Court Opinion

ID: 9718544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:27:01.314548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:00.315870
License: Public Domain

MICHAEL A. WOLFF, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the principal opinion.
Every business day, in courtrooms throughout the state, prosecutors announce that they represent “the State of Missouri.” These lawyers, for reasons more historical than rational, are not paid by the state, however, but by the counties. Their salaries and benefits vary considerably.
Toward the good purpose of enhancing the compensation of prosecutors, section 56.807, RSMo Supp.1995, was passed 15 years ago requiring counties to contribute to fund pensions for the state’s prosecutors. Then, perhaps to take sting out of this requirement, the state found a way to reimburse these contributions through the Department of Social Services, whose large budget includes federal money and state money that may include recycled federal funds. The details of such maneuvers aside, it appears that this practice — which was ended in 2002 (about the time of the state’s first fiscal crisis of this century)— was intended to obscure or lessen the costs of these pension contributions.
In other words, the state was following its time-honored practice of seeking justice on the cheap.
Just as in the recent public defender case, State ex rel. Missouri Public Defender Comm’n v. Pratte, 298 S.W.3d 870 (Mo. banc 2009), we should acknowledge that the state’s interest in its criminal justice system exceeds its willingness to pay the costs.1
In this case, the burden of this unwillingness falls on the counties, many of which are strapped for money to meet their other obligations.
We citizens appear to have a collective willingness to pretend that we can have a highly functioning criminal justice system that will maximize public safety without having to pay for it. We have developed an attitude toward state governance that puts two conflicting main ideas in play— that all forms of taxation are bad and that state government, through tax credits and other spending for non-necessities, can be an ATM machine for the well-connected.
What is missing here is the true sense that spending for criminal justice is a necessity, not an optional luxury or an obligation that can be funded by some other government.
Today’s decision allows the state to continue relying on a patchwork of locally funded county-by-county prosecution offices for the administration of justice.
I agree with the principal opinion that this is what the law allows. And what the law allows is a system that is well suited to meet the needs of the 19th century.

. A further example, if one is needed, is the state's reimbursement for county jail custody for criminal defendants under section 221.105, RSMo 2000. The state pays counties $22 per day for pretrial detainees, substantially less than the cost to most counties. For inmates sentenced to county jail on a state offense, the state pays nothing. The incentive, of course, is for local prosecutors to urge judges to send offenders to state prisons at a far greater cost than the cost of punishing those who otherwise could be punished through greater use of county jail facilities. This shows that sometimes not paying for something ends up costing more.