Poll: Rate Prosecutor McCulloch’s Handling of the Case of Darren Wilson Killing Michael Brown

It has been nearly three months since Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown. Despite community calls for a special prosecutor, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch has handled the case. It’s important to understand how the law works:

How Does a Grand Jury Differ from a Preliminary Hearing?

While all states have provisions in their laws that allow for grand juries, roughly half of the states don’t use them. Courts often use preliminary hearings prior to criminal trials, instead of grand juries, which are adversarial in nature. As with grand juries, preliminary hearings are meant to determine whether there is enough evidence, or probable cause, to indict a criminal suspect.

Unlike a grand jury, a preliminary hearing is usually open to the public and involves lawyers and a judge (not so with grand juries, other than the prosecutor). Sometimes, a preliminary hearing proceeds a grand jury. One of the biggest differences between the two is the requirement that a defendant request a preliminary hearing, although the court may decline a request.
Grand Jury Proceedings

Grand jury proceedings are much more relaxed than normal court room proceedings. There is no judge present and frequently there are no lawyers except for the prosecutor. The prosecutor will explain the law to the jury and work with them to gather evidence and hear testimony. Under normal courtroom rules of evidence, exhibits and other testimony must adhere to strict rules before admission. However, a grand jury has broad power to see and hear almost anything they would like.

However, unlike the vast majority of trials, grand jury proceedings are kept in strict confidence. This serves two purposes:

It encourages witnesses to speak freely and without fear of retaliation.
It protects the potential defendant’s reputation in case the jury does not decide to indict. (FindLaw)

And “probable cause”?

Probable cause refers to the amount and quality of information required to arrest someone, to search or seize private property in many cases, or to charge someone with a crime. (FindLaw)

From last month:

The prosecutor’s office is also presenting evidence to the grand jury as soon as it receives it, rather than waiting until the St. Louis County Police Department and the FBI have completed their investigations. Police probes are typically completed before a case is presented to a grand jury, county officials said.

As a result, jurors in the Wilson case are hearing from every eyewitness, seeing every telling photo, viewing every relevant video, and reviewing all DNA, ballistics and other test results from county and FBI labs, said Ed Magee, a spokesman for county prosecutor Robert McCulloch. They will hear testimony from Dorian Johnson, the friend who was with Brown when he died, but it is unclear yet whether they will hear testimony from Wilson.

“Normally they hear from a detective or a main witness or two. That’s it,” Magee said. “This gives us an opportunity to present all of the evidence to jurors who represent St. Louis County. They will make the decision.” (In atypical approach, grand jury in Ferguson shooting receives full measure of case)

I don’t want to sway readers one way or another before they get a chance to take the poll this week. rating McCulloch’s handling of the case. The poll is in the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Negative Changes In The Last Ten Years

A week from today is the 10th anniversary of this blog. All month long I’ve looked back over the last decade, a week ago I posted about Some Positive Changes In The Last Ten Years.

So today I want to share negative changes from each calendar year I’ve published this blog:

• 2004: Kirkwood Station Plaza, another great idea with questionable execution
• 2005: Rare Lustron Home Razed by Developer on a Saturday
• 2006: Pyramid’s Sullivan Place Senior Housing An Anti-Urban Monstrosity
• 2007: Poor Design Alert: New ADA Ramp Blocks Sidewalk
• 2008: Halliday St. Illegal Parking Pad Fiasco Ends, Portion of Street Likely Given Away
• 2009: Downtown Gets Yet Another Plaza
• 2010: New shopping center in Des Peres not reachable by pedestrians, many to blame
• 2011: Rock Hill to Trade Namesake for Gas Station & Convenience Store
• 2012: Harris-Stowe State University Campus Disconnected From Adjacent City
• 2013: SLU’s Sculpture Garden Not Accessible To All
• 2014: Neglected Castle Ballroom to be Razed

Thanks to those who’ve used the PayPal donation button at the top of the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Blank Renard Paper Warehouse Now Less-Blank Urban Chestnut Brewing Company

Renard Paper was building their massive blank walled warehouse on Manchester Ave in 1990, right when I moved to St. Louis. It was awful, but many saw it as progress. It was an investment, they weren’t leaving the city.

Fast forward to May 2011, the ribbon cutting for the new Manchester Ave streetscape in the section known as The Grove. Renaud Paper’s boss, Dave Renard was among the speakers talking about the vibrant area even though his own warehouse, built 21 years earlier, was a huge drag on the vibrancy at the west end of The Grove.

That was May 19th, less than four months later came this news:

HP Products Corporation of Indianapolis, IN has announced that they have completed the acquisition of Renard Paper Company of St. Louis, Missouri.

A done deal not even four months after talking about the future…

It wasn’t long before Renard Paper, now a division of HP Products, was located out in Earth City. Their large building with a long blank wall fronting Manchester Ave was now for sale. One argument is they were in the city paying earnings taxes for 21+ years longer than had they sold out in 1990. True enough. What we can’t possibly know is where would that end of The Grove be had Renard Paper not razed buildings to build their warehouse? Who knows, that section might be the most vibrant part. The street might have come back to life years, decades, earlier? Or the area might’ve declined further and be worse than ever to this day?

Again, it’s impossible to know.

After sitting vacant for nearly two years a new buyer was found that could use the warehouse space, but they also wanted to correct the main design problem: the long blank wall.

