Former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is again facing accusations that she violated Missouri’s rules of professional conduct for lawyers.
Gardner and her attorneys are set to defend her actions Tuesday in front of a panel made up of two attorneys and a non-lawyer. The state Supreme Court will have the final say on discipline.
The conduct in question stems from Gardner’s 2022 admission that she violated attorney ethics rules in the prosecution of former Gov. Eric Greitens. She was reprimanded and ordered to pay a $750 fine and reimburse the state for the costs of the disciplinary hearing.
Gardner used the circuit attorney’s contingency fund to reimburse herself for those expenses, which totaled a little more than $5,000. But under state law, that fund can only be used for expenses like bringing in witnesses from other states or printing copies of briefs.
Last year, Gardner reached a precharge diversion agreement with federal prosecutors over her use of that fund. It became a federal matter because the city receives more than $10,000 from the U.S. government in a year, and the total paid was more than $5,000.
The latest ethics charges accuse Gardner of violating professional conduct rules in four ways:
- Violating federal law.
- Violating state law by using the contingency fund for something other than its listed purpose. Gardner was never criminally charged at the state level for her conduct.
- Engaging in conduct involving “dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” by asking circuit attorney employees to use the contingency fund to reimburse her personal expenses.
- Engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.
The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, which presents the case for the state, is asking the three-person panel to find that Gardner committed professional misconduct and discipline her. The brief does not ask for any specific level of punishment.
In their brief, attorneys for Gardner lay out nine reasons that she did not commit misconduct. They say the disciplinary counsel’s office claims are based on a “fundamental mischaracterization” of the agreement she reached with federal prosecutors. Gardner, they wrote, was never charged with a crime, and therefore the main ethics accusation fails.
Additionally, they wrote, Gardner relied on the advice of an experienced ethics attorney who represented her in her first disciplinary hearing when she asked her employer, then the City of St. Louis, to reimburse her for the costs. She also was not the one who chose which fund to use for that reimbursement.
Gardner’s brief also echoes a familiar argument she used throughout her time in office – the latest ethics case is “selective enforcement,” more akin to a witch hunt than an effort to protect the legal profession.
“There is no precedent for disciplining an elected St. Louis circuit attorney in the manner she has been treated,” wrote her attorneys, Ron Sullivan and Maurice Foxworth.
Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law School, helped Gardner with the Greitens prosecution. Foxworth is a law school classmate of Gardner’s who at one time worked as a consultant for the circuit attorney’s office.
