Even as the U.S. economy shows signs of slowing down, many states around the U.S. are flush with cash, with their so-called rainy day funds estimated to reach a record high of $136.8 billion this fiscal year. And lawmakers in more than half of states are responding to their new cash cushions with similar proposals: cutting taxes.
Twenty-seven states are weighing tax cuts this year, according to a recent analysis from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which termed the push “tax cut fever.” Some officials are considering totally eliminating their state income tax, including in Mississippi and Arkansas, while others are floating property tax cuts, among other ideas.
The drive to cut state taxes has accelerated during the pandemic. During the past two years, dozens of states reduced their income tax rates or created new tax credits and rebates, partly as their coffers overflowed due to strong economic growth and billions in federal pandemic aid. Yet the latest round of tax cuts comes as the economy is showing signs of stress, raising questions about timing.
“Times are good now, but if there’s a downturn, what will their response be?”” said Richard Auxier, senior policy analyst at the Tax Policy Center who focuses on state and local tax policy. “Will it be cutting spending on education? And if it’s raising taxes, who will be impacted?”
The current tax cut proposals range from small reductions in states’ income tax rates to getting rid of the individual income tax altogether, as Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican who is running for reelection this year, has proposed.
Other states are examining more targeted measures, such as exempting more retirement income from taxation — a move that would benefit older residents but potentially take away revenue that could be used for younger families, ITEP noted.
To be sure, some of these proposals are simply that: ideas floated by lawmakers and governors that may face a long path to becoming law. In some states, the tax cut plans are further along, such as in North Dakota, where lawmakers are weighing a bill that would eliminate the individual income tax for single filers making $44,725 or less and for married filers making $74,750 or less, according to the Bismarck Tribune.
Tax cut rationale: The good, the bad and the ugly
State lawmakers say they are proposing tax cuts for a number of reasons: To make their states more economically competitive with others; to boost economic growth; or to boost taxpayers who are struggling with inflation.
But Auxier said voters should examine whether these tax strategies match up with lawmakers’ objectives, noting that the cuts might not actually accomplish their stated goals.
For instance, reductions in income tax rates are often portrayed as helping put money back into ordinary workers’ pockets. Yet in the 11 states that cut individual income tax rates in 2022, the biggest direct benefits were enjoyed by the highest-earning households, Auxier’s analysis found.
By comparison, lower- and middle-income households received only a modest or no benefit. The reason: Higher-income households pay the most in taxes, while some low-income households pay no taxes. That means a tax cut wouldn’t provide those individuals with any benefit.
“If you say, ‘My goal is to give back money to the people who pay the most taxes,’ then the income tax cut works,” Auxier told CBS MoneyWatch. “I don’t like when they say, ‘I want to pass a tax cut for regular working class people’ — nope, it doesn’t work that way.”
Some states weighing whether to scrap their income tax entirely say it will make them more attractive to businesses and households from other states. In Mississippi, Reeves said eliminating taxes would help the state — one of the poorest in the U.S. — “become more competitive economically with Texas, with Florida, with Tennessee.”
Competitive taxation
But Mississippi, which US News & World Reports ranks 50th on health care and 49th on its economy among all 50 states, may need far more than a tax cut to compete with Florida or Texas — which rank No. 8 and No. 9 in terms how well residents are doing — Auxier noted.
“I get really nervous when people in Mississippi and West Virginia start saying, ‘We have lot of problems, and I’m looking at Florida and Texas and they don’t have an income tax and they are doing great — that’s what we have to do’,” Auxier said. “If you think the only difference between Mississippi and West Virginia and Florida and Texas is income taxes, I don’t think you are doing enough research.”
Businesses generally rank other issues higher than taxes when deciding where to locate, experts say. For instance, they’ll point to the need for a pool of qualified workers, good schools for their employees’ children and good roads and transportation to get employees to work.
“Be careful before you eliminate your state’s ability to generate revenue,” Auxier noted.
Targeted tax relief
Other states are focusing their tax cuts on specific groups, such as 10 states that last year created or expanded a Child Tax Credit or Earned Income Tax Credit, which is geared toward low-income families. Some states this year are focusing on older residents, with tax reductions for retirement income, such as Vermont, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
These cuts are typically less fiscally costly than a wholesale reduction of the income tax rate, which makes them more affordable — and gives a state more fiscal flexibility in a downturn, Auxier added.
One example of tax cuts backfiring — the Kansas experiment of 2012. That year, lawmakers in the state slashed income tax rates on top earners by almost 30%, while some businesses had their taxes reduced to zero, under the theory that lower taxes would help spur economic growth.
But Kansas underperformed its neighboring states on an economic basis, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And with less state revenue, Kansas was forced to cut spending on education and other services. Eventually, the tax cuts were reversed by lawmakers.
Here are the 27 states where lawmakers or their governors are considering tax cuts in 2023.
Arkansas
Newly inaugurated Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, is pledging to eliminate the state’s individual income tax, although she said she will start with tax cuts. Her rationale: “We will no longer surrender our jobs, our talent, our businesses and our economic might to states like Tennessee and Texas that have no income tax.”
“I will work with lawmakers to pass an income tax cut this year – and we must keep cutting it, no matter how long it takes, until we eventually wipe the income tax off the books,” Sanders said in her January inauguration speech.
Arkansas’ economy ranks 41st out of the 50 states, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Colorado
Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, is pushing for $200 million in property tax relief this year, according to the Colorado Sun. That comes after voters last fall approved a cut that reduced the state’s flat income tax rate to 4.4% from 4.55%.
Connecticut
The state has a 3% personal income tax on the first $10,000 of earnings for single workers (and up to $20,000 for married filers), and a 5% rate for income up to $50,000 for single taxpayers and $100,000 for married filers. Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, is proposing cutting those rates to 2% and 4.5%, respectively, starting in 2024.
Georgia
Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, wants to give $1 billion in income tax rebates to residents, which he describes as inflation relief, according to WSB-TV. He’s also proposing an additional $1 billion in property tax relief grants.
Idaho
Idaho, which last year lowered its personal and corporate tax rate and created a tax rebate of $300 per person, wants to provide more relief in 2023, Governor Brad Little, a Republican, said in his 2023 state address. Little is pledging $120 million in property tax relief this year.
Indiana
Lawmakers in the state say they want to prioritize property tax cuts in 2023, as well as potentially cut individual tax rates even further, according to WISH-TV. That would come after the state approved lowering its personal income tax rate from 3.23% to 2.9% over seven years.
Iowa
Lawmakers are focusing on lowering property taxes in 2023 after Governor Kim Reynolds signed a law last year to introduce a flat tax of 3.9% and eliminate brackets for higher-income residents.
“So I think what you’re going to see us looking at this year is more of, how do we help bring down some of these levies, but at the same time, how do we make sure that there’s a level of accountability so Iowans see this property tax relief?” said Pat Grassley, the Republican House speaker, according to The Gazette.
Kansas
Both Democrats and Republicans in Kansas want to provide more tax cuts in 2023, although they disagree about how to go about it, according to the Kansas City Star.
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, wants to eliminate sales taxes on food, diapers and feminine hygiene products as well as cut income taxes on Social Security, among other approaches. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are pushing to introduce a flat income tax rate for state residents.
Kentucky
Lawmakers have introduced a bill that would accelerate tax cuts and lower the individual income tax to 4.5% in 2023 and to 4% in 2024. Currently, the state’s tax rate is a flat 5%.
Louisiana
Some state lawmakers want to eliminate its personal income tax, with state Rep. Richard Nelson, a Republican, suggesting offsetting the loss of income taxes with changes to sales and property taxes. Louisiana’s graduated individual income tax now ranges from 1.85% to 4.25%, according to the Tax Foundation.
“My concept is really you’re going to package those changes with eliminating income tax and some of these other non-competitive taxes,” Nelson said, according to BRProud.com.
Michigan
On February 3, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and other Democratic state lawmakers proposed a set of tax cuts, including a $180 tax rebate for every tax filer, according to Click on Detroit.
The plan would also eliminate a retirement tax of 4.25% and expand a match of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, which is aimed at low- and middle-income families.
Minnesota
Lawmakers in Minnesota, one of only 12 states that taxes Social Security income, are proposing to eliminate the tax. That would impact more than 400,000 tax filers, who would see a tax reduction of $1,200, according to CBS Minnesota.
Mississippi
As mentioned above, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves is seeking to eliminate the state’s personal income tax, which currently is a graduated tax ranging from 4% to 5%.
That would come after Reeves signed a law last year to reduce individual tax rates, with the 5% tax rate gradually declining to 4% for fiscal year 2026, according to the Clarion Ledger.
Missouri
Fresh off $800 million in tax cuts that were signed into law in 2022, Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, a Republican, said in January that the state’s $6 billion surplus should be used to send more money back to taxpayers.
Plocher didn’t provide specifics, but said he is interested in cutting income taxes and sales taxes, as well as making changes to property taxes, according to the Missouri Independent.
Montana
With a $2.5 billion surplus, state lawmakers are moving forward with a billion-dollar tax rebate that would send $1,250 in rebate checks to taxpayers. The bill would also green-light property tax rebates of $500 per homeowner, the Montana Free Press reported in January.
However, Governor Greg Gianforte, a Republican, last month called for even bigger property tax rebates, at $2,000 per taxpayer.
“We want to provide Montana homeowners with $2,000 in property tax rebates over this year and next, and permanent, long-term income tax cuts,” he said at a January press conference.
Nebraska
Governor Jim Pillen, a Republican, and state lawmakers in January jointly proposed a number of bills that would reduce tax rates. For instance, one bill would cut its highest individual income tax rate form 6.64% now to 5.84% by tax year 2027.
Another bill proposes exempting all Social Security income from taxation. Currently, the state exempts 60% of Social Security benefits from taxes.
New Mexico
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, in January announced a plan to send tax rebates to residents. The legislation proposes making $750 payments to individual taxpayers or $1,500 for those filing jointly, with the goal of helping residents struggling with inflation.
North Carolina
Some lawmakers want to cut personal tax rates to compete with states without individual tax rates. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, a Republican, last month said he wants to cut the individual income tax rate to 2.5%, according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
The state income tax rate is already getting a cut in 2023, thanks to earlier legislation. The tax rate this year is 4.75%, down from 4.99% previously, and it will decline to 3.99% in 2026.
North Dakota
Lawmakers in North Dakota are weighing a proposal that could eliminate the individual income tax for low- and middle-income earners. People earning less than $44,725 and married filers earning less than $74,750 wouldn’t pay taxes under the proposal, while higher-earning households would have a flat tax of 1.5%.
Ohio
A flat income tax is on the agenda for lawmakers in 2023, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Currently, the state has a graduated tax that ranges from 2.77% to about 4%, the Tax Foundation notes.
Flat taxes ultimately benefit the highest-earning households, according to ITEP, which said its research found that all households except the top 20% paid a higher tax rate on average in flat-tax states compared with those in graduated tax states.
Oklahoma
Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said in his state address earlier this month that he wants to cut taxes, according to Fox25.
“In my executive budget I am proposing to eliminate Oklahoma’s state grocery tax and reduce our personal income tax rate to 3.99%,” Stitt said. The state has a graduated individual income tax that ranges up to 4.75%, according to the Tax Foundation.
South Carolina
The state last year passed an income tax reduction, reducing the top income tax rate from 7% to 6.5% and condensing the number of income brackets to three from six, according to the Post and Courier.
Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, said in his January state address that he’d like to speed up the tax cuts.
“Should an increase in future revenues allow, I ask the General Assembly to use additional funds to speed up the income tax cut schedule, so taxpayers can keep even more of their hard-earned money,”
Utah
Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, is proposing cutting the state’s current income tax rate from 4.85% to 4.75%, according to KSL.com. He also wants to use the state’s budget surplus to send checks of at least $100 to households and provide a one-time property tax rebate.
Vermont
Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, highlighted some possible tax cuts in his fiscal year 2024 budget address last month. Among them: getting rid of taxes on veteran pension benefits, which the AARP calls “long overdue,” and expanding its exemption on taxes for Social Security income.
