Sen. Bob Dixon received the Legislator of the Year Award from the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys earlier this month. He earned the honor for getting SB 590 passed through the House and Senate and signed by the governor.
“It was a tremendous honor,” Dixon said, adding that he was grateful to be recognized “for the efforts that we were successful in this year after four years of finally putting a constitutional sentencing option on the books.”
The bill changes Missouri statute to prevent those who committed first-degree murder while under the age of 18 from facing the death penalty. A similar provision in Alabama was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2012’s Miller v. Alabama. The bill also gives those same felons who committed that crime as a minor the chance at parole after 25 years in prison.
Dixon stopped by the Greene County Prosecuting Attorney’s office to accept the award, but that moment also marked what he wants to do for his last two years in office. While at the office, he thanked the staff of the prosecuting attorney while acknowledging that they likely do not get compensated enough for a job that he finds invaluable.
“People don’t go into public service for the pay, and some folks leave prosecution to go into private practice,” Dixon said. “But I was just imploring them to stand in the breach for crime victims because that’s what they do.
“They’re working countless hours, they’re under-compensated and they’ve seen some horrific things. And they’ve taken care of a lot of great Missourians.”
And so even after receiving that award, Dixon looks forward to his next challenge. As the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dixon likely stands at the forefront of the next key issue affecting Missouri’s judicial system: ensuring that both state prosecuting attorneys and the public defender’s office have more financial security.
With two years left as Springfield’s state senator, Dixon says he wants to focus on solving that problem.
Helping public defenders and state prosecutors
During veto session, Dixon held a committee hearing of the Joint Committee on the Justice System that specifically allowed Michael Barrett, the director of the State Public Defender’s Office, to make his case for more funds for the office.
However, Dixon sees the problem as more than just a funding issue. While redirecting more funds to the public defender’s office is part of the solution (an effort he and the Senate have attempted in the last two budget cycles only to be vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon both times), he also believes that lowering the caseload is key to alleviating the pressure on that office. He supports and has facilitated efforts in the past to outsource some minor cases to the private sector.
“We do have a bottleneck in the courts, and when there’s a bottleneck, everybody suffers,” Dixon said. “The crime victims suffer, the accused suffers and the taxpayer suffers. Our focus was to underscore the need of moving through the courts.”
Since county prosecutors cannot outsource as charges must be brought by the state, on that end, he sees places where structural needs can be addressed. A re-circuiting of the state’s courts, set to go into effect in 2020 (another bill of Dixon’s), should contribute to that as new judges are placed in circuits that are drawn according to caseload, a more efficient method than the geographical circuit adopted in 1950. He also wants to create circuit clerk district boundaries that match with the public defender district boundaries, again to create more efficiency.
With those proposals on his mind, Dixon hopes that his last two years in the General Assembly can leave a positive impact on the state’s judicial system.
