Butler County prosecutor, sheriff oppose releasing of inmates

Butler County’s prosecuting attorney and sheriff, along with their respective associations, are speaking out against a recent request to the Missouri Supreme Court asking it order local courts to release certain inmates.

Citing the COVID-19 pandemic, the Missouri State Public Defender Director Mary Fox and others signed a letter Thursday asking the state’s high court to “immediately release from confinement” five groups of inmates.

The inmates included:

Pandemic coronavirus covid-19 worldwide, concept. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

• Those currently serving sentences in any city or county jail in Missouri pursuant to a conviction for a misdemeanor offense or a conviction for a municipal ordinance violation;

• Those confined pretrial on nonviolent misdemeanor, municipal ordinance violation or nonviolent C, D, and F felony charges;

• Those confined on technical probation violations or probation violations based on allegations of municipal ordinance violation, nonviolent misdemeanor or nonviolent felony; and

• Those in high-risk categories likely to face serious illness or death.

“This action is necessary to combat the spread of COVID-19 to protect the health and safety of inmates, corrections workers, nurses and all those involved in Missouri’s justice system,” the letter says.

Those signing the letter were requesting “narrowly-tailored relief appropriate” to address the current emergency circumstances.

Both the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and Missouri Sheriff’s Association have spoken out in opposition, saying such an order is “unwarranted and would undermine the cause of individual justice” and disallow judges from considering the relevant facts of each case.

“There is no doubt the Missouri Public Defender system will take advantage of every opportunity to get their clients out of jail,” said Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Kacey Proctor. “Currently, they are using the pandemic as a reason to try to do so.”

As of Friday, Proctor said, no inmate in the Butler County jail is infected by COVID-19.

“The Butler County Sheriff’s Department is taking precautions to ensure the inmates are not exposed to the virus to the extent they can,” Proctor said.

Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs, according to Proctor, has a “good system” in place in the jail, where new inmates are kept separate from the more long-term population.

“It’s well thought out and a good system,” Proctor said. “It’s proven to be effective so far and mitigates the risk of those in jail contracting the virus while still maintaining public safety.”

The protocol being used is new inmates “have to be there for a week, quarantined for a week, with no symptoms, before they are moved into the general population,” Dobbs explained.

There are many aspects in life where Dobbs sees “people drawing back from their responsibilities and chalk it up to it being in response to COVID-19.

“I’m left to wonder if people are just trying to get out of the things they are supposed to do and using (COVID-19) to their advantage,” Dobbs said.

What this boils down to, according to Dobbs, is public defenders are the “worst about coming to see their clients in jail.

“They wait until they are in the courtroom to have conferences with their clients. It boils down to now, they have to come to the jail to visit them.”

Inmates are no longer being taken to the courtroom due to a order from the Supreme Court suspending most in-person proceedings.

When the public defenders do visit in the jail, Dobbs said, they have no contact with their clients.

“They visit the inmates through a glass on a closed-circuit telephone,” Dobbs said. “That’s the easiest way for them to do it.”

Coming to see their clients, Dobbs said, is something “they should have been doing in the first place” instead of waiting until they came to court.

Dobbs said COVID-19 is being taken very seriously, but “it’s not the kind of situation where the justice system needs to start to release criminals that are far more dangerous than this virus.”

Crime, Proctor said, also is not going to stop just because there is a pandemic.

“Opening up the jail cells and letting everyone out in fear that the inmates may contract the virus will only harm public safety and put our citizens at a heightened risk of becoming crime victims,” Proctor said