Vermont, one of 12 states that taxes Social Security income, exempts earnings from the program of up to $25,000 per single taxpayer or $32,000 for married couples. Under Scott’s plan, that would be expanded by $15,000.
Virginia
Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, in December proposed a new budget with an additional $1 billion in tax cuts, according to the Virginia Mercury. That would follow on last year’s $4 billion in tax cuts for state taxpayers.
Among his proposals is cutting the state’s top personal tax rate to 5.5% from 5.75% — a change that would impact most taxpayers since it applies to incomes over $17,000.
West Virginia
Governor Jim Justice, a Republican, proposed what he describes as “the largest tax cut in West Virginia history” in his state address last month. His plan would reduce personal income taxes by 50% over three years, beginning with a 30% cut in June 2023 and two additional 10% cuts in the following two years.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, proposed cutting taxes for middle-class households in his state address last month, according to PBS Wisconsin. However, Republicans are pushing for a flat-tax plan that would reduce taxes for the highest-earning households and introduce a flat 3.25% rate in four years, the publication noted.
SPRINGDALE, Ark., January 30, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– Jane See White died January 11, 2023. She was 72. The Mexico, Missouri native had an award-winning 40-plus year career in newspaper and magazine journalism, including national reporting and editing with the Associated Press, and teaching journalism as part of the University of Arizona School of Journalism.
White was the daughter of Robert Mitchell White II and Barbara Whitney Spurgeon.
At the age of nine White began a dedicated journalism career as the founding Editor and Publisher of The Mexico (Missouri) Junior Ledger. The summer weekly newspaper covered neighborhood news, but ceased publication when White began spending her summers at Camp Bryn Afon in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
She graduated from Mexico High School, then in 1972, from Hollins College with honors and a BA in History and American Studies.
Upon graduation from Hollins College, White spent two years as a reporter for The Roanoke Times then moved back to Missouri as a feature writer for The Kansas City Star. There she earned awards for an investigative series regarding state-run schools for the mentally disabled, and another related to state psychiatric hospitals.
In 1976 she transitioned to the Associated Press in New York City as an editor on the World Desk. From 1978 to 1981 she was also part of an AP six-person national writing team, writing feature news stories for datelines around the country. Her work included covering the Love Canal toxic crisis, exposing and examining the early controversy over the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange.
Peter Arnett, awarded the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting, and known broadly for his coverage of the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, was a colleague of White’s at the Associated Press. “I had the good fortune to be based in AP Headquarters as a Special Correspondent during the 1970s when Jane was steadily building her journalism career,” Arnett recently wrote. “. . . touching tributes to Jane White on her purposeful life in journalism and her recent untimely death brought back memories of not only working with her, but also of Jane’s sparkling personality and her moxie, a very American word of that era used to describe courage and determination.”
White joined Medical Economics magazine as a writer in 1982. Her progression with the publication included Professional Editor, News / Bureaus Editor and Head of the Editorial Division for the national bi-weekly non-clinical publication.
In 1987, her passion for newspaper journalism led her back to Virginia and The Roanoke Times and World News where she was the Deputy City Editor, then City Editor. Her responsibilities included daily and Sunday news coverage by 40 reporters and six assistant city editors.
White moved to Arizona in 1991, holding various writing and editing roles for The Phoenix Gazette and The Arizona Republic, including Features Editor and Assistant Managing Editor.
From 2006 until her retirement in 2014, White was an Editor and editorial writer for The Arizona Daily Star. Editorials White researched and wrote won first-place prizes from the Arizona Press Club, the Arizona Newspapers Association, and were included in nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.
Between 1997 and 2014, White also shared her expertise and passion for journalism with future journalists, as an adjunct Professor with the University of Arizona School of Journalism.
The Kansas City Chiefs are advancing to Super Bowl LVII following a 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship game on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.
After suffering a high ankle sprain last week in the Chiefs’ Divisional Round win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, Patrick Mahomes led the team to a victory in a back-and-forth game.
Kansas City got out to a 6-0 lead after two field goals and before halftime, Mahomes found his favorite target – tight end Travis Kelce for a touchdown to take a 13-3 lead. Kelce was listed as questionable to play coming into the game due to a back injury.
Right before halftime, the Bengals drove down the field and kicked a field goal to cut the deficit to 13-6.
On the Bengals’ first offensive possession of the second half, quarterback Joe Burrow found wide receiver Tee Higgins for a 27-yard touchdown to tie up the game at 13. However, a clearly hobbled Mahomes and the Chiefs responded with a laser touchdown throw to Marquez Valdes-Scantling to take the lead right back.
The Chiefs defensive unit shut down the high-powered Bengals offense until the first play of the fourth quarter.
On fourth down, Burrow heaved the ball down the field and found Ja’Marr Chase for a 35-yard strike to move Cincinnati deep into Kansas City territory. Two plays later, the Bengals scored on a 2-yard touchdown run by running back Samaje Perine to tie the game yet again.
The Chiefs sacked Burrow on third down to give them the ball back with less than a minute left and the score tied at 20. Chiefs returner Skyy Moore returned the Bengals punt 29 yards to set the offense up with good field position. On third down, Mahomes scrambled and as he went out of bounds, Bengals defensive end Joseph Ossai pushed him and was called for a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty which put the Chiefs in field goal range.
Kansas City kicker Harrison Butker knocked down the 45-yard field goal to send the Chiefs back to the Super Bowl for the third time in four seasons.
The Eagles scored on their first possession and didn’t look back in the rout of the 49ers.
The 49ers were momentarily left without rookie starting quarterback Brock Purdy after he suffered a right elbow injury in the first quarter, on a hit by Eagles linebacker Haason Reddick that forced a fumble. Josh Johnson, who is the fourth string quarterback for San Francisco, filled in for Purdy until the third quarter before being ruled out of the game with a concussion.
Playing on the injured elbow, Purdy re-entered the game but the 49ers offense struggled to tally any points.
Meanwhile, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia run-game, ran all over the 49ers defense, notching 148 rushing yards and scoring all four touchdowns on the ground. With his rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter, Hurts (15) passed Cameron Newton (14) for most rushing touchdown’s in a single season by a QB in NFL history, including playoffs, according to NFL Research.
All five inmates who escaped from a jail in Farmington, Missouri, earlier this week have been captured, authorities confirmed Saturday.
The inmates escaped Tuesday evening from the St. Francois County Detention Center, according to the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department.
They were identified as LuJuan Tucker, Aaron Sebastian, Kelly McSean, Dakota Pace and Michael Wilkins.
All five were captured on Friday and Saturday. Four of the five were captured in Ohio, while Wilkins was caught in Missouri, the sheriff’s department said.
Mugshots of five inmates who escaped from a jail in Farmington, Missouri, on Jan. 17, 2023. All five were later captured, authorities said. Clockwise from top left: Kelly McSean, LuJuan Tucker, Dakota D. Pace, Michael Wilkins and Aaron W. Sebastian.
St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department
Wilkins was located at a second-hand retail store in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol said troopers tried to stop a suspected stolen car in Fairfield Township, north of Cincinnati, on Friday evening. The car fled and after a short chase, four people got out of it and ran. Troopers quickly captured two of them and arrested a third in West Chester Township to the south around 2 a.m. Saturday.
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones told reporters on Saturday that a report of a suspicious person in a Liberty Township subdivision led a bloodhound to a parked car where the fourth inmate was found hiding in the backseat.
Three of the five – Tucker, Sebastian and McSean – were convicted sex offenders, according to the sheriff’s department. Pace and Wilkins were being held on felony warrants at the time of their escape.
At around 7 p.m. Tuesday, the inmates got into a secured cell, and then forced their way through a secured door which somehow led them onto the roof of the detention center, the sheriff’s department said.
They then got onto the property of the nearby Centene Corporation, a health insurance company, where they stole a 2009 Scion TC from a secured parking lot, the sheriff’s department disclosed.
Farmington is located about 75 miles southwest of St. Louis.
Lawmakers from the U.S. states of Mississippi and Missouri have introduced bills that seek to legally protect their citizens’ rights to run a Bitcoin node and to mine BTC.
Excerpt of Mississippi’s bill
Excerpt of Missouri’s Bill
Bills have been submitted to both the Houses and Senates of the respective states, with Senator Josh Harkins (R) and Representative Jody Steverson (R) leading the movement within Mississippi. Representative Phil Christofanelli (R) of Missouri submitted its respective bill to the House. Both states’ bills utilize language from the Satoshi Action Fund. Amongst the explicit rights for nodes and mining, the bills also have language prohibiting:
Political subdivisions of the state creating requirements which are not in line with other data center requirements, and changing the zoning of bitcoin miners without proper notice.
Outlawing of discriminatory energy rates directed at bitcoin miners.
Sound ordinances directed at mining facilities that are not in-line with other sound ordinances within the community.
Operating nodes or miners being considered the act of money transmitting.
Just yesterday, a New Hampshire commission recommended that the state Department of Energy investigate how bitcoin mining could be integrated into energy grids statewide. In addition to this recommendation, a report released in November 2022 directed at members of the Texas legislature recommended making bitcoin an authorized investment for the state, while giving tax incentives to local BTC miners.
“I see an opportunity for states that were left out of the tech boom to have a real shot at taking part in the Bitcoin boom,” Dennis Porter, CEO and founder of the Satoshi Action Fund commented. “Mining facilities often get built in rural parts of America. We hope that Missouri and Mississippi see this potential and begin opening up their states to Bitcoin mining businesses.”
The reports all signify growing interest from states across America on how they can benefit from adopting bitcoin and utilizing bitcoin mining within their energy networks. Continued political action from the likes of Bitcoin Policy Institute and Satoshi Action Fund greatly contribute to the education of lawmakers.
“Now that these bills have been drafted and introduced, we must continue the education process for the elected leaders of the state of Mississippi,” Porter stated.
In regards to concerns voiced by Bitcoiners about the consolidation of hash rate in North American jurisdictions, Porter said that, “Consolidation of mining is a concern, but it is much less of a concern than consolidation of nodes. The nodes and the users of the Bitcoin network are the ones in control, the Blocksize Wars proved this. However, extreme consolidation of mining could become a risk. We at Satoshi Action strongly support the growth of hash rate outside the USA and North America.”
Eric Peterson, director of policy at the Satoshi Act Fund has also been working to advise Mississippi. He explains how “Because of its unique characteristics, Bitcoin miners are looking to expand their footprint in the state. Legislators can see the opportunities these miners bring, especially in terms of creating jobs in rural areas.”
If the bills are enacted, they could contribute to mounting interest from state governments, something that Peterson is seemingly leaning in on. “The most important concept for legislators to understand is that Bitcoin is not going away anytime soon,” he said. “Even if states don’t get behind the industry they need to have a working regulatory structure for it and ensure that businesses who operate in this state can do so long term in their state.”
Lawmakers in the Missouri House of Representatives this week adopted a stricter dress code for women as part of a new rules package, and now requires them to cover their shoulders by wearing a jacket like a blazer, cardigan or knit blazer.
The addition, which was proposed by Republican state Rep. Ann Kelley, sparked outrage from some Democrats who said the change was sexist because the dress code for men was not altered.
Men in the Missouri House of Representatives are required to wear a jacket, shirt and a tie. The previous dress code for women required “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots.”
Kelley, speaking on the House floor, said she felt compelled to offer the change that “cleans up some of the language … by mirroring the language in the gentleman’s dress code.”
“Men are required to wear a jacket, a shirt and a tie, correct? And if they walked in here without a tie, they would get gaveled down in a heartbeat. If they walked in without a jacket, they would get gaveled down in a heartbeat. So, we are so interested in being equal,” Kelley said on Wednesday during the floor debate.
Women hold less than a third of the seats in the Missouri House, which is made up of 116 men and 43 women, according to the state House site.
The dress code amendment was passed in a voice vote and the rules package was later adopted by the GOP-controlled legislature in a 105-51 vote, but not without pushback and debate from House Democrats.
“Do you know what it feels like to have a bunch of men in this room looking at your top trying to determine if it’s appropriate or not?” Democratic state Rep. Ashley Aune proclaimed from the House floor.
