Attorneys for St. Louis County Executive Sam Page want a judge to dismiss charges against him related to a mailer over a failed countywide proposition.
At issue is a mailer his office sent out about Proposition B, a failed countywide initiative that would have allowed the St. Louis County Council to fire his department heads. After then-Attorney General Andrew Bailey took over the case, a grand jury indicted Page on two misdemeanor election offenses and two counts of felony theft “by deceit” over the spending of county money.
The case was transferred to Greene County Judge Kaiti Greenwade earlier this year. And now Page’s attorneys have asked Greenwade to dismiss the charges, contending there's a list of problems with the actual indictment.
They dispute, for instance, that Page ignored legal advice from county attorneys – when those lawyers did approve the language in the mailer.
They also note that the indictment fails to make a distinction between the educational campaign and the “persuasive campaign,” which was funded through political donations. And they added that keeping the cost of the mailers below $5,000 to avoid bidding for an outside vendor was aimed at getting the mailers out before the election.
“When the affidavit is stripped of its misrepresentations and supplemented with the omitted facts, the remaining narrative fails to establish a fair probability that any crime occurred,” according to the dismissal request filing. “The issuing judge was led to believe that Dr. Page, as County Executive, used municipal resources for a ‘Persuasive Campaign’ to oppose Proposition B, disregarded legal advice to cease such activity, and manipulated County procurement rules to conceal improper conduct. But when the record is corrected, that portrayal collapses.”
A spokeswoman for his successor, Catherine Hanaway, said the GOP official is not commenting on this pending litigation.
