{"id":65230,"date":"2021-02-25T16:31:31","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T22:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65230"},"modified":"2021-02-25T16:31:31","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T22:31:31","slug":"65230","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65230","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

New Prosecutor In McCloskey Gun Case Says He’ll Start With “Blank Slate”<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner was\u00a0ousted as the prosecutor<\/a>\u00a0overseeing the case against Mark and Patricia McCloskey last year, the couple still faces charges of unlawful use of a weapon and tampering with evidence. Now, a former U.S. Attorney has\u00a0been appointed<\/a>\u00a0as a special prosecutor to oversee the case, and he\u2019s promising to take a new look at all of the evidence in question.<\/p>\n

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[Richard] Callahan said Wednesday from his Jefferson City home that he\u2019s no stranger to prosecuting politically charged cases and will approach this one no differently. He said he stepped down last week from his post as a senior judge in Cole County to accept the special appointment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI am going to approach it the same way I\u2019ve done anything in the last 49 years \u2014 start with a blank slate, follow the evidence and see where it takes me,\u201d said Callahan, who is 73.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s good that Callahan says he\u2019ll approach the case with an open mind, because there\u2019s been a great deal of criticism leveled against Gardner for her decision to prosecute the couple to begin with. The McCloskeys were on their own property when hundreds of protesters entered their private community and marched towards the home of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson last June.<\/p>\n

Nine individuals were initially charged with misdemeanor trespassing violations , but attorneys for the city dropped the cases last fall after trustees for the private Portland Place neighborhood said they didn\u2019t want to pursue prosecution. Joel Schwartz, the McCloskeys\u2019 attorney, said at the time that the city\u2019s decision wouldn\u2019t impact his clients\u2019\u00a0defense<\/a>, which is centered around the state\u2019s Castle Doctrine.<\/p>\n

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Missouri\u2019s Castle Doctrine law allows people to use deadly force to defend their property, and that\u2019s what the McCloskeys were doing, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s is abundantly clear the crime of trespassing was committed in this case, making the McCloskeys actions perfectly legal,\u201d he said. \u201cJust because the city counselor decided not to charge them changes nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m curious to see if Callahan proceeds with the case after reviewing all of the evidence, or if he drops all of the charges against the McCloskeys. I\u2019m also really looking forward to hopefully learning more about the evidence tampering charge that Patricia McCloskey faces, given that it was Kim Gardner\u2019s own office that <\/span>fiddled with the firearm<\/a>\u00a0and restored it to working condition. The McCloskeys maintain that the gun had been disabled before it was used as a piece of evidence in a trial that they were involved in, and that they never fixed the gun so it could fire again.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought the case against the McCloskeys was a weak one from the start, but we\u2019ll have to wait to see what the special prosecutor concludes. Given the fact that Gov. Mike Parson has already said that he\u2019ll pardon the couple if they are convicted, Callahan could save tax payers a lot money and the McCloskeys a lot of grief if he were to conclude that the original charges filed by Kim Gardner weren\u2019t justified.<\/p>\n

Of course in doing so Callahan would kick off a whole new controversy, and Gardner would almost certainly complain that, while she was kicked off the case because she used the McCloskeys\u2019 arrest as a fundraising tool, any decision to drop the charges against the pair would be just as political in nature. Of course, she\u2019ll be able to do that anyway if the couple were convicted and Parson does end up issuing a pardon.<\/p>\n

The Left will complain about the McCloskeys no matter how this case ends up, because there\u2019s zero chance that they\u2019ll actually do any time or end up with a criminal record. Callahan could drop the charges, the McCloskeys could win their case at trial, or they could get a gubernatorial pardon. Given the fact that none of the trespassers are facing any charges either, the quickest route to justice, in my opinion, would be for the new special prosecutor to conclude that the McCloskeys shouldn\u2019t be prosecuted at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Prosecutor In McCloskey Gun Case Says He’ll Start With “Blank Slate” Even though St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner was\u00a0ousted as the prosecutor\u00a0overseeing the case against Mark and Patricia McCloskey last year, the couple still faces charges of unlawful use of a weapon and tampering with evidence. Now, a former U.S. Attorney has\u00a0been appointed\u00a0as … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65231,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65230\/revisions\/65231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}