Republicans altered their amendment to include cardigans after Democratic state Rep. Raychel Proudie criticized the impact requiring blazers could have on pregnant women.
Democratic state Rep. Peter Merideth refused to vote on the amendment, telling his colleagues on the floor, “I don’t think I’m qualified to say what’s appropriate or not appropriate for women and I think that is a really dangerous road for us all to go down.”
“Y’all had a conniption fit the last two years when we talked about maybe, maybe wearing masks in a pandemic to keep each other safer. How dare the government tell you what you have to wear over your face? Well, I know some governments require women to wear things over their face, but here, oh, it’s OK because we’re just talking about how many layers they have to have over their shoulders,” Merideth added.
In the US Congress, up until 2017, reporters and lawmakers were required to wear dresses and blouses with sleeves if they wanted to enter the House chamber. A group of bipartisan female lawmakers protested over their “right to bare arms,” prompting then-Speaker Paul Ryan’s office to concede that the dress code “could stand to be a bit modernized.” The US Senate later amended its rules as well, The New York Times reported.
Aune told CNN Friday afternoon the change signals that Republicans in the state aren’t focused on “important issues.”
“In 2019 House Republicans passed the abortion ban that went into effect this summer after the Dobbs decision came down, fully restricting a women’s right to choose in this state, and on day one in our legislature they’re doubling down on controlling women,” she said on “CNN Newsroom.”
“It’s wild to me. I think it’s sending a message that the Republican Party, the Missouri GOP, doesn’t have the best interest in mind and (is) not focused on the important issues.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
NEW YORK — Many of the conservative prelates who dominate the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were appointed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. His recent death deprives them of a symbolic figurehead but is unlikely to weaken their collective power or end the culture wars that have divided the USCCB, according to Catholic academics and clergy.
David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, noted that conservative-leaning bishops were appointed over a 35-year period by Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, and routinely prevail in voting over the relatively more liberal group of bishops appointed since 2013 by Pope Francis.
“That conservative core is better organized and, as shown by the recent election of USCCB officers, more motivated as it reacts against the more open and unpredictable style of Francis,” Gibson said via email.
“The Francis-style bishops are not as numerous nor as well-organized,” Gibson added. “But they are also contending with well-organized conservative Catholic activists who can make their jobs exceedingly difficult if those bishops are perceived as being too focused on social justice or other teachings perceived as ‘progressive.’”
The USCCB doesn’t track the number of bishops appointed by individual popes, according to its spokesperson, Chieko Noguchi. A sociology professor who does do such tracking, Katie Hoegeman of Missouri State University, said says that of more than than 200 bishops now active in the USCCB, about half were initially appointed by Francis and half by his two predecessors.
Massimo Faggioli, a professor of historical theology at Villanova University, says he doesn’t foresee any major shift in the USCCB’s decision-making in the aftermath of Benedict’s death.
“It is a fact that whenever there’s an election (within the USCCB), the more conservative side always wins,” he said in a telephone interview.
One reason for the conservatives’ sustained dominance, Faggioli said, is that Benedict and John Paul II appointed bishops at relatively young ages. For example, outspoken conservative Salvatore Cordileone was 46 when named a bishop by John Paul in 2002; he was promoted to be archbishop of San Francisco by Benedict 10 years later.
Cordileone has been among the USCCB members to differ openly with Pope Francis on high-profile issues, notably barring U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi – a Catholic from San Francisco – from receiving Communion in the archdiocese because of her support for abortion rights. Francis has made clear he opposes using denial of Communion for this type of repudiation.
“It’s difficult to say what a Francis bishop stands for – they don’t correspond to a single profile,” Faggioli said, “It’s easy to say what a Benedict bishop stands for … they brought in a very distinct cultural war mentality.”
The divisions within the USCCB are so pronounced that they were highlighted in a statement from Timothy Broglio, the Archbishop of the Military Services, USA, after his election in November as the conference’s new president.
“We do suffer from a damaged unity,” Broglio said.
“We have a responsibility to cultivate that unity, which does not mean that we are carbon copies of one another or always have the same approaches to a problem.” he said. “It does mean that, if we disagree, we first speak among ourselves. We are not obliged to imitate the society around us by contributing to diatribes about others.”
One of the minority of U.S. bishops who energetically align with Pope Francis is John Stowe, bishop of Lexington, Kentucky.
During the November USCCB meeting at which Broglio was elected, Stowe unsuccessfully urged his fellow bishops to overhaul a longstanding statement on “Faithful Citizenship” so it would reflect some of Francis’ priorities, such as climate change and economic justice.
Stowe was subsequently asked by the Jesuit magazine America what he saw ahead for the USCCB during Broglio’s three-year term.
“We’re definitely not going to be going in the direction of Pope Francis any more than we have, and that’s unfortunate,” Stowe replied. “I hope Archbishop Broglio can bring us together a little bit better than we have been, but I’d also like to see Francis’ agenda much higher on the bishops’ priorities.”
America then asked Stowe if lay Catholics were wearying of the confrontational approach of some USCCB bishops.
“I think the conference is becoming more and more irrelevant to average Catholics,” Stowe replied.
Indeed, the hardline stances of many conservative U.S. bishops are not shared by a majority of lay Catholics, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in June. Most respondents said abortion should be legal, favored greater inclusion of LGBT people, and opposed the denial of Communion for politicians who support abortion rights.
Stowe was appointed bishop by Pope Francis in 2015.
Francis, in addition to his appointment of bishops, has appointed five cardinals during his papacy, most recently San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy. He was picked over higher-ranking prelates such as Cordileone and Los Angles Archbishop José H. Gomez
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has been the archbishop of New York since his appointment to that post by Benedict in 2009, expressed relief that the opposing ideological camps within the USCCB had responded to Benedict’s death with “inclusive praise.”
“I’m just very touched by it,” he told The Associated Press in Rome.
But he demurred when asked if the USCCB’s culture wars might subside.
“Unfortunately, you’re talking to a church historian, so I have to say, that is nothing new,” he said. “They’ve always been going on and they’ll continue.”
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AP Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield contributed to this report.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
The national trade association for school photography and yearbooks, School Photographers of America (SPOA), announced the winners of the fall national student photography competition.
Press Release –
Jan 4, 2023 07:00 EST
GREENSBORO, N.C., January 4, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– The national trade association for school photography and yearbooks, School Photographers of America (SPOA), announced their 2022 Fall National Student Photography Contest winners.
Middle and high school students all over the country submitted entries for the three different categories: school sports, student life and creative.
These categories tend to represent the main categories used in high school yearbooks today. With the advancement in digital technology and popularity of photography, students are learning at an early age the art and craft of photography.
“We are even seeing student photographers starting their own businesses as early as their freshman year,” says David Crandall, executive director of SPOA. “Seeing students have a passion for photography in high school is incredible for our industry and many others. Having a partner like Sony and the Sony Artisans excited about teaching and providing valuable resources will help fuel future photographers for generations to come.”
The following students were awarded national champion and received a letter of recognition along with a new Sony A7c camera kit:
Yoav Kaelter of Providence High School in Charlotte, NC – Sports Category
Sravya Reddy Guda of Parkway West High School in Chesterfield, MO – Student Life Category
Edna Conness of Mizzou Academy on the University of Missouri Campus – Creative Category
The winners’ school administrators were notified, and they took the opportunity to surprise the students with an award ceremony to honor their achievement.
SPOA and Sony’s next student photography competition is now open through the end of February, with winter sports, student life, senior superlatives, and creative as the categories.
About School Photographers of America
School Photographers of America (SPOA) is the national trade association for school photography and yearbooks. Their mission is to educate, advocate, promote, protect and preserve the great traditions of school photography and yearbooks. In 2023, they plan to launch the American Foundation of School Pictures and Yearbooks, a charitable arm of SPOA, that will provide school pictures and yearbooks to those that may not otherwise be able to afford them.
ST. LOUIS — Nearly 1,600 death row inmates have been put to death in the U.S. since 1977, but an execution scheduled for Tuesday in Missouri would be the first of an openly transgender woman.
Amber McLaughlin, 49, is set to die for stalking a former girlfriend and stabbing her to death nearly 20 years ago. With no legal appeals planned, McLaughlin’s fate rests with Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who is weighing a clemency request.
A database for the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center shows 1,558 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-1970s. All but 17 of them were men, and the center said there are no known previous cases in which an openly transgender inmate was executed.
A clemency petition cited McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard at her trial. A foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her, according to the petition, which also cited severe depression resulting in multiple suicide attempts, both as a child and as an adult.
The petition also included reports citing a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, a condition causing anguish and other symptoms as a result of a disparity between a person’s gender identity and their assigned sex at birth. But McLaughlin’s sexual identity is “not the main focus” of the clemency request, said her attorney, Larry Komp.
In 2003, long before transitioning, McLaughlin was in a relationship with Beverly Guenther. After they stopped dating, McLaughlin would appear at the suburban St. Louis office where Guenther worked, sometimes hiding inside the building, according to court records. Guenther obtained a restraining order and police officers occasionally escorted her to her car after work.
Guenther’s neighbors called police on the night of Nov. 20, 2003, when she failed to return home. Officers went to the office building, where they found a broken knife handle near her car and a trail of blood. A day later, McLaughlin led police to a location near the Mississippi River in St. Louis where the body had been dumped.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury deadlocked on the sentence. Komp said Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow a judge, rather than a jury, to sentence someone to death.
A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021.
McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago, recalled Jessica Hicklin. Hicklin, 43, sued the Missouri Department of Corrections, challenging a policy that prohibited hormone therapy for inmates who weren’t receiving it before being incarcerated. She won the lawsuit in 2018 and became a mentor to other transgender inmates, including McLaughlin.
Hicklin, who spent 26 years in prison for a drug-related killing before being released a year ago, described McLaughlin as a painfully shy person who came out of her shell after deciding to transition.
“She always had a smile and a dad joke,” Hicklin said. “If you ever talked to her, it was always with the dad jokes.”
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated there are 3,200 transgender inmates in the nation’s prisons and jails.
Perhaps the best-known case of a transgender prisoner seeking hormone therapy was that of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who served seven years in federal prison for leaking government documents to Wikileaks until President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in 2017. The Army agreed to pay for hormone treatments for Manning in 2015.
McLaughlin has not had hormone treatments, Komp said.
The U.S. Department of Justice wrote in a 2015 court filing that state prison officials must treat an inmate’s gender identity condition just as they would treat other medical or mental health conditions, regardless of when the diagnosis occurred.
The only woman ever executed in Missouri was Bonnie B. Heady, who was put to death on Dec. 18, 1953, for kidnapping and killing a 6-year-old boy. Heady was executed in the gas chamber alongside the other kidnapper and killer, Carl Austin Hall.
Nationally, 18 people were executed in 2022, including two in Missouri. Kevin Johnson was put to death in November for the ambush killing of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Carman Deck was executed in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri.
Another Missouri inmate, Leonard Taylor, is scheduled to die Feb. 7. He was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her three young children.
ST. LOUIS — Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing a former girlfriend in 2003.
McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending.
The clemency request focuses on several issues, including McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard in her trial. A foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her, according to the clemency petition. It says she suffers from depression and attempted suicide multiple times.
There is no known case of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center. A friend in prison says she saw McLaughlin’s personality blossom during her gender transition.
Before transitioning, McLaughlin was in a relationship with girlfriend Beverly Guenther. McLaughlin would show up at the suburban St. Louis office where the 45-year-old Guenther worked, sometimes hiding inside the building, according to court records. Guenther obtained a restraining order, and police officers occasionally escorted her to her car after work.
Guenther’s neighbors called police the night of Nov. 20, 2003, when she failed to return home. Officers went to the office building, where they found a broken knife handle near her car and a trail of blood. A day later, McLaughlin led police to a location near the Mississippi River in St. Louis, where the body had been dumped.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury deadlocked on the sentence. A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021.
