Ferguson, Missouri - Court System Seized and Judge Resigns

In the wake of a scathing report by the United States Justice Department, the State of Missouri has seized control of the Ferguson, Missouri, court system and a presiding municipal court judge targeted in the report has resigned.  As is often the case The Guardian, a British newspaper has coverage on events far superior to U.S. coverage.  Here are excerpts from The Guardian coverage which shows the corruption and wrongdoings which seemingly were the norm in Ferguson:

A judge in Ferguson, Missouri, who is accused of running a modern-day debtors’ prison while fixing traffic tickets for himself and owing $170,000 in unpaid taxes, resigned on Monday as state authorities seized control of the city’s court system.

Ronald J Brockmeyer stepped down as Ferguson’s municipal court judge after Missouri’s supreme court ordered that all the court’s cases be transferred to the St Louis County circuit court, according to a source who was not authorized to speak publicly about the decision.

Under the same ruling, Judge Roy L Richter of the Missouri court of appeals will be assigned to the county’s circuit court, where he will hear all of Ferguson’s municipal court cases “to help restore public trust and confidence” in the system.

A scathing report by the Department of Justice last week concluded that Ferguson’s police and court system was blighted by racial bias. Investigators accused Brockmeyer and his court officials of aggressively using the municipal court to raise revenue for the city. The policy is blamed by many for damaging relations between the city’s overwhelmingly white authorities and residents, two-thirds of whom are African American.

Brockmeyer, 70, was singled out by investigators as a driving force behind Ferguson’s strategy of using its municipal court to generate revenues aggressively. Investigators found that Brockmeyer had boasted of creating a range of new court fines, “many of which are widely considered abusive and may be unlawful”.

A press release accompanying Russell’s order said that all pending and future cases that were to be heard by Ferguson’s municipal court would instead be heard by Richter at the circuit court from 16 March until further notice. A court spokeswoman could not confirm how cases would proceed this week.

The decision was welcomed cautiously by Alec Karakatsanis, the co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law, one of the legal non-profits that is suing the city. “The problems we are dealing with are endemic to our legal system and not isolated to the small municipality of Ferguson,” said Karakatsanis. “I hope this serves as a first small step toward confronting the horrors that we visit everyday on poor people of color in the legal system and not as any kind of attempted solution.

The state’s chief justice signaled in her statement on Monday that regional or even statewide reform may be necessary for a municipal court system that has been sharply criticized as a failed system that has lost the trust of many residents.  

The sad reality is that Ferguson is not the exception to the rule in many states and localities.  These developments are a start, but reform is needed on wholesale basis, especially across the Deep South and other red states.