An offer of help from the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.
Executive Director Darell Moore says first, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office needs to hire not just a bunch of experienced attorneys with prosecutorial experience, but also, "an outside national expert to come in and help whoever the interim Circuit Attorney is, look at the office and determine how to get it back on track."
If the office commits to reorganization, Moore says they will happily lend expertise on a short-term basis.
He says hiring even 15 experienced prosecutors is going to be difficult, and there is so much work to be done.
"There needs to be a triage of people looking at the unfiled cases, the cases that haven't been reviewed, which I understand there may be thousands," Moore says, "and then we need to have someone doing triage on the filed cases, trying to identify, especially the serious felony cases, the murders, etc., that are facing time deadlines."
Moore believes the interim Circuit Attorney should be familiar with St. Louis and that office and should NOT have plans to run for the office, because getting things under control will take all their focus.
Moore believes six months is optimistic and that it'll take a year and a half to turn things around, assuming they can find experienced prosecutors who will stay and start to work on the backlog of thousands of cases.