One person who knew Amber before she transitioned is Jessica Hicklin, 43, who spent 26 years in prison for a drug-related killing in western Missouri in 1995. She was 16. Because of her age when the crime occurred, she was granted release in January 2022.
Hicklin, 43, began transitioning while in prison and in 2016 sued the Missouri Department of Corrections, challenging a policy that prohibited hormone therapy for inmates who weren’t receiving it before being incarcerated. She won the lawsuit in 2018 and became a mentor to other transgender inmates, including McLaughlin.
Though imprisoned together for around a decade, Hicklin said McLaughlin was so shy they rarely interacted. But as McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago, she turned to Hicklin for guidance on issues such as mental health counseling and getting help to ensure her safety inside a male-dominated maximum-security prison.
“There’s always paperwork and bureaucracy, so I spent time helping her learn to file the right things and talk to the right people,” Hicklin said.
In the process, a friendship developed.
“We would sit down once a week and have what I referred to as girl talk,” Hicklin said. “She always had a smile and a dad joke. If you ever talked to her, it was always with the dad jokes.”
They also discussed the challenges a transgender inmate faces in a male prison — things like how to obtain feminine items, dealing with rude comments, and staying safe.
McLaughlin still had insecurities, especially about her well-being, Hicklin said.
“Definitely a vulnerable person,” Hicklin said. “Definitely afraid of being assaulted or victimized, which is more common for trans folks in Department of Corrections.”
The only woman ever executed in Missouri was Bonnie B. Heady, put to death on Dec. 18, 1953, for kidnapping and killing a 6-year-old boy. Heady was executed in the gas chamber, side by side with the other kidnapper and killer, Carl Austin Hall.
Nationally, 18 people were executed in 2022, including two in Missouri. Kevin Johnson, 37, was put to death Nov. 29 for the ambush killing of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Carmen Deck was executed in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri.
Another Missouri inmate, Leonard Taylor, is scheduled to die Feb. 7 for killing his girlfriend and her three young children.
Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again Wednesday as the company faces frustration from passengers and scrutiny from federal officials over its handling of its schedule in the aftermath of a massive storm that wrecked Christmas travel plans across the U.S.
According to tracking service Flight Aware, more than 2,500 flights scheduled for Wednesday were canceled before 7 a.m., the vast majority of all the 2,747 canceled flights within, into or out of the U.S. set for that day. On Tuesday, a day after most U.S. airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest had called off about 2,600 more flights on the East Coast by late afternoon Tuesday. Those flights accounted for more than 80% of the 3,000 trips that got canceled nationwide Tuesday, according to FlightAware.
And the chaos seemed certain to continue. The airline also scrubbed more than 2,300 flights set for Thursday as it tried to restore order to its mangled schedule.
At airports with major Southwest operations, customers stood in long lines hoping to find a seat on another flight. They described waiting hours on hold for help, only to be cut off. Some tried to rent cars to get to their destinations sooner. Others found spots to sleep on the floor. Luggage piled up in huge heaps.
Conrad Stoll, a 66-year-old retired construction worker in Missouri, planned to fly from Kansas City to Los Angeles for his father’s 90th birthday party until his Southwest flight was canceled early Tuesday. He said he won’t get to see his 88-year-old mother either.
“I went there in 2019, and she looked at me and said, ‘I’m not going to see you again.’” Stoll said. “My sister has been taking care of them, and she’s just like, ‘They’re really losing it really quick.’”
Stoll hopes to get another chance to see his parents in the spring, when the weather is warmer.
CEO vows to make it right
In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”
Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline’s “highly complex” network. He said Southwest’s tools for recovering from disruptions work “99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down” on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week.
“We have some real work to do in making this right,” said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. “For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that.”
The problems began over the weekend and snowballed Monday, when Southwest called off more than 70% of its flights.
That was after the worst of the storm had passed. The airline said many pilots and flight attendants were out of position to work their flights. Leaders of unions representing Southwest pilots and flight attendants blamed antiquated crew-scheduling software and criticized company management.
Luis Hernandez, 61, left, Ruth Hernandez, with their dog Sissi wait for a ride home after their Southwest Airlines flight to Omaha, Nebraska, got cancelled at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Irfan Khan
Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the airline failed to fix problems that caused a similar meltdown in October 2021.
“There is a lot of frustration because this is so preventable,” Murray said. “The airline cannot connect crews to airplanes. The airline didn’t even know where pilots were at.”
Murray said managers resorted this week to asking pilots at some airports to report to a central location, where they wrote down the names of pilots who were present and forwarded the lists to headquarters.
Lyn Montgomery, president of the Transport Workers Union representing Southwest flight attendants, said she and other labor leaders have repeatedly told management that the airline’s scheduling technology is not good enough.
“This has been something we have seen coming,” she said. “This is a very catastrophic event.”
Buttigieg: Southwest should offer cash refunds
The airline is now drawing unwanted attention from Washington.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said his agency would examine the causes of Southwest’s widespread cancellations and whether the airline was meeting its legal obligations to stranded customers.
“While we all understand that you can’t control the weather, this has clearly crossed the line from what is an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline’s direct responsibility,” Buttigieg told “NBC Nightly News.” He said Southwest should at least pay cash refunds for canceled flights and cover stranded passengers’ hotel and meal costs.
In Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee also promised an investigation. Two Senate Democrats called on Southwest to provide “significant” compensation for stranded travelers, saying that the airline has the money because it plans to pay $428 million in dividends next month.
Bryce Burger and his family were supposed to be on a cruise to Mexico departing from San Diego on Dec. 24, but their flight from Denver was canceled without warning. The flight was rebooked through Burbank, California, but that flight was canceled while they sat at the gate.
“It’s horrible,” Burger said Tuesday by phone from Salt Lake City, where the family decided to drive after giving up the cruise.
The family’s luggage is still at the Denver airport, and Burger doesn’t know if he can get a refund for the cruise because the flight to California was booked separately.
At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, travelers said they were told they won’t be able to catch another Southwest flight until Saturday, according to CBS News DFW.
The size and severity of the storm created havoc for many airlines, although the largest number of canceled flights Tuesday were at airports where Southwest is a major carrier, including Denver, Chicago Midway, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Dallas.
Spirit Airlines and Alaska Airlines both canceled about 10% of their flights, with much smaller cancellation percentages at American, Delta, United and JetBlue.
Consumer advocates urged Congress to adopt new regulations to protect travelers.
“While the awful weather isn’t anyone’s fault, the way travelers were treated and accommodated — or not — sits squarely on the shoulders of most of the airlines,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog with public interest group U.S. PIRG, in a statement.
“As federal officials examine how much of the mayhem was preventable, this catastrophe once again exposes the massive changes that are needed to better protect airline passengers.
“Oh my God, we’re getting on a plane!”
Kristie Smiley planned to return home to Los Angeles until Southwest canceled her Tuesday flight, so she waited at the Kansas City airport for her mother to pick her up. Southwest can’t put her on another plane until Sunday, New Year’s Day.
Smiley said the airline kept blaming the weather after the storm passed and didn’t tell passengers why planes couldn’t take off.
“They like acted like [Tuesday’s flight] was going to go until they started saying, ‘Oh, five more minutes. Oh, 10 more minutes.’ I’m not sure what’s up with them. It seems a little off,” she said.
Danielle Zanin vowed never to fly Southwest again after it took four days, several canceled flights and sleeping in the airport before she, her husband and their two young children got home to Illinois from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They made stops at airports in Denver and Phoenix and reached Chicago only after ditching Southwest and paying $1,400 for four one-way tickets on American Airlines.
“I remember saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re getting on a plane!’ I was honestly shocked because I thought we were stuck in airports forever,” she said.
Zanin plans to ask Southwest to be reimbursed for part of their original tickets plus the new ones on American, and extra spending on rental cars, parking, an Uber ride and food — about $2,000 in all.
“I don’t have good faith that they will do much of anything,” she said.
Today is Monday, Dec. 26, the 360th day of 2022. There are five days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Dec. 26, 2004, more than 230,000 people, mostly in southern Asia, were killed by a 100-foot-high tsunami triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean.
On this date:
In 1799, former President George Washington was eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
In 1865, James H. Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts, received a patent for “an improved coffee percolator.”
In 1908, Jack Johnson became the first African-American boxer to win the world heavyweight championship as he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.
In 1917, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation authorizing the government to take over operation of the nation’s railroads.
In 1941, during World War II, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.
In 1966, Kwanzaa was first celebrated.
In 1980, Iranian television footage was broadcast in the United States showing a dozen of the American hostages sending messages to their families.
In 1990, Nancy Cruzan, the young woman in an irreversible vegetative state whose case led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right to die, died at a Missouri hospital.
In 1994, French commandos stormed a hijacked Air France jetliner on the ground in Marseille, killing four Algerian hijackers and freeing 170 hostages.
In 1996, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. (To date, the slaying remains unsolved.)
In 2003, an earthquake struck the historic Iranian city of Bam, killing at least 26,000 people.
In 2006, former President Gerald R. Ford died in Rancho Mirage, California, at age 93.
Ten years ago: Toyota Motor Corp. said it had reached a settlement worth more than $1 billion in a case involving unintended acceleration problems in its vehicles. Soul singer Fontella Bass, 72, died in St. Louis.
Five years ago: The snowfall total from a storm that began on Christmas Day reached 53 inches in Erie, Pennsylvania – the biggest-ever two-day total in the state’s history. The cities of New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia sued the Defense Department, charging that the military failed to properly use the national background check system for guns; the lawsuit said the failure to report criminal records of service members had allowed a former member of the Air Force to kill more than two dozen people at a Texas church in November. Voters in Liberia went to the polls for a runoff election that saw former soccer star George Weah elected as the African country’s new president.
One year ago: South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu died at 90; the retired archbishop had been an uncompromising foe of apartheid and a modern-day activist for racial justice and LGBT rights. A major Christmas weekend storm caused whiteout conditions and closed key highways amid blowing snow in mountains of Northern California and Nevada.
Today’s Birthdays: R&B singer Abdul “Duke” Fakir (The Four Tops) is 87. “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh is 77. Country musician Bob Carpenter (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) is 76. Funk musician George Porter Jr. (The Meters) is 75. Baseball Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk is 75. Retired MLB All-Star Chris Chambliss is 74. Baseball Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith is 68. Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana is 67. Humorist David Sedaris is 66. Rock musician James Kottak (The Scorpions) is 60. Rock musician Lars Ulrich (Metallica) is 59. Actor Nadia Dajani is 57. Rock singer James Mercer (The Shins; Flake) is 52. Actor-singer Jared Leto is 51. Actor Kendra C. Johnson is 46. Rock singer Chris Daughtry is 43. Actor Beth Behrs is 37. Actor Kit Harington is 36. Actor Eden Sher is 31. Pop singer Jade Thirlwall (Little Mix Actor) is 30. Actor Zach Mills is 27.
A transgender woman who is scheduled to be executed in Missouri next month for murdering a woman in 2003 has filed a clemency application with the governor, citing struggles with brain damage and childhood trauma, the petition says.
Amber McLaughlin – listed in court documents as Scott McLaughlin – is set to be executed by lethal injection on January 3 for the 2003 murder of Beverly Guenther, according to her clemency application with Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican.
“The lead investigating officer contemporaneously noted McLaughlin’s genuine remorse, as has every expert to evaluate McLaughlin in the years since the trial,” the application filed by her attorneys states, adding that McLaughlin has been “consistently diagnosed with borderline intellectual disability,” and “universally diagnosed with brain damage as well as fetal alcohol syndrome.”
A spokesperson for the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-execution organization, told CNN that McLaughlin is the first transgendered prisoner to be given an execution date.
McLaughlin was “abandoned” by her mother and placed into the foster care system, and in one placement, had “feces thrust into her face,” according to the petition.
In one foster home, McLaughlin suffered abuse and trauma that included being tased by her adoptive father, the petition says, and she battled depression that led to “multiple suicide attempts.”
The petition alleges that the jury in McLaughlin’s trial was not presented with evidence detailing her mental health struggles. The jury was ultimately deadlocked “after finding just one of four alleged statutory aggravating factors to be true.” The death penalty in McLaughlin’s case was imposed by a trial judge, according to the petition.
