Ronald Brockmeyer wears many hats — criminal defense attorney, local prosecutor, and municipal judge in a town called Ferguson. Here’s a look at how that has played out.
This is Ronald Brockmeyer, an attorney from St. Louis, Missouri, who specializes in divorces and criminal defense. He also serves as municipal judge in Ferguson.
Here's a list of interesting facts about the legal figure who wears multiple hats:
Ronald Brockmeyer law firm
There are more than 90 municipalities in the St. Louis area. Many of them have their own courts, where cases pertaining to violations of city ordinances can be tried.
Unlike larger halls of justice, municipal courts rarely employ full-time judges or prosecutors. Instead, the city courts — which are part of the town's police departments — hire local attorneys to serve as judges and prosecutors part-time, paying them per session.
One of the consequences of this system is that the same lawyers often wear several hats, opening the door to all kinds of conflicts of interest and abuse, according to Tony Rothert, the president of St. Louis branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"In these courts, the people who are the defense attorneys, the judges, and the prosecutors are the same people," Rothert told BuzzFeed News. "It's not uncommon for one person to be the prosecutor in one city, and a judge in the next town over."
Brockmeyer, for one, serves as judge in Ferguson and Breckenridge Hills and as prosecutor in Florissant, Vinita Park, and Dellwood, KSDK reported. He reportedly charges $600 per session.
If the reasons why Brockmeyer's multiple appointments make local civil rights groups uneasy are unclear, imagine what would happen if the Manhattan District Attorney was the judge in a court in Queens and had a criminal defense practice in Brooklyn.
Brockmeyer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In the past, he has said that he doesn't believe his multiple part-time gigs constitute a conflict of interest, and that his ability to "see both sides of it" makes the municipal court system "even better."
In the wake of the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last year, the DOJ and other agencies performed a wide-ranging investigation of Ferguson's criminal justice system. The resulting report is a harsh indictment of the city government.
The DOJ investigators also had some choice things to say about Brockmeyer:
The City has made clear to the Police Chief and the Municipal Judge that revenue generation must also be a priority in court operations.
The Finance Director's February 2011 report to the City Council notes that "Judge Brockmeyer was first appointed in 2003, and during this time has been successful in significantly increasing court collections over the years." The report includes a list of "what he has done to help in the areas of court efficiency and revenue."
The list, drafted by Judge Brockmeyer, approvingly highlights the creation of additional fees, many of which are widely considered abusive and may be unlawful, including several that the City has repealed during the pendency of our investigation. These include a $50 fee charged each time a person has a pending municipal arrest warrant cleared, and a "failure to appear fine," which the Judge noted is "increased each time the Defendant fails to appear in court or pay a fine."
The Judge also noted increasing fines for repeat offenders, "especially in regard to housing violations, [which] have increased substantially and will continue to be increased upon subsequent violations."
In 2012, a Ferguson City Councilmember wrote to other City officials in opposition to Judge Brockmeyer's reappointment, stating that "[the Judge] does not listen to the testimony, does not review the reports or the criminal history of defendants, and doesn't let all the pertinent witnesses testify before rendering a verdict."
The Councilmember then addressed the concern that "switching judges would/could lead to loss of revenue," arguing that even if such a switch did "lead to a slight loss, I think it's more important that cases are being handled properly and fairly."
The City Manager acknowledged mixed reviews of the Judge's work but urged that the Judge be reappointed, noting that "[i]t goes without saying the City cannot afford to lose any efficiency in our Courts, nor experience any decrease in our Fines and Forfeitures."
A criminal defense attorney who works in the St. Louis area and asked not to be identified because he sometimes has to work in the same courts as Brockmeyer said such practices were not limited to Ferguson.
"On two occasions I actually presided as a judge in another town, in cases when the judge didn't show up or had a conflict," the attorney told BuzzFeed News. "And I'll tell you, I think that I was too lenient, I didn't collect enough revenue, because they never called me again."
Debtors' prisons — or places where people are detained simply because they cannot pay what they owe — are illegal in the United States. Brockmeyer told the DOJ that he has never imprisoned anyone for being unable to pay a fine.
But federal investigators found that the town's practice of issuing arrest warrants when people did not appear in court to pay small fines for violations, such as "dog creating nuisance" and "overgrown vegetation," resulted in many of them spending time behind bars:
While issuing municipal warrants against people who have not appeared or paid their municipal code violation fines is sometimes framed as addressing the failure to abide by court rules, in practice, it is clear that warrants are primarily issued to coerce payment.
One municipal judge from a neighboring municipality told us that the use of the Failure to Appear charge "provides cushion for judges against the attack that the court is operating as a debtor's prison."
The St. Louis criminal defense attorney told BuzzFeed News that the findings of the DOJ report did not surprise him.
"One of the really horrible things is the amount of time that people can spend in jail because they failed to pay some fine somewhere," the attorney said. "Maybe they owe money in two different jurisdictions, and they can sit for jail for days, and they wait for their case in one town to be resolved, then they get transported for another town."
