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Chief Justice asks for further details from Municipal Division Work Group

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Chief Missouri Supreme Court Justice Patricia Breckenridge wrote a letter last week asking the Municipal Division Work Group for more details from its report submitted. The work group met last week in Springfield to review current practices in Missouri’s municipal court divisions and to provide suggestions for improvement.

Breckenridge
Breckenridge

“It would be beneficial to the Court for the Work Group to identify those solutions suggested in the material that has been gathered that would most merit consideration by the Court,” she wrote.

Specifically, Breckenridge asked for further explanation and findings on the propriety of judges, prosecutor and staff serving in different capacities in multiple municipal divisions; the consolidation of municipal divisions; the use of warrants, process for setting bonds, and time of incarceration; and the enforceability of judgments and remedies for nonpayment.

“The Court extends its appreciation to the members of the Work Group for agreeing to undertake this important work,” Breckenridge wrote, before noting that she would be pushing back the deadline for the group’s final report from Dec. 1, 2015 to march 1, 2016. “In that connection, if the Work Group would find additional staff to be of assistance, the Court is prepared to honor an appropriate request.”

The Municipal Division Work Group was created to analyze the state’s municipal court divisions. The former chief justice, Mary Russell, spoke about a need for municipal court reforms in her State of the Judiciary this past spring.