McLaughlin’s lawyers argue she should be spared because she has expressed genuine remorse for Guenther’s death.
The governor’s legal team will meet with McLaughlin’s attorneys on Tuesday to discuss her petition, according to Kelli Jones, communications director for the governor.
“These are not decisions that the Governor takes lightly, and the process is underway as it relates to the execution scheduled for January,” Jones said.
McLaughlin’s federal public defender, Larry Komp, told CNN his client’s execution “would highlight all the flaws of the justice system and would be a great injustice on a number of levels.”
“It would continue the systemic failures that existed throughout Amber’s life where no interventions occurred to stop and intercede to protect her as a child and teen. All that could go wrong did go wrong for her. There is so much hate out there, so I admire Amber and her courage as she embraces who she is,” Komp wrote in a statement.
According to Komp and the governor’s office, McLaughlin has not initiated a legal name change or transition and as a death-sentenced person, is kept at Potosi Correctional Center near St. Louis, which houses male inmates.
AMARILLO, Texas — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Biden administration from ending a Trump-era policy requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas stayed the termination until legal challenges by Texas and Missouri are settled but didn’t order the policy reinstated. The impact on the program wasn’t immediately clear.
“It’s a common sense policy to prevent people from entering our country illegally,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted after the ruling. “Texas wins again, for now.”
The decision comes as El Paso, Texas, and other border cities face a daily influx of migrants that could grow larger if separate asylum restrictions enacted under President Donald Trump end next week as scheduled.
Thursday’s ruling could prove to be a temporary setback for the Biden administration, which may appeal.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it disagreed with the ruling and was considering its next steps. It said the government was well within its authority to end the policy.
Under Trump, about 70,000 asylum-seekers were forced to wait in Mexico for U.S. hearings under the policy introduced in January 2019. President Joe Biden — who said it “goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants” — suspended the policy on his first day in office.
That sparked a long and tortured legal and administrative path.
Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee in Amarillo, ordered that the policy be reinstated in 2021. The Biden administration complied with the order after agreeing to changes and additions demanded by Mexico. But it didn’t enforce the policy widely and only a few thousand people were sent back to wait in Mexico.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that Biden had the ability to end what technically are known as Migrant Protection Protocols. But it threw back to Kacsmaryk one main issue: determining whether the administration’s action was “arbitrary and capricious” and thus violated federal law for crafting regulations.
In his 35-page ruling, the judge said it was likely an October 2021 memo that was the administration’s latest effort to nail down termination of the policy did indeed appear to violate the law.
Among other things, the administration failed to consider the benefits of the policy, including reducing illegal immigration and “unmeritorious asylum claims,” the ruling said.
Trump made the policy a centerpiece of border enforcement, which critics said was inhumane for exposing migrants to extreme violence in Mexico and making access to attorneys far more difficult.
Kacsmaryk said the Biden administration memo mentioned conditions that migrants might face while in Mexico but not the hardships they face “when making the dangerous journey to the southern border” in the first place.
Two police officers were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, officials said.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves identified the slain officers as Branden Estorffe and Steven Robin, according to a tweet from his verified account.
“I am heartboken by this terrible loss of two brave law enforcement officers. I am praying for their family, friends, their fellow officers, and the entire Bay St. Louis community,” Reeves wrote. “Mississippians will never forget the sacrifice of these heroes.”
The two officers received a call for service at a Motel 6 on Highway 90, according to a news release from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. The officers encountered a woman who shot both officers before turning the gun on herself.
One officer died on the scene, and the second officer was taken to the hospital but later died.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — The first openly transgender woman set to be executed in the U.S. is asking Missouri’s governor for mercy, citing mental health issues.
Lawyers for Amber McLaughlin, now 49, on Monday asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson to spare her.
McLaughlin was convicted of killing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther on Nov. 20, 2003. Guenther was raped and stabbed to death in St. Louis County.
There is no known case of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center.
“It’s wrong when anyone’s executed regardless, but I hope that this is a first that doesn’t occur,” federal public defender Larry Komp said. “Amber has shown great courage in embracing who she is as a transgender woman in spite of the potential for people reacting with hate, so I admire her display of courage.”
McLaughlin’s lawyers cited her traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard, in the clemency petition. A foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father tased her, according to the letter to Parson. She tried to kill herself multiple times, both as a child and as an adult.
Parson spokeswoman Kelli Jones said the Governor’s Office is reviewing her request for mercy.
“These are not decisions that the Governor takes lightly,” Jones said in an email.
Komp said McLaughlin’s lawyers are scheduled to meet with Parson on Tuesday.
A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury was unable to decide on death or life in prison without parole.
A federal judge in St. Louis ordered a new sentencing hearing in 2016, citing concerns about the effectiveness of McLaughlin’s trial lawyers and faulty jury instructions. But in 2021, a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty.
McLaughlin’s lawyers also listed the jury’s indecision and McLaughlin’s remorse as reasons Parson should spare her life.
Missouri has only executed one woman before, state Corrections Department spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email.
McLaughlin’s lawyers said she previously was rooming with another transgender woman but now is living in isolation leading up to her scheduled execution date.
Pojmann said 9% of Missouri’s prison population is female, and all capital punishment inmates are imprisoned at Potosi Correctional Center.
“It is extremely unusual for a woman to commit a capital offense, such as a brutal murder, and even more unusual for a women to, as was the case with McLaughlin, rape and murder a woman,” Pojmann said.
Missouri executed two men this year. Kevin Johnson, a 37 year old who was convicted of ambushing and killing a St. Louis area police officer he blamed in the death of his younger brother, was put to death last month. Carmen Deck died by injection in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri, in 1996.
ST. LOUIS — Lamar Johnson has wrongly spent nearly three decades in prison for a St. Louis killing after a witness was coerced into falsely identifying him as the shooter, an attorney for the local prosecutor’s office told a judge Monday.
But Assistant Missouri Attorney General Miranda Loesch said detectives will testify that they never threatened or coerced anyone. “They did their job” and followed leads that pointed to Johnson as the killer, Loesch said.
Kim Gardner, who leads the same St. Louis circuit attorney’s office that secured Johnson’s 1995 murder conviction, believes he is innocent and is seeking to set him free after nearly 28 years in prison for the shooting death of Marcus Boyd. The state attorney general’s office maintains that Johnson was rightfully convicted.
St. Louis Circuit Judge David Mason is presiding over the hearing, which is expected to last all week. Johnson was in the courtroom on Monday, dressed in a blue shirt and tie with brown slacks. He sat quietly next to his attorneys and listened to testimony.
Boyd was shot to death on the front porch of his home by two men wearing ski masks on Oct. 30, 1994. A man who was with Boyd, James Gregory Elking, got away.
Johnson was convicted of killing Boyd over a $40 drug debt and received a life sentence. Another man, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term.
Charles Weiss, an attorney for the St. Louis prosecutor’s office, described for Mason the circumstances that led to Johnson’s arrest.
A woman who lived nearby told police Johnson was the only person she knew who might have had a problem with Boyd. Police put Johnson in a lineup, but Elking didn’t initially identify him, only doing so after detectives coerced him, Weiss said.
Another detective alleged that Johnson at one point blurted out to him, “I shouldn’t have let the white guy live,” referring to Elking. Weiss said there was no recording of that conversation, but Loesch cited it as evidence of Johnson’s guilt.
Johnson contended he was with his girlfriend, miles away, when the shooting happened. Elking recanted his identification of Johnson about 20 years ago. Campbell and another man, James Howard, later signed sworn affidavits admitting to the killing and said Johnson wasn’t involved.
Campbell is now dead and Howard is serving a life sentence for an unrelated murder and nearly a dozen other crimes committed during an incident in 1997. He wore handcuffs and an orange prison outfit as he testified Monday.
“How did Marcus die?” Johnson’s attorney, Jonathan Potts, asked.
“Me and Phillip Campbell killed him on his front porch,” Howard answered.
Howard, 46, was 17 at the time of Boyd’s killing. He testified that he and Campbell decided to go to Boyd’s house and rob him since Boyd owed drug money to another friend. They put on black clothing and black ski masks, and found Boyd and a second man on the front porch, he said.
Howard said he grabbed Boyd. When they struggled, Campbell intervened. Howard said Campbell shot Boyd in the side, while Howard shot him in the back of the head and neck. He said they didn’t shoot the witness, Elking, because they didn’t think he could identify them.
“Was Lamar Johnson there?” Potts asked.
“No,” Howard answered. He said he decided around 2002 to admit to the crime and try to help Johnson get freed.
“I was trying to right my wrongs that I had done him,” Howard said.
While cross-examining Howard, Loesch cited inconsistencies in his version of events. Affidavits signed by Howard said he and Campbell ran back to Howard’s home after the killing and that Campbell stayed at the house for three days. Howard now says Campbell left the home on the night of the killing. Howard also admitted that an affidavit gave the wrong route the men took to Boyd’s house.
Howard said he can’t remember every detail from 28 years ago.
“What I can tell you is I shot him,” he said.
Elking testified that he was at Boyd’s house trying to buy crack cocaine when two armed men in black masks ran up. He saw both gunmen shoot Boyd, then leave.
Elking was called to view lineups of potential suspects. When he was still unable to identify anyone, he said Detective Joseph Nickerson told him, “I know you know who it is,” and urged him to “help get these guys off the street.”
Feeling “bullied” and wanting to help police, Elking said that if investigators would tell him who they suspected, he would identify them as the shooters.
“I hate it, and I’ve been living with it for 30, 28 years. I just wish I could change time,” Elking said, fighting back tears.
Gardner’s investigation in collaboration with the Midwest Innocence Project also alleged prosecutor misconduct and secret payments to Elking, along with falsified police reports and perjured testimony.
Nickerson denied Gardner’s allegations and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he still believed Johnson was guilty.
In March 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Johnson’s request for a new trial after Schmitt’s office argued successfully that Gardner lacked the authority to seek one so many years after the case was adjudicated.
The case led to passage of a state law that makes it easier for prosecutors to get new hearings in cases where there is fresh evidence of a wrongful conviction. That law freed another longtime inmate, Kevin Strickland, last year. He had served more than 40 years for a Kansas City triple murder.
ST. LOUIS — A hearing begins Monday in a case that will decide if the conviction should be overturned for a Missouri man who has spent nearly three decades in prison for a murder that two other people later confessed to committing.
Lamar Johnson has long maintained his innocence, and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is backing his request to vacate his conviction. However, the Missouri attorney general’s office maintains Johnson was rightfully convicted in the 1994 slaying of 25-year-old Marcus Boyd and should remain in prison.
The hearing in St. Louis Circuit Court is expected to last up to five days.
Johnson was convicted in 1995 of fatally shooting Boyd over a $40 drug debt and received a life sentence. Another suspect, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term.
Johnson claimed he was with his girlfriend miles away when Boyd was killed. Years later, the state’s only witness recanted his identification of Johnson and Campbell as the shooters. Two other men have since confessed and said Johnson was not involved.
Gardner launched an investigation in collaboration with lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project. Their investigation found misconduct by a prosecutor, secret payments made to witness, falsified police reports and perjured testimony.
The former prosecutor and the detective who investigated the case rejected Gardner’s allegations.
Last week, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt asked the court to sanction Gardner, accusing her of concealing evidence. Schmitt said Gardner’s office failed to inform the attorney general’s office of gunshot residue testing on a jacket found in the trunk of Johnson’s car after his arrest. Schmitt’s filing said the evidence was hidden “because it tends to prove that Johnson is guilty.”
Gardner, a Democrat, responded by accusing Schmitt, a Republican, of grandstanding. She said the failure to turn over a lab report on the jacket was due to an overlooked email. She also called it irrelevant since the jacket was not used in the crime.
Johnson’s claims of innocence were compelling enough to spur a 2021 state law that makes it easier for prosecutors to get new hearings in cases where there is new evidence of a wrongful conviction. That law freed another longtime inmate, Kevin Strickland, last year after a prosecutor told a court that evidence used to convict him had been recanted or disproven. He served more than 40 years for a Kansas City triple murder before a judge freed him.
