When Gabe Gore took over as St. Louis circuit attorney nearly three years ago, the office had famously been compared to a “rudderless ship of chaos.” His predecessor, Kim Gardner, had been outed as being enrolled in an advanced nursing program even as the office around her devolved into disarray. As Gore recalls, the office had plummeted to 22 prosecutors after having 60 just a few years before.

“I don’t think there was a specified homicide unit,” he recalls in a new episode of The 314 Podcast. “People were handling the cases that they had to handle, and you had some attorneys handling cases that they really didn’t have the experience level to handle. It was a very difficult situation.”

Under Gore, however, the office has been restored to a model of probity. New hires—some of them experienced former prosecutors who returned to help the office where they cut their teeth, others newcomers eager to make a difference—have gotten the Circuit Attorney’s Office back to 49 prosecutors. The office has cleared a huge backlog of cases and dramatically increased the speed at which defendants get their day in court. There have been no public complaints from the judges, a huge change from Gardner’s day.

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