON POLICE DEPARTMENT, supra note 21, at 9.

28. Betsey Bruce, Court Study Shows Fines Weigh Heavily on Towns with Larger African American Population, FOX2NOW, Oct. 15, 2014, video from 1:20 to 1:39, http://fox2now.com/2014/10/15/study-many-north-st-louis-county-towns-balance-budgets-with-court-fees/.

29. U.S. Census Bureau, Community Facts, http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml (last visited June 3, 2015).

30. Racial Profiling Data/2013, supra note 22, at 877.

31. Id.

32. Id.

33. Id.

34. BETTER TOGETHER, PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS APPENDIX 10 (Oct. 2014), http://www.bettertogetherstl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BT-Municipal-Courts-Report-Appendix.pdf.

35. MISSOURI JUDICIAL REPORT SUPPLEMENT: FISCAL YEAR 2013, supra note 26.

36. U.S. Census Bureau, State and County Quick Facts, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/29/2963956.html (last revised Apr. 22, 2015).

37. Racial Profiling Data/2013, supra note 22, at 1021.

38. Id.

39. Id.

40. PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS APPENDIX, supra note 34, at 11.

41. MISSOURI JUDICIAL REPORT SUPPLEMENT: FISCAL YEAR 2013, supra note 26, at 309.

42. U.S. Census Bureau, State and County Quick Facts, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/29/2945830.html (last revised Apr. 22, 2015).

43. Racial Profiling Data/2013, supra note 22, at 657.

44. Id.

45. Id.

46. PUBLIC SAFETY—MUNICIPAL COURTS APPENDIX, supra note 34.

47. MISSOURI JUDICIAL REPORT SUPPLEMENT: FISCAL YEAR 2013, supra note 28, at 309.

48. One of the authors, Thomas B. Harvey, is the co-founder and executive director of this firm.

49. Denise Hollinshed, Man Found Dead in Jail Cell in Jennings, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Mar. 22, 2013, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-found-dead-in-jail-cell-in-jennings/article_cd89f507-f07d-583f-950d-f6392527c594.html.

50. Joel Currier, Jennings Hanging Attempt Is Latest in a Series of Area Jail Incidents, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Oct. 6, 2014, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/jennings-hanging-attempt-is-latest-in-series-of-area-jail/article_a62642ad-141b-5b5c-9881-6ec2a67290f8.html.

51. Id.

52. Id.

53. THOMAS HARVEY ET AL., ARCH CITY DEFENDERS, MUNICIPAL COURTS WHITE PAPER (2014), http://www.archcitydefenders.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ArchCity-Defenders-Municipal-Courts-Whitepaper.pdf

54. Balko, supra note 15.

55. MO. ANN. STAT. § 302.341 (West).

56. Id.

57. Jennifer Mann, Koster Sues 13 St. Louis County Municipalities over Court Fees, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/koster-sues-st-louis-county-municipalities-over-court-fees/article_09652317-c932-55b3-ab1d-f1e0bc478c0b.html.