On Oct. 15, 2019, Joseph Elledge walked into the Columbia, Missouri Police Department without a lawyer to tell detectives about the mysterious disappearance of his 28-year-old wife, Mengqi Ji — six days earlier.
JOE ELLEDGE (police interview): We didn’t have any big fights … I think the last big fight was actually the week before. And it wasn’t really a big fight.
For over a year, Mengqi’s Ji’s husband, Joe Elledge, had been insisting that his wife took only her purse and disappeared sometime in the early morning hours of Oct. 8, 2019.
Defense Attorney Matei Stroescu
The 23-year-old described his wife as tense and withdrawn the night before she disappeared, so he gave her a massage.
JOE ELLEDGE (police interview): I was going kinda slow. I was trying to drag it out because I wanted to extend the amount of time that we were together doing something.
According to Joe, Mengqi eventually went to sleep, saying she had to be somewhere in the morning.
JOE ELLEDGE: I asked her about three times, “Who is she meeting?” And her answer was just, quote, “Me.” … she wouldn’t tell me who she was meeting or where she was going, what she was doing.
The next morning, Joe says he woke up alone. His wife was gone.
Dan Knight: He was claiming … she had just disappeared — that she had left her little girl behind. Her phone was left behind … her car. Her car keys were left behind.
From the beginning, then-Boone County prosecuting attorney Dan Knight, had doubts about Joe’s story.
Dan Knight: We were trying our best to leave no stones unturned. But there were a lot of stones.
Joe told investigators that after his wife disappeared, he found journal entries on her computer where she’d written about an online emotional affair she was having with a man living in China.
JOE ELLEDGE (police interview): The last paragraph said … “like It’s sad though that I have no interest in my husband.”
The day Joe spoke with detectives, he also did an exclusive interview with local CBS affiliate, KRCG, and implied that his wife may have left him for another man.
Joe Elledge gave an interview to CBS affiliate KRCG. He said he needed his wife to return home safely, and that he and his daughter loved her. He also implied that Mengqi may have run off with another man.
KRCG 13
JOE ELLEDGE (KRCG interview): I hope that she’s with – at least with somebody who – who cares for her, you know, enough to keep her safe.
Joe and his family hired attorney Scott Rosenblum, who points out there were intimate texts between Mengqi Ji and the man she was communicating with.
Peter Van Sant: Sexual in nature?
Scott Rosenblum: Very sexual.
Texts like this one where she wrote, “I want you so much right now.”
Peter Van Sant: And did she ever express love for him in any of these communications?
The question was, had Mengqi run off to be with that man who lived in China, where she was born?
Amy Salladay is the Ji family’s attorney.
Amy Salladay: Mengqi was born during China’s One-Child Policy. But Ke Ren, Mengqi’s mother, would say that “We only ever wanted one child. We wanted to give all of our love to this child.”
Yáo Li: Mengqi is like the — the kid all the parents would want.
Yáo Li is a Chinese immigrant, and an assistant prosecutor in Boone County, who helped Dan Knight communicate with Mengqi’s parents.
Yáo Li: They are really, really proud of her. … I know how hard it is to get into a top university in Shanghai and Beijing … the competition … is really intense. … And she did that.
Dan Knight: Then she came to the University of Missouri in 2012 where she finished up her undergraduate studies and then she also obtained her master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Peter Van Sant: This was a brilliant woman. Correct?
Dan Knight: Absolutely.
One of her professors hired her right out of school at his biomaterials company, “Nanova,” where Joe also worked.
Dan Knight: Joe … grew up in Kansas City. … he then came to the University of Missouri, and he studied engineering, and he met Mengqi at Nanova Biomaterials. … My understanding is, is that she was his supervisor.
Joe proposed on a trail in Rock Bridge Memorial State Park called “The Devil’s Icebox.” Two weeks later, they were married.
Boone County DA’s Office
The two quickly fell in love, and a year and seven months into their relationship, Joe proposed. He took a knee on a trail in Rock Bridge Memorial State Park called “The Devil’s Icebox.” Two weeks later, they were married.
Dan Knight: I believe there was a rush to get married because Mengqi’s visa was about ready to expire.
Yáo Li: It’s a really foreign concept for American citizens to understand the stress that a immigrant is facing … She’s fully capable to support herself financially. But she cannot get this green card. … So, this really changes the power dynamics of a marriage.
Nearly five months into the marriage, Mengqi was offered a big job.
Yáo Li: And then she found out that she’s pregnant.
Mengqi and Joe decided she should turn down the job to be a full-time mom – even though, at the time, she was the sole income earner. Joe had quit working to finish school. In October 2018, the baby was born.
Yáo Li: So that’s the dynamic of this marriage. Mengqi was completely isolated from all the support system that she can have. … the little baby’s the only thing she has.
Her one lifeline was a daily call with her mother in China. It was their ritual. So, when Mengqi didn’t call on Oct. 9, 2019, her parents sent a friend living nearby to check on her.
JOE ELLEDGE (police interview): You know, I told him everything that happened. I told him that she just hasn’t been here for a couple days.
And it was only after that visit — the day after he said his wife vanished — that a seemingly unconcerned Joe Elledge finally called police to report her missing.
JOE ELLEDGE (to 311): Hi. I need to file a missing person’s report.
He didn’t dial 911 – Joe called the non-emergency 311.
Peter Van Sant: Do you find that suspicious?
Dan Knight: Absolutely. Absolutely. … it would be natural for him to have reported this immediately.
Instead, Joe would tell police that the day he woke up and found his wife missing, he went on two long leisurely drives in her car-with their baby in the backseat-looking for new hiking trails.
JOE ELLEDGE (police interview): There’s this, there’s just this big area that’s all – that’s all green on the Google Maps. And so, I wanted to go and see if there were walking paths back there.
Naturally, that raised eyebrows.
Joe voluntarily sat for an extensive interview with the Columbia Police Department. Investigators soon became suspicious of his story, especially after Joe described going for long, leisurely drives to look for new hiking paths instead of searching for his missing wife.
Boone County Prosecutor’s Office
DET. JON VOSS: Did you lock your door when you left the apartment?
JOE ELLEDGE: Yeah.
DET. JON VOSS: If she comes home, how is she gonna get back in? You’ve got her keys and her car. Her phone’s in the house. She can’t even call anybody.
JOE ELLEDGE: Yeah, I don’t know.
Detectives, and Dan Knight, suspected foul play. But there was no physical evidence: no blood, no weapon, no witnesses, no body. There was also no evidence that Mengqi took off with that man in China.
Dan Knight: And then also — it became — apparent early on that Mengqi would not have abandoned her child, her 1-year-old daughter. … She was a great mother.
During his interview with detectives, Joe gave them access to his phone — and on it they found something stunning: 10 hours of secretly recorded conversations with his wife, like this one:
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): I would like to discuss our relationship. And I am kinda ready to discuss the end of it as well.
Dan Knight: Joe told Mengqi … that he wanted to divorce her.
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): I don’t like being married (laughs) to you. I don’t like living with you. … It’s been a terrible relationship. I’m eager – to end it.
Dan Knight: He was asking her whether or not she was going to basically cooperate … And if not … was going to – he was going to tell the judge … “that she had been abusive to him.”
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): Should I mention in court that you’re abusive to me? Should I ask them to-deport you?”
But that was nothing, says Dan Knight, compared to the nearly four-and-a-half hours of secretly recorded audio they found on Mengqi’s phone.
Peter Van Sant: What was on those conversations of significance?
Dan Knight: Unvarnished Joe Elledge.
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): If you keep acting this way, I’ve told you before, ain’t gonna be pretty.
A CONTROLLING RELATIONSHIP
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): What are you trying to do? … Are you trying to make me go crazy so that you can call the police on me and take my f*****’ baby away from me?
About a year before Mengqi Ji would disappear, she secretly recorded her husband Joe, going ballistic, for nearly an hour.
Facebook
It was Oct. 29, 2018, about a year before Mengqi Ji would disappear, when she secretly recorded her husband Joe, going ballistic, for nearly an hour.
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): Do you want me to f****** break s***? Do you want me to hurt somebody?”
It all started weeks earlier, after Mengqi gave birth and her parents flew in from China to stay with them. It is Chinese custom for grandparents to stay and help for 100 days — a custom that infuriated Joe.
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): I don’t want your mom here … Your mom is causing problems … Your mom should f****** leave.
Dan Knight: What really infuriated Joe was that Mengqi was standing up to him and saying that she needed her mother.
MENGQI JI (audio recording): If I don’t take care of my own body, my own health, it’s not responsible for me … or this family –
JOE ELLEDGE: Yeah, I agree.
MENGQI JI: She’s helping me to do that. And I know it.
JOE ELLEDGE: I don’t like that woman. And I don’t think you should either.
Yáo Li: The tension was just to the breaking point, and there’s yelling, there’s cussing.
And Yáo Li says Joe really despised it when Mengqi and her mother Ke Ren spoke Chinese in his presence.
Yáo Li: That’s a stressor for him. Because everything that he doesn’t understand, he would assume the worst.
Mengqi, left, and her parents during their visit from China to help care for their granddaughter.
Amy Salladay
When Mengqi’s father returned to China, Joe decided to take back control, says Amy Salladay.
Amy Salladay: Mengqi’s mother was making Chinese dumplings … She’s making them for his birthday … And he doesn’t like how she’s using, using the cutting board.
Dan Knight: I called it the “cutting board incident.”
Prosecutor Dan Knight says it’s an incident that seems petty, but it led to an explosive argument.
JOE ELLEDGE (audio recording): Don’t do my cutting board like that. I’m telling you, cutting board doesn’t like that.
Dan Knight: He was demanding that his mother-in-law leave the residence immediately and permanently, never to return.
Peter Van Sant: Did Mengqi’s mother stand up to him? … and could that have triggered this cutting board incident?
Dan Knight: Mengqi’s mother, like Mengqi, was a Confucianist. She wanted harmony more than anything else. There was no standing up to Joe.
JOE ELLEDGE: There’s gonna be some f****** problems if she tries staying … I’m gonna make it f****** go away.
MENGQI JI: The problem …
JOE ELLEDGE: Yeah, you can bet your ass on that.
Dan Knight: It was a one-way street. It was Joe’s way or the highway.
MENGQI JI: You are not a God. You don’t understand –
JOE ELLEDGE: I am a f****** God … I say mom don’t stay here, she don’t stay here.
Mengqi pleaded with Joe to let her mother stay. He responded with insults and profanity.
JOE ELLEDGE: What the f*** is the matter with you? F****** brainless.
Dan Knight: He told her that she was incapable because she was a woman.
JOE ELLEDGE: You think you’re so empowered because of this society … You’re still just a woman.
Dan Knight: It was a calculated effort on his part to gaslight her, to try to brainwash her, to bring her under his control.
Joe was also threatening, explaining how he “conquers nature”- a cryptic comment that Dan Knight believes was a metaphor for wanting to hurt Mengqi.
JOE ELLEDGE: You know how I conquer nature? I f*****’ kill it. I grab its head and break its f****** neck. That’s how you conquer f****** nature.
Yáo Li: Mengqi ‘s … mother, of course, was in shock. It’s just really difficult for her to understand why this young man is so mad and so angry at her, at everything.
Mengqi felt so helpless that she called Joe’s mother Jean Geringer, who drove two hours to try and mediate.
MENGQI JI: I have no choice, I had to call you. I’m sorry … He’s gonna come back and just, I don’t know, unpredictable thing’s gonna happen.
Mengqi recorded that meeting as well.
JEAN GERINGER: I’m not here to choose sides. I’m here to try to be neutral and just give advice and guidance.
Even in his mom’s presence, Joe was not shy about expressing hateful, even violent thoughts about his mother-in-law.
JOE ELLEDGE: Do I just smack her? Do I just beat her down?
MENGQI JI: You wanted to.
JOE ELLEDGE: I have that craving … yes.
