Missouri Attorney General is taking an outsized role in opposing innocence cases

Under state law, Attorney General Eric Schmitt's office isn't required to participate in wrongful conviction cases, but Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker says that Schmitt acts as if his primary duty is to defend convictions rather than seek justice.
St. Louis Judge David Mason was exasperated — again.

“There’s so many documents here,” he said last week to Assistant Missouri Attorney General Miranda Loesch, pointing to the stack of evidence files in front of him.

“You will almost have to be saying that they’re all fake documents in order to get anywhere,” he said, “and that’s a long way to go.”

It was 4:55 pm on only the second day of Lamar Johnson’s wrongful conviction hearing, and Mason was losing his patience. He had already entertained two full days of long-winded challenges from the assistant attorney generals’ table.