A judge in southwest Missouri has allowed the criminal case against St. Louis County Executive Sam Page to move forward.
Greene County Judge Kati Greenwade on Friday denied a motion from Page’s attorneys to dismiss the case. She did not rule on a second motion to throw out evidence set to be collected from Page’s cellphone.
A grand jury in July charged Page with two felonies and two misdemeanors related to the April municipal elections. He is accused of theft of public money for spending county funds on a flyer and mailer opposing Proposition B, a ballot measure that would have given the county council more power to fire department heads. Page has said the materials were educational.
The language of the election statute says public funds cannot be spent “directly” to “advocate, support, or oppose the passage or defeat” of candidates or ballot issues. But the indictment says Page “purposely expended” public funds.
That difference in language, his attorneys argued, meant that Page could not be exactly sure of the conduct the state considered criminal – “like a speeding ticket that does not say how fast the driver was going,” they wrote in the motion to dismiss.
Greenwade found the difference between “purposely” and “directly” to be the most “compelling and concerning” argument in that motion. But she ultimately accepted the explanation of prosecutors, who said the word “purposely” spoke to Page’s state of mind when he authorized the materials.
There are two ways a public official can violate this part of election law, said Assistant Attorney General Shaun Mackelprang: The official could spend the public money directly or send public funds to a campaign committee that then advocates for or against something.
The printing of the flyers and the mailers, Mackelprang said, was the direct spending of the money. He said the state would be OK with changing the language of the indictment to match state law.
Greenwade will rule at a later date on a second motion that asks her to throw out evidence that is set to be collected from a cellphone seized from Page. Defense attorneys say that falsehoods in a court document submitted to get the warrant to search the phone mean the warrant should not have been issued in the first place.
The case against Page is set to go to trial in March. Both sides agreed in September to have the case heard in Springfield, Missouri.
