Missouri AG takes aim at Kim Gardner’s enrollment as SLU nursing student

ST. LOUIS — The ballooning scandals engulfing St. Louis Circuit Legal professional Kimberly M. Gardner continued to develop Wednesday because the Missouri legal professional basic took intention at Gardner’s enrollment in St. Louis College’s nursing program. 

Republican Missouri Legal professional Common Andrew Bailey filed two subpoenas Tuesday looking for all data monitoring Gardner’s pupil schedule and scientific work in this system.

“If the Circuit Legal professional needs to be a nurse, she must stop pretending to be a prosecuting legal professional,” Bailey informed reporters Wednesday earlier than renewing his requires Gardner to resign. 

College spokespeople didn’t reply to questions Wednesday about her class schedule and particular tutorial program. And Gardner’s workplace didn’t make clear the extent of her enrollment at SLU. 

Her workplace did, nevertheless, difficulty an announcement denying that enrollment in this system hampered her work as the town’s prime prosecutor.

“Circuit Legal professional Gardner believes the problems in our felony justice system typically relate to our damaged well being care system,” the assertion reads. “After serving as a line legal professional on the Circuit Legal professional’s Workplace and seeing firsthand the underlying points that drive crime, she grew to become a registered nurse. She continues to remain present with lessons at St. Louis College so as to add to her coaching and advance her mission on the CAO. The Circuit Legal professional has finished this at nice private price to her time along with her household and family members. Any suggestion that she isn’t totally dedicated to her duties as Circuit Legal professional is blatantly false.”

Bailey’s workplace filed the subpoenas this week as a part of a lawsuit aimed toward eradicating Gardner from workplace for failing to uphold her duties.

Since then, the dysfunction surrounding Gardner’s workplace has solely intensified: Practically a 3rd of her already depleted employees resigned in lower than two months, leaving few to deal with the town’s most violent felony circumstances. Prosecutors have failed to show over proof and repeatedly delayed hearings. A decide filed to carry each Gardner and considered one of her assistant prosecutors in contempt after nobody from the workplace appeared for a trial and listening to in an assault case. All of the whereas, a invoice shifting by way of the Missouri Legislature seeks to strip Gardner of most of her energy.

Gardner earned a bachelor’s diploma in well being care administration from Harris-Stowe State College in 1999 and returned to highschool at SLU in 2012 for a grasp’s diploma in nursing.

Bailey’s subpoenas request that SLU turns over all data documenting Gardner’s course of research, lessons, internships and scientific work since at the very least 2021. It additionally asks for all emails despatched or obtained by Gardner on the identical matters. 

Bailey’s workplace filed a second subpoena Tuesday to Household Care Well being Facilities, a major care clinic with two places in St. Louis, requesting paperwork associated to any hours Gardner labored on the clinic since 2021. The workplace can be looking for surveillance video displaying Gardner’s appearances on the clinic and any emails between Gardner and clinic employees.

Bailey’s lawsuit focuses on Gardner’s failure to prosecute circumstances by dismissing fees and permitting others to languish. The go well with says her workplace didn’t hold victims knowledgeable and didn’t evaluation 1000’s of circumstances submitted by St. Louis police.

On Tuesday, Decide John Torbitzky allowed seven of 10 allegations levied in Bailey’s go well with to proceed regardless of arguments from Gardner’s attorneys that there is no such thing as a authorized standing to hunt her ouster.

He additionally rejected blanket arguments from Gardner’s workplace {that a} subpoena from the legal professional basic’s workplace asking for a big cache of paperwork, together with emails, case data and complaints from victims, ought to be thrown out as a result of it’s “unduly burdensome” and compromises prosecutorial privilege. He ordered Gardner’s workplace to offer nearly all the paperwork inside 30 days.

On Wednesday, the state Supreme Courtroom changed Torbitzky, in response to Gardner’s request, filed Friday.

Decide Thomas N. Chapman, of the Missouri Courtroom of Appeals, Western District, will oversee the case. Chapman was appointed to the bench by Republican Gov. Mike Parson in 2018. 

Bailey, on the press convention Wednesday, highlighted Torbitzky’s rulings, depositions starting Thursday, and his anticipation for the trial, now scheduled for September. He stated the case had “crossed a threshold.”

“There are rumors circulating round Jefferson Metropolis and St. Louis about potential resignations,” Bailey stated there. “And I am right here to inform you we are going to pursue this case except and till such time as she resigns and commits to not working for workplace sooner or later.”