JEAN GERINGER: You can’t …
JOE ELLEDGE: I’m not going to though …
JEAN GERINGER: … you can’t go there.
Dan Knight: The evidence that we – that we had was that he was making his mother-in-law, Ke Ren, kneel to him and bow to him.
Joe would eventually apologize to his mother-in-law, but he still forced to her leave before the 100 days were up.
Yáo Li: She thought that apology was sincere. Or otherwise, she wouldn’t have left and then believing that things might get better.
Yáo Li translated Mengqi’s journals for the prosecutor’s office, and says things didn’t get better. But Mengqi couldn’t walk away.
Yáo Li: And even she is confused of, “Why I just cannot get out of this relationship” … That’s her constant question to herself.
Dan Knight thinks Mengqi felt trapped by her immigration status.
Dan Knight: In just five months she was set to have another interview where she would be applying to get her permanent green card.
A little over two weeks after Mengqi vanished, the Columbia Police Department announced it was opening a criminal investigation into her disappearance. That same day, police showed up at Joe’s apartment.
Amy Salladay: He’s with his mother. … The detectives at the scene were asking her, “Where is Mengqi, do you know where she is?”
The Columbia Police Department announced that they were opening a criminal investigation into Mengqi’s disappearance. The same day — 16 days after his wife vanished — officers arrested Joe Elledge on suspicion of physical child abuse.
AP via Boone County Sheriff’s Department
Joe was arrested — not in connection with his wife’s disappearance, but on suspicion that he had physically abused their daughter.
ARRESTING OFFICER: We have become aware that there was some bruising … So, do you know what we’re talking about?
JOE ELLEDGE: Yup.
Dan Knight: This is through Ke Ren, her mother. … Mengqi had told her that she’d observed … bruising on the buttocks. And Ke Ren suggested that Mengqi confront Joe about this. … and that Joe then … admitted that he had done this … to the little girl.
ARRESTING OFFICER: Tell me exactly what happened.
JOE ELLEDGE: She was crying a lot one night… I think I pinched her butt a little bit.
Scott Rosenblum: To me, that was — a ruse to get him incarcerated.
Joe’s defense attorney, Scott Rosenblum.
Scott Rosenblum: He was a young parent. Maybe he made a mistake. But there was no other indication that he was abusive towards his daughter. None whatsoever.
Joe was held on a $500,000 bond, his mother took custody of his daughter, and Dan Knight set about proving his theory about what happened to Mengqi.
Dan Knight: I thought from pretty much the very beginning this eventually was gonna wind up being a murder case. Things just had to develop.
Peter Van Sant: So, you’re tellin’ me that these trees that we are standing among right now helped solve a … case?
Dan Knight: Absolutely.
TREES HAVE DNA, TOO
Dan Knight: On October 25th, 2019, police executed a search warrant over at Joe Elledge’s and Mengqi’s apartment.
That was the same day Joe Elledge was arrested on suspicion of child abuse. Mengqi had been missing for a little over two weeks.
“These officers, they were on the ball. … they were able to find some things that were … great evidence in this case,” said Prosecutor Dan Knight.
CBS News
Dan Knight: These officers, they were on the ball. … they were able to find some things that were … great evidence in this case.
Dan Knight: Police collected … from his backpack … writings, different writings.
Notes Joe had apparently written to himself about how to respond to questions from reporters and investigators.
Dan Knight: One of those I labeled as being a script, “what to tell the police.”
Dan Knight: Another thing that he had written was that he was to speak about Mengqi in the present tense rather than the past tense.
JOE ELLEDGE: She’s a very dedicated person. Ah, she’s a hard worker and I really like that.
Peter Van Sant: Why would a man who was claiming his wife had walked away, have to remind himself to not speak about her in the past tense?
Dan Knight: Because he killed her.
Detectives looked for possible evidence in every corner of the apartment, and on a hunch, also took a muddy pair of Joe’s boots into evidence.
Peter Van Sant: Just in case, down the road, they might be relevant?
Dan Knight: Something was amiss, yes. And … they sensed it. And they took ’em.
The search for Mengqi became a hunt for her remains, starting by retracing the long, leisurely drives that Joe said he took – with his baby in the backseat – while only he knew that wife was “missing.”
JOE ELLEDGE: We just went driving and it was a really nice day and so I just wanted to go out.
But every lead was just another dead end. So, Dan Knight made a bold move.
Dan Knight: I decided to go ahead and file charges. Murder in the first degree without a body.
Charges were filed while Joe was still in jail on abuse charges.
With Joe behind bars, Knight stepped up the search for Mengqi’s body.
Dan Knight: These are the cell tower records that we had in this case.
Peter Van Sant: This is his cell phone then? Joe’s cellphone?
Dan Knight: That’s correct.
According to Joe’s cell phone records, he had spent 30 minutes by the Lamine River, the day he claimed Mengqi disappeared – something he had not told police.
After months of searching for Mengqi, authorities still couldn’t find her. Mengqi’s mother attended a memorial vigil in her honor at the Lamine River.
Amy Salladay
Convinced her body was here, authorities searched for months. There was even a memorial on the river, attended by Mengqi’s mother.
Yáo Li: By March of 2020, we had really given up … we needed to do something to be able to say goodbye.
Then, a year later, with Joe Elledge still awaiting trial, a hiker was making his way through a wooded area in the very park where Joe had proposed to Mengqi. A flash of color in the dirt caught his eye. It was a purse.
Dan Knight: He had this walking stick. And he kind of flipped that purse around just a little bit. … He noticed that there were these shoes … And then … He saw somethin’ that looked like was maybe a- skull … and in fact, it was a skull, Mengqi’s skull.
Peter Van Sant: She had finally been found?
Dan Knight: That’s right. That’s right. it was a miracle.
YáoLi: I think that’s – that’s the worst moment for a parent.
YáoLi: I had a video conference with Mengqi’s parents, who were both back in China.
Yáo Li: They didn’t say anything. All you s — see is their tears.
From China, Menqgi went to the University of Missouri in 2012, where she finished her undergraduate studies and obtained a master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering. One of her professors hired her right out of school at his biomaterials company, and that’s where she met her future husband.
Facebook
They now knew their daughter was dead — but how and why were still a mystery. Sadly, even the medical examiner’s office couldn’t say what killed Mengqi.
Peter Van Sant: Was there damage to her bone structure that —
Dan Knight: Yes.
Peter Van Sant: Unnatural damage?
Dan Knight: Yes, there was. Four … ribs were broken all the way through.
Peter Van Sant: Do you believe that those broken ribs are evidence of physical abuse, of a physical attack?
Dan Knight: Of a massive, catastrophic blow to her back, all the way, these through and through breaks that she would have been in agonizing pain.
Dan Knight was building a theory of what happened to Mengqi-and items collected about a year-and-a-half earlier, were about to become key. For one thing, Joe’s cell phone records put him near Mengqi’s burial site the day he reported her missing.
Peter Van Sant: What were the weather conditions like that day?
Dan Knight: Unfortunately for Joe but fortunately for justice, it was raining.
Knight had those muddy boots — and a hunch was about to pay off.
Dan Knight: As you can see right here, there is soil that is caked onto these boots.
Mud and gravel on the soles of Joe’s boots were sent out for analysis, along with foliage stuck in the mud.
Dan Knight: We’ve got 12 different types of vegetation in these boots.
Mud and gravel on the soles of Joe’s boots were sent out for analysis, along with foliage stuck in the mud.
District Attorney Dan Knight/Boon County DA’s Office
Dan Knight decided to send Joe’s boots to a lab at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where juniper tree needles were carefully removed from the soles for DNA testing.
Peter Van Sant: Plants have DNA just like people?
Christine Edwards: Absolutely, yeah. Every organism, every living organism in the planet has DNA.
Christine Edwards is a plant population geneticist who never dreamed she’d become a CSI investigator in a murder case.
Christine Edwards: They wanted to see if there was some way that we could match the vegetation in the boots to the … site where a woman’s remains were found.
Christine Edwards: These are two samples that were collected from … the left boot right here.
Christine Edwards: Once we knew that we could get usable DNA out of the – the forensic samples that we took from the boots, then we needed to match them to the – the trees at the site.
After carefully removing the needles stuck to the bottom of Joe Elledge’s boots and extracting their DNA, Alex Linan, was assigned to climb several juniper trees surrounding Mengji’s grave. He meticulously numbered each tree and then scaled them one by one, picking fresh needles from the highest branches.
CBS News
Edwards’ colleague was tasked with collecting sample needles from the juniper trees surrounding Mengqi’s gravesite.
Peter Van Sant: How do you do it? Pick it up off the ground or go up to the trees?
Alex Linan: So, we have to go all the way up to the trees. And this involved a ladder and a 10, 15-foot-long pole pruner so that we could make sure that the needles that we were getting came from the exact tree that it was. So, we couldn’t just get it from the ground. It had to be from the tree.
Each sample was stored and numbered, and back at the lab, they were compared to the needles found on Joe’s boots.
CBS News
Each sample was stored and numbered, and back at the lab, they were compared to the needles found on Joe’s boots.
Christine Edwards (pointing to a monitor): These two lines here are the genotype of one of the samples from the boot. … And this one is from the tree that is overhanging the gravesite. And as you can see, the lines match up.
Peter Van Sant: And that moment for you when you realized you had a match?
Christine Edwards: Yeah, It … was really exciting. … “We got him.” … He was there.
Peter Van Sant: No doubt he was there.
Christine Edwards: No doubt in my mind. He was there.
Peter Van Sant: Scientifically confirmed?
Alex Linan: Yes.
Peter Van Sant: Just like a fingerprint, just like DNA, blood DNA that is presented in trial, this is just as reliable.
Alex Linan: Exactly. Exactly the same technology.
Peter Van Sant: So, what you’re telling me is, these trees that are all around us here played a role in solving a murder?
Alex Linan: Absolutely. Yes.
Dan Knight says it’s only the second murder case he knows of where tree DNA has been used as evidence.
Dan Knight: The walls were closing in on Joe. So, I expected at trial for there to be another defense, besides … “Oh, Mengqi must’ve just run off and gone to China.”
And Dan Knight was right.
TRAGIC ACCIDENT OR PREMEDITATED MURDER?
On Nov. 1, 2021, Joe Elledge went on trial for the murder of his wife, Mengqi Ji.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): The question is … what happened in that apartment?
And Joe’s attorney Scott Rosenblum pivoted to a new explanation about what happened to Mengqi. Joe didn’t mean to kill his wife.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): What happened was a tragic accident.
Faced with the fact that Joe was now placed at the scene of Mengqi’s burial site, Joe Elledge’s defense attorney, Scott Rosenblum presented a new story at trial. He argued that Joe did in fact kill his wife, but it was a tragic accident.
Don Shrubshell/Columbia Daily Tribune via AP, Pool
Thanks to a juniper tree and its DNA, Joe could no longer claim that Mengqi had run away. He now had to admit that he buried his wife in a shallow grave.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): He had no intent, not — certainly not murder. That’s not even close.
Joe did have something to do with Mengqi’s death, said Rosenblum, but it was not murder. He took jurors back to Oct. 8, 2019, the day Mengqi died.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): And as they go into the evening hours … he asks her if he – if she wants a massage. Joe proceeds and … Tries to initiate sex. She rebuffs him. She says no.
Joe now admits he knew about his wife’s online affair with that man in China, Rosenblum said. And on this night, he confronted her.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): He’s upset, he’s hurt, and he wants to take his daughter for a walk. … She lunges towards him and pushes him … and he pushes her … Pushes her into the countertop.
Joe claims that’s when Mengqi broke her ribs. The defense called Dr. Keith Norton, the pathologist who conducted Mengqi’s autopsy, and he said it was possible.
DR. KEITH NORTON: Yes, but it would have to be a very forcible push.
Peter Van Sant: Does Joe maintain that she initiated this physical encounter?
Scott Rosenblum: 100%.
Peter Van Sant: She came after him?
Scott Rosenblum: Well, I mean … she wanted to prevent him from leaving with their daughter.
Peter Van Sant: He claimed in his new story that she attacked him … Do you buy any of that?
