The “joint commitment” agreement was announced Monday at the start of a disciplinary hearing before a three-member committee. In the agreement, Gardner admits that he did not provide documents and mistakenly claimed that all the documents were provided to Greitens’s lawyers in the 2018 criminal case. The agreement states that Gardner’s conduct “was negligent or perhaps reckless, but not intentional.” Requires written reprimand. A more severe punishment – suspension or acquittal – would likely cost Gardner her job because state law requires elected prosecutors to have active law permits. The commission has yet to sign the agreement and make a recommendation within 30 days to the Missouri Supreme Court, which will decide on the sentence. It is not clear when the court can make the final decision. Gardner, a 46-year-old Democrat, is the first black woman lawyer in St. Louis and is one of many progressive prosecutors elected in recent years with an emphasis on creating more justice in the criminal justice system. He told the panel Monday that the mistakes were due to the rapid nature of the Greitens case. “It simply came to our notice then. But, unfortunately, this process was short, “she said, adding that her office took the case as a” lesson “to move forward. The 2018 prosecution against Greitens played a key role in his eventual resignation. Gretens is now making a political comeback and is the main contender for the Republican nomination for the Senate, despite recent allegations of abuse by his ex-wife. “Gardner represents the worst of the establishment and the dishonest officials who use their unbridled power to target innocent and law-abiding individuals, from the governor of Missouri to the police and civilians,” Grattens said in a statement. “The people of Missouri deserve better.” The brazen former Navy SEAL officer with presidential ambitions was in his first year when the news of a relationship with his hairdresser in St. Louis was released in January 2018. The woman claimed that Greitens took a compromising photo and threatened to use it as blackmail if she talked about their relationship. “There was a victim, someone said he was attacked,” Gardner’s lawyer, Michael Downey, said in an interview. But neither the FBI nor the St. Louis police seemed willing to investigate, Downey said. Gardner’s internal investigator was missing for military service. So Gardner hired private investigator William Tisaby, a former FBI agent. The investigation led to the Greitens indictment for a felony charge of invasion of privacy. Greitens claimed to have been the victim of a political witch hunt. The jury selection had just begun when Gardner dropped the charge after a judge ruled that he would have to answer a jury question from Greitens’s lawyers about how the case was handled. He said he put her in an “impossible” position to be a witness in a prosecuted case. Gardner, meanwhile, has filed a second lawsuit accusing Greitens of falsifying computer data for allegedly revealing to his political fundraiser a list of top donors to a veterans charity he founded without the charity’s permission. Under investigation and by lawmakers, Greitens resigned in June 2018 and Gardner agreed to drop the criminal charges. The focus then shifted to the way Gardner and Tisaby handled the investigation. In 2019, Tisaby was charged with six counts of perjury and one count of falsifying evidence. He pleaded guilty last month to falsifying evidence of a misdemeanor and received a one-year suspended sentence. The case stemmed from Tisaby’s statement that he had not taken notes during an interview with the woman, when a video later showed that he had, and his statement that he had not taken notes from the prosecutor’s office before interviewing the woman. when a document later showed that he had. Greitens’s lawyers have expressed concern about Gardner’s failure to correct the record of Tisaby’s statements and whether she withheld evidence. Downey said the mistakes were unintentional, a result of Gardner’s heavy workload during the Greitens investigation. Gardner had many conflicts during her leadership in the prosecutor’s office. Last summer, the charges were dropped in three murder cases within a week because prosecutors did not appear in court or were unprepared after months of delays, St. Louis said. Louis Post-Dispatch. The paper also cited Circuit Court figures showing that about a third of felony cases were dismissed – three times as many as its predecessor. Gardner argues that her reforms have made the city safer and the criminal justice system fairer. He has extended a diversion program and stopped pursuing low-level marijuana possession, helping to significantly reduce prison overcrowding. Gardner was often at loggerheads with police, especially in 2019, when she placed dozens of police officers on an “exclusion list”, barring them from making cases. The list came after a national group accused officers of posting racist and anti-Muslim comments on social media. In 2020, Gardner filed a lawsuit accusing the city, a police union and others of a coordinated and racist conspiracy to force her to leave office. The lawsuit alleges violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was enacted to prevent attempts to deny tribal minority civil rights. Downey, in a court statement, said the moral allegations included “another attempt by Ms. Gardner’s political enemies – largely outside of St. Louis – to remove Ms. Gardner and thwart systemic reforms” . Gretens had remained largely invisible until Senator Roy Blunt announced in March 2021 that he would not run for a third term. Republican leaders worry that Grattens could win the primary but lose to a Democrat in the general election, losing what should have been a safe haven for the GOP. In a court case she filed last month in a child custody case, Sheena Greitens accused her ex-husband of physically abusing her and their children. Eric Gretens called the allegations “completely fabricated” and “baseless.”
