Butler County voters will decide Tuesday during the Republican primary who will serve as their prosecuting attorney for the next four years.
Long-time incumbent Kevin Barbour is not seeking re-election to another term as prosecutor and two candidates, Paul Oesterreicher and Kacey Proctor, are vying to replace him. The Butler County Prosecuting Attorney's Office files between 2,000-2,500 misdemeanor and felonies per year with one prosecutor, one full-time assistant and one part-time assistant.
Candidates were asked the same five questions and their profile stories are presented in the order in which their names appear on the ballot. Due to Proctor's military deployment, he is prohibited from participating in his campaign and his wife, Ashley, spoke on his behalf.
Paul Oesterreicher
With nearly 40 years of prosecutorial experience, Paul Oesterreicher has tried over 100 cases and has filed thousands of cases dealing with murderers, rapists, child abusers, drug users and dealers, as well as crimes involving burglary and stealing.
"I have been a prosecuting attorney and/or an assistant prosecuting attorney since 1981," said Oesterreicher, 63. "My first job was assistant prosecuting attorney in Randolph County, Missouri. After a year and a half there, I was elected prosecuting attorney and served there for eight years."
In 1991, Oesterreicher relocated to Southeast Missouri where he began working for the Butler County prosecutor's office as an assistant prosecuting attorney -- the same job he holds today.
"I've been with Butler County for 27 years, other than, there was a time I was prosecuting attorney of Ripley County for four years while I was also assistant prosecuting attorney in Butler County," he explained.
Oesterreicher said he feels a need to continue serving the residents of Butler County as he intends to make Poplar Bluff and its surrounding areas a safe place to raise a family.
"Since we have started raising a foster child now, I've decided the community needs to be safe," he said. "I know over the last 27 years, I've been able to find and know who are the good people, as well as who are the bad people in the community and feel that I can still give my service to the county."
Oesterreicher said honesty, as well as life experience, are characteristics a prosecutor needs to be successful. He said a prosecutor's objective should be to find resolutions benefiting both the victims and society as a whole. Butler County's case load, which he has been handling for years, is not a deterrent to his desire to be elected.
"With my experience, I know what needs to be done," he said. "When I read a case, I know what needs to be corrected, what needs to be changed so that we can get it through the court system as soon as possible."
Oesterreicher said during the last five years, the county has held two grand juries. From those two grand juries, between 200 and 250 persons were indicted as a direct result of his work.
"My responsibility in the last five years was to primarily deal with all of those cases and I handled all of them. Those were predominantly drug cases," he added.
Because the number of cases filed by Butler County continues to rise, Oesterreicher said his long-term plan is to streamline the prosecutor's office and make it more efficient by going paperless.
"It's going to be a long transition," he said, "but that is the long-range goal of what I'm looking at at this point. Going paperless will enable swifter prosecution so that we will be able to go after people in a more timely fashion."
Kacey Proctor
Crimes against families are what Kacey Proctor plans to focus on if he wins Tuesday's race, according to his wife, Ashley. The 33-year-old previously has served as the assistant prosecutor for Taney, Ripley and Stoddard counties and was the interim prosecutor in Carter County. Proctor also served as Poplar Bluff's city prosecutor before his current military deployment.
"He's definitely familiar with working a lot of overtime," said Ashley of her husband's work ethic. "He stays up way after we go to bed a lot of times."
Proctor has attended extensive trainings to aide in the prosecution of child molestation cases, computer forensics, and domestic violence. Ashley said she feels Proctor is prepared to go above and beyond in serving the residents of Butler County.
"His focuses are on crimes that effect families and crimes where the victims are either the elderly or children," Ashley said. "So domestic violence, child molestation, child abuse, drug cases that revolve around heavier drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, opioids -- the distribution and manufacturing of those."
Ashley said her husband's desire to become the Butler County prosecuting attorney began when he was attending law school at Saint Louis University. The couple knew they wanted to eventually move back to their hometown of Poplar Bluff to raise their family. While working as a defense attorney for a public interest law group, Ashley said Proctor noticed a difference in the way cases were handled based on an individual's financial status.
"The public interest law group he worked with primarily helped homeless veterans and other people who couldn't afford attorneys -- they were their defense attorneys," Ashley said. "(Kacey) realized, especially, the less fortunate aren't always treated as equally as some people who can hire a private defense attorney. So he realized that prosecution, at that point in St. Louis under that group, was unfair and he decided he wanted to be a prosecutor."
Ashley said she feels her husband would say a prosecutor should be honest and fair in each case and that prosecuting with common sense is a must. She noted his ability to remain impartial and said whether prosecuting a defendant with a private attorney or a public defender, Proctor would remain fair and balanced, which is something she said he finds to be a very important quality.
Ashley said Butler County's case load is manageable for her husband because he is accustomed to juggling multiple roles and putting in lots of long days.
"Taney County, I think even at one time, was the worst staffed for how many cases they have," she said. "I remember when he worked there, he'd come home at midnight on a law day because they'd just have to get through all the cases. Then, before he left, he was the Ripley County prosecutor, the Poplar Bluff city prosecutor, and the interim for Carter County all at the same time. Technically, those are I believe, well not Carter County, but the other two technically are part-time jobs, but when you have three, and you're National Guard and you're a dad, it's a heavy load."