Dan Knight: Of course not.
Joe Elledge and Menqi Ji.
District Attorney Dan Knight/Boone County DA’s Office
Peter Van Sant: Look at the size difference here.
Dan Knight: Of course not. He’s twice as big as her.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): And again, she lunges at him and … he pushes her away … and she falls this time on her back and he hears the thud of her head hitting the ground.
Joe claims Mengqi was knocked nearly unconscious and then got up and went to bed. In the morning, when the baby started crying, Mengqi didn’t wake up.
SCOTT ROSENBLUM (opening statement): He’s sort of violently shaking her. Are you all right? Are you — all right? And it is abundantly clear at that point in time that his wife is dead.
Peter Van Sant: Why did Joe lie?
Scott Rosenblum: He … he was scared. … He made a choice, an erratic, irrational choice.
Peter Van Sant: Is that someone who’s in a panic state, or is that a killer who’s trying to – to cover up his crime?
Scott Rosenblum: I believe … it was, uh, evidence of extreme panic.
Dan Knight (at burial site): That story was very clever, but it … wasn’t what happened.
Prosecutor Dan Knight says all the proof he needs that Joe’s story is made up are those four broken ribs.
Mengqi was found with four broken ribs, an injury that Prosecutor Dan Knight believes shows that she was killed in a violent confrontation
District Attorney Dan Knight/Boone County DA’s Office
Peter Van Sant: You know how painful it is to break a single rib … She would’ve had to have been to a hospital, right?
Dan Knight: Oh, sure. There’s no doubt about it.
Knight says he keeps going back to Joe’s story about giving Mengqi a massage that night and believes that’s when he killed her.
Dan Knight: I don’t know if he put his hands around her neck and he strangled the life out of her. I don’t know if he, maybe, forced her face into a pillow. … But I know one thing for sure. That murder was horrific.
A premeditated murder says Knight, fueled by months of growing anger.
Dan Knight: He hated Mengqi with everything he had.
JOE ELLEDGE (audio): I’ll find a happier life. F*** this s***. I ain’t – I ain’t happy here.
Joe took the stand in his own defense, and insisted that he loved his wife, even though there was tension in the marriage.
Joe Elledge spent two days on the witness stand.
Don Shrubshell/Columbia Daily Tribune via AP, Pool
SCOTT ROSENBLUM: You would have these arguments, you both felt you were misunderstand (sic), then there’d be a reconciliation and you would love each other.
JOE ELLEDGE: That’s right.
The defense tried to get jurors to relate to the sometimes-stormy nature of Joe and Mengqi’s marriage; moments of arguing common with many couples. Joe claimed his wife was responsible for much of the tension.
JOE ELLEDGE (on the stand): Uh, she would raise her voice – uh, yelled … And, uh, she wouldn’t – listen to me very well.
Amy Salladay: They wanted to paint her as the aggressor … they wanted people to feel like it was her fault.
Amy Salladay and Yáo Li were in the courtroom, regularly texting updates to Mengqi’s mother – who was unable to travel.
Yáo Li: She didn’t believe a bit of it. And – um – that was very emotional for her.
When Dan Knight finally had his chance to question Joe Elledge, he point-blank asked Joe how he killed the mother of his child.
Prosecutor Dan Knight played those secret audio recordings between Joe and Mengqi showing them arguing, including Joe telling Mengqi she was “brainless.” Knight told Peter Van Sant that the recordings helped establish motive.
Don Shrubshell/Columbia Daily Tribune via AP, Pool
DAN KNIGHT: Did you maybe stand up on top of her and jump on top of her back?
JOE ELLEDGE: No.
DAN KNIGHT: Did you suffocate her?
JOE ELLEDGE: No.
After nearly two weeks of testimony detailing the audio recordings, digital evidence, cell tower data, and the tree DNA linking Joe to Mengqi’s burial site, both sides delivered their closing arguments. Rosenblum asked for manslaughter, “Return the right verdict,” and Dan Knight asked for first-degree murder.
DAN KNIGHT: She deserves justice ladies and gentlemen! Mengqi deserves justice!
Amy Salladay: We were all nervous. And we hoped that the jury would see the case the way that we saw it.
A JURY DECIDES
Amy Salladay: We’ve all come to know Mengqi … and so I think we all felt that connection to her. And we hoped that justice would be served.
It was 7 p.m. on Nov. 11, 2021, and after deliberating for nearly seven hours, the jury had its verdict.
After a 10-day trial, both sides delivered closing arguments. Defense attorney Scott Rosenblum reiterated that it was all a tragic accident and argued for manslaughter. Dan Knight argued that Mengqi’s death was premediated and asked for first-degree murder. Neither side got what they wanted. The jury found Joe Elledge guilty of second-degree murder, meaning that they didn’t see Mengqi’s murder as premediated.
Alessia Tagliabue/Missourian via AP, Pool
JUDGE: Mr. Elledge would you please stand to receive the verdict. … We the jury find the defendant Joseph Duane Elledge guilty of murder in the second degree.
Guilty of second-degree murder. The jury believed that Joe killed Mengqi, but not with premeditation. Yáo Li says Mengqi’s parents were very pleased.
Yáo Li: They weren’t nervous about a conviction at all. … They believe this is a fair system.
But the day wasn’t over yet. The jury would now hear testimony in the “penalty phase.”
Dan Knight: I had to turn around very quickly late that night and start presenting evidence.
Dan Knight wanted life in prison. The defense asked for 10 years.
The state called several of Mengqi’s friends, who spoke about the impact of her death.
QINYI WANG | Friend: I feel very sad. And I feel angry.
FRIEND: That hurt us, that make us huge pain and huge sorrow.
The defense called only one witness to plead for mercy — Joe’s mother Jean Geringer.
JEAN GERINGER: It’s very disturbing. It’s heartbreaking because it’s so out of his character.
It was midnight when the jury got the case again. A little over an hour later —
JUDGE: We the jury … declare the punishment for a term of 28 years.
Dan Knight believes the jury gave Joe one year for every year of Mengqi’s short life. Yáo Li informed Mengqi’s parents.
Yáo Li: I don’t think … the numbers matter to them. I think the truth matters the most … that’s what is frustrating … I don’t think they will ever, ever know the whole truth of what actually happened.
All they can hope for now is to be able to raise their granddaughter in China, says family attorney Amy Salida.
Amy Salladay: Her future is — is undetermined at this point.
Mengqi’s daughter now lives with Joe’s mother, but Mengqi’s parents are seeking shared custody of the now 4-year-old.
Amy Salladay: I hope that she can be raised to know her mother’s Chinese culture and to know her mother’s family.
Scott Rosenblum says that while the baby will always know her Chinese grandparents, she is in good hands with Joe’s mother.
Scott Rosenblum: Jean and her husband are great parents. … She makes it her business to include — the maternal grandparents in the baby’s life.
Dan Knight would not discuss the custody case but did say this about the trauma already suffered by Mengqi’s daughter.
Dan Knight: Number one: she was in the apartment at the time that Joe killed Mengqi, her mother. … one of these days, she’s gonna find out about that. … Second thing is when Joe drove around, the next day … Mengqi was in the trunk and … their little girl was strapped into a car seat. … But the thing that she’s also gonna find out about is that Joe … would’ve been just fine with her going the rest of her life thinking that her mother abandoned her.
Mengqi Ji’s legacy of accomplishment, dedication and love lives on in her baby girl, and in the hearts of those whose lives she touched.
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Amy Salladay: I want her daughter to know that she was a great mother. She was dedicated. She loved her with all of her heart. … I want her to be remembered for her smile and how friendly and outgoing she was.
Mengqi Ji’s legacy of accomplishment, dedication and love lives on in her baby girl, and in the hearts of those whose lives she touched.
Yáo Li: Everybody sees the goodness in her. That’s why everybody’s so connected with her.
A decision in the custody case is expected by the end of this month.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, call 1-800-799-SAFE or visit thehotline.org.
On June 4, 2022, Dan Knight who worked so hard to get justice for Mengqi, died unexpectedly.
Boone County DA’s Office
Prosecutor Daniel Knight died on June 4, 2022.
Produced by Judy Rybak and Emily Wichick. Ryan N. Smith is the development producer. Shaheen Tokhi is the associate producer. Michael Loftus is the broadcast associate. Michael McHugh is producer/editor. Doreen Schechter, Michelle Harris and Phil Tangel are the editors. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
ST. LOUIS — St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner on Friday accused Missouri’s attorney general of seeking sanctions against her “because he has no case” in his effort to keep Lamar Johnson in prison for a murder that Johnson has long contended he had nothing to do with.
Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt asked a St. Louis judge on Thursday to sanction Gardner, a Democrat, accusing her of concealing evidence as she seeks to vacate Johnson’s conviction. Johnson was convicted of killing 25-year-old Marcus Boyd in 1994 in an alleged drug dispute.
At issue in the sanction request is forensic testing on a jacket seized from Johnson’s trunk after his arrest. The crime lab in Kansas City, Missouri, recently determined the jacket contained gunshot residue. Schmitt accused Gardner of concealing that evidence, which Schmitt, in a court filing, called material “because it tends to prove that Johnson is guilty.”
In a response motion on Friday, Gardner said the failure to disclose the gunshot residue testing was a simple oversight — and irrelevant since the jacket in question wasn’t used in the crime. Gardner said her office wasn’t even aware of the gunshot residue report until rechecking emails on Thursday, after Schmitt filed the sanction motion.
“It concerns gunshot residue testing conducted on a red-and-black Chicago Blackhawks jacket that was not even used in the crime,” Gardner’s court filing states. “In 28 years, no eyewitness has ever mentioned a red Blackhawks jacket. Considering that Boyd was shot at close range, one would also expect the jacket to be covered in blood spatter. It’s not.”
Her filing called Schmitt’s motion “a weak attempt to change the narrative because the Attorney General has no case.”
Johnson was convicted of killing Boyd over a $40 drug debt and received a life sentence while another suspect, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in exchange for a seven-year prison term.
Johnson claimed he was with his girlfriend miles away when Boyd was killed. Meanwhile, years after the killing, the state’s only witness recanted his identification of Johnson and Campbell as the shooters. Two other men have confessed to Boyd’s killing and said Johnson was not involved.
Gardner launched an investigation in collaboration with lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project. She said the investigation found misconduct by a prosecutor, secret payments made to the witness, police reports that were falsified and perjured testimony.
The former prosecutor and the detective who investigated the case rejected Gardner’s allegations.
Schmitt’s sanctions filing states that in April, Gardner sent the jacket to the Kansas City lab. The lab report said it found no DNA on the jacket. But last month, another test determined it did contain gunshot residue. Gardner said the “unexpected and nondescript email” that provided the gunshot residue report had gone unnoticed.
In a response filing, Schmitt’s office reiterated that sanctions should stand.
“If an attorney is using her email for the exchange of reports and other evidence, it strains credulity to suggest that emails simply languish unread indefinitely, and it falls short of the care that should be employed when dealing with matters related to discovery in ongoing cases,” the court filing stated.
Gardner was disciplined earlier this year amid allegations of concealing evidence in another high-profile case.
In April, she reached an agreement with the Missouri Office of Disciplinary Counsel in which she acknowledged mistakes in her handling of the prosecution of former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens. She received a written reprimand.
In that case, Gardner conceded she failed to produce documents and mistakenly maintained that all documents had been provided to Greitens’ lawyers in the 2018 criminal case that accused him of taking a compromising photo of a woman and threatening to use it if she spoke of their extramarital relationship.
The charge was eventually dropped, but Greitens resigned in June 2018.
Johnson’s claims of innocence were compelling enough to spur a state law adopted in 2021 that makes it easier for prosecutors to get new hearings in cases where there is new evidence of a wrongful conviction. The new law freed another longtime inmate last year.
Kevin Strickland was released from prison at age 62 in November 2021 after serving more than 40 years for a triple murder in Kansas City. He maintained that he wasn’t at the crime scene, and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said her review convinced her that Strickland was telling the truth. A judge ordered Strickland freed.