 Urban Chestnut’s renovation of the Renard Paper warehouse will include a bottling line, staff offices, retail space, a kitchen and bar area, and seating for about 150 people. Windows will look out on to Manchester Avenue, and the bar will face the brewhouse. (Post-Dispatch)

The silver lining is by leaving such a warehouse Urban Chestnut was able to greatly expand their capacity. They also knew design facing Manchester Ave was important, the building’s exterior had to be altered. I couldn’t find my before pictures but you can see some Google Streetview screen captures here.  I suppose Urban Chestnut did the best they could.

The lesson here is most newer buildings cost so much to construct the reality is it’s unlikely they’ll be razed to may way for something better in 20 years, so if you get it wrong now you’re mostly stuck with it long after the company sells out and leaves town. Short-term gain can be a long-term net negative. Urban Chestnut has basically neutralized this 1990 warehouse.

Every new building must be designed with enough long-term vision to think beyond 20 years, when the owners retire and cash out.

— Steve Patterson

Readers Not Keen On Aventura Apartments

Overall readers in the poll last week indicated are general disliking of the new Aventura Apartments in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, just south of I-64.

Here are the results:

Q: The Aventura apartments south of BJC/Cortex are… (pick up to two answers)

1. architecturally out of place 63 [36.84%]
2. not ideal, but could’ve been worse 27 [15.79%]
3. better than the old gasometer 20 [11.7%]
4. not my taste, but right for others 19 [11.11%]
5. attractive to their target audience 17 [9.94%]
6. TIE
   1. quality housing with needed density 11 [6.43%]
   2. Other: 11 [6.43%]
      1. yuk! total let down in otherwise awesome neighborhood
      2. ugly suburban crap. will be trashed in
      3. doesn’t interact with the street
      4. Cheap and suburban. Horrible design and little effort from the developers.
      5. Could not have been much worse
      6. good density, poor quality. what will they look like in 30 years?
      7. Crappy Suburan type desig
      8. Predictable design, but it works OK.
      9. Sad ongoing trend of what our beautiful city is morphing into
      10. The density is appropriate, the design is not
      11. whatever
7. unsure/no opinion 3 [1.75%]

All 11 of the other comments are correct! My main issue isn’t so much the aesthetics, but the building’s lack of relationship to the public sidewalks and each other. It’s isolationist, a gated enclave.

This project won’t age well, the plastic shutters that can’t cover the windows will fall off, the surrounding sidewalks will remain lifeless and therefore unsafe. This project sucks the life out of the area. Hopefully I’ll live long enough to see it razed and replaced with an appropriate development(s).

— Steve Patterson

November 4th 2014 Ballot

The 2014 midterm election is just two weeks away. Depending upon where you live, the ballot varies. Everyone has US Representatives and State Representatives. Missouri voters, of course, have constitutional amendments. Most have the retention of judges.

For this post I looked at the sample ballot for all raves in St. Louis:

• State Auditor — three candidates, the incumbent will likely win.
• U.S. District Rep 1 —  three candidates. I like that the Republican challenger to Lacy Clay supports ending the War on Drugs and favors marriage equality, he also advocates eliminating the federal income tax, replacing it with a national sales tax — reason enough to not support his candidacy.
• State Senate Dist 4 — two candidates, the incumbent will likely win.
• State Rep, twelve districts: 66, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 91, 93
  • Three are uncontested: 76, 77, 84
  • No way would I vote to add to the Republican majority in Jefferson City!
• St. Louis Collector of Revenue — one candidate
• St. Louis License Collector — two candidates
• St. Louis Recorder of Deeds  — three candidates
  • The most interesting local race!
  • The Democrat, Sharon Quigley Carpenter,  resigned amid nepotism charges in July, but won the Democratic primary in August
  • Young Republican Erik Shelquist is seeking to become the first Republican elected to citywide office in decades.
  • And Independent Jennifer Florida, the former 15th ward Alderman, appointed when Carpenter resigned.
  • The real race is between Carpenter & Florida. Will voters go with the Democratic nominee even though she’d been in office for decades and  resigned in disgrace?
• Retain two Missouri Supreme Court judges
• Retain two Missouri Court of Appeals judges (Eastern District)
• Retain seven Circuit Court judges (22nd)
• Missouri Constitutional Amendment 3 — teacher evaluation
  • From the ballot language “Significant potential costs may be incurred by the state and/or the districts if new/additional evaluation instruments must be developed to satisfy the proposal’s performance evaluation requirements.”
  • This isn’t about improving the quality of education, it’s a union busting measure. The Kirkwood School Board voted to oppose this amendment, please vote no.
• Missouri Constitutional Amendment 6 — early voting… sorta
  • I fully support early voting, but not this way.The ACLU of Missouri called it a “sham early voting amendment”, please vote no.
• Missouri Constitutional Amendment 10 — budget power
  • The GOP Missouri Legislature doesn’t like the checks & balances from the Governor’s office, when it’s a Democrat in office.
  • “We believe this amendment could reduce the flexibility to make changes to balance the budget and make the process more difficult. We believe this amendment could potentially weaken the state’s strong governmental framework to make midyear budget adjustments, which in our view, could potentially lower the rating to a level in line with our indicative rating under our state scoring methodology.” — Standard & Poor’s
  • “Vote no on Amendment 10. It’s not conservative. It is short-sighted. It’s bad for business. It’s bad for Missouri.” — Post-Dispatch editorial
• St. Louis Charter Amendment — Veterans’ Preference, would give honorable discharged veterans hiring preference for civil service jobs

See the Post-Dispatch Voter’s Guide for races where you live.

— Steve Patterson