St. Louis Sheriff Alfred Montgomery’s long-awaited day in court finally arrived Tuesday — but he was nowhere to be seen.
The embattled sheriff remained behind bars in federal custody, leaving his legal team attempting to kick off the trial without him as they fight the Missouri Attorney General’s months-long effort to oust him permanently from office. Montgomery’s attorneys asked a federal judge to allow him to attend this week’s trial, but as of Tuesday morning the judge had not ruled either way, making Montgomery’s presence impossible.
About 20 minutes after the trial was set to start, the state’s attorneys, sheriff’s attorneys and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Krug quickly walked into the judge’s chambers. Moments later, Judge Steven R. Ohmer announced that he was declining to start the trial against the sheriff, opining that doing so would not give Montgomery a fair shake.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office said it was prepared to move forward, while sheriff’s attorney David Mason also expressed similar concerns.
“This court has some very serious reservations about proceeding in this matter without the presence of Sheriff Montgomery,” Mason said. “I don’t see how an effective hearing can take place, how he can defend whatever the evidence from the state’s going to be, and how he can effectively present his own defense in this matter?”
The trial is expected to resume tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. at the Clyde S. Cahill Courthouse. Mason and Justin Gelfand, the sheriff’s attorneys, told STPLR late Tuesday they had struck a deal for Montgomery to attend the rest of the trial in person.
“We have to respect that the judge is going to make the decision that he feels is in the best interest of the process of the case on his desk, his federal case,” Mason said ahead of the agreement. “He has no responsibility to help out the state case, we can ask, but he makes the rulings that he feels are appropriate in the context of what he is presiding over, and we have to respect that.”
Mason said it can be common to request federal release about a month in advance. He said it can be a convoluted process for the state to get someone in federal custody that requires cooperation with the U.S. Marshals, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a federal judge and transporting them to and from trial, he explained.
Ohmer said he was committed to moving through the removal trial quickly and saw what he thought was a pertinent metaphor driving to the courthouse this morning.
“There was a beautiful rainbow to the west, and my thoughts were that we were going to get to the end of the rainbow,” he said. “It happened and [then] the rainbow kind of disappeared and that was probably more pertinent.”
Requests denied
Montgomery’s repeated absences have grown increasingly frustrating for Ohmer. During the final pretrial hearing last month, Ohmer questioned why the sheriff wasn’t in the courtroom.
“I didn’t anticipate testimony,” Mason, Montgomery’s attorney, told the judge.
“I would imagine he would have an interest,” Ohmer replied, before ultimately agreeing with the state attorney general’s request to temporarily suspend Montgomery from office. The judge said he could not understand how the sheriff could fulfill the duties of his office while jailed on a separate federal case.
Ohmer subsequently appointed a three-person panel to select an interim leader for the department — ultimately choosing former St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden to temporarily steer the sheriff’s ship.
Following the decision, Hanaway’s office filed a seventh charge in the removal petition, arguing that Montgomery should be permanently removed from office because he can’t devote time to fulfill the duties of his office, violating state law. She later told STLPR the entire office should be abolished.
Montgomery’s legal team had appealed U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Bodenhausen’s decision to order the sheriff back into custody after prosecutors said he violated the conditions of his bond — including using a secret burner phone to harass and retaliate against federal witnesses. The crimes allegedly unfolded in a matter of days while Montgomery was already under house arrest.
But on Monday, a federal appeals court rejected Montgomery’s appeal to have him released and amend the conditions of his bond. In the court’s ruling, the panel found probable cause to believe he committed additional crimes while on supervised release.
Mason, the sheriff’s attorney, said Mongtomery was felt despondent when he learned of the ruling after being detained for more than a month.
“We're moving into the holiday season,” Mason said. “He's got two little boys that are constantly asking: ‘Daddy, how come you can’t be with us?’”
A compromise, Mason said, could be for the federal judge to place Montgomery under house arrest again until a full evidentiary hearing. The sheriff’s attorney said Montgomery wouldn’t speak with anyone from the department and would be open to letting interim Sheriff John Hayden continue handling the office executive’s duties.
“It's not to me a huge ask as a judge,” said Mason. “I had done that kind of thing many times. It’s called a Christmas furlough.”
But, the probability of such an arrangement seems to be unlikely. The appeals judges cited a recorded call in which Montgomery told three witnesses they had “been playing f---ing games since day one” and were “the ones been telling the feds all type of s---.”
“He declared, ‘I don’t have to take this s---, I’m the f---ing sheriff… I don’t have to tolerate this s---. You work for the pleasure of me,’” the opinion states, quoting the recording. “‘I brought you in this motherf-----, I will move you up out this motherf-----.’”
The court wrote that it could not identify any condition — or combination of conditions — that would “reasonably assure the safety of any other person or the community,” concluding that Montgomery is unlikely to abide by release terms given his past behavior.
The sheriff may finally get to see his day in court — and a brief repreieve from the Perry County Jail, the southern Illinois facility he is being held at nearly 100 miles outside St. Louis.
This story has been updated.
