News & Commentary

ST. LOUIS – The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri is pleased to announce that Jeffrey Mittman is the affiliate’s new executive director. May 29 was his first day leading the organization.

ST. LOUIS, MO — On May 28, 2013, U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry entered a preliminary injunction in the ACLU of Eastern Missouri’s lawsuit involving buskers and the city of St. Louis. The City agreed to entry of the order.

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO — Stanley Schell, a former detainee at the Sainte Genevieve County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center, and current detainees will receive their newspapers again, thanks to a settlement in Schell v. Sainte Genevieve, which was dismissed on May 9, 2013. The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri filed the suit Jan. 2 on behalf of Schell who stopped getting his prepaid subscription to the Ste. Genevieve Herald a week after his letter to the editor of that paper was published. When Schell inquired about his missing paper, he was informed that the sheriff was no longer allowing local newspapers into the jail.

ST. LOUIS – Not long ago, anyone with $25 could get an annual license to perform in the City of St. Louis. That’s not the case today. Buskers must audition before an administrative assistant in the Street Department. Those who pass the talent test, then have to pay $100 per person for an annual license that can be yanked without notice. Representing two musicians, the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri filed a suit on May 8, 2013, challenging the City of St. Louis’ unconstitutional busking policies.

BOONVILLE, Mo. – Rev. Christopher Olah lost his Boonslick Regional Library privileges in March when a Boonville branch librarian decided he wasn’t a permanent resident because he lives in a transitional shelter. Olah then contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri (ACLU-EM).

Reggie Clemons, sitting on Missouri’s death row, was sentenced as an accomplice in the death of two white women in 1991. Clemons and two other black men were sentenced to death while a fourth person, a young white man was offered a plea deal and is out on parole. That is not the only race issue in the case. The original suspect, a white man and the cousin of the women, confessed to the crime after failing a lie detector test and changing his story several times. All three black defendants claimed that their confessions were coerced by police beatings and/or denial of constitutional rights. The arraignment judge sent Clemons to the hospital for obvious injuries he did not have before his ‘interview’ with police.

ST. LOUIS – The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri is challenging the City of Ellisville’s policy and custom of retaliating against drivers who use their headlights to send a message to slow down and proceed with caution. The suit was filed April 16, 2013, in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division.

ST. LOUIS – Brent Stafford, a resident of O’Fallon, Mo., was arrested on St. Patrick’s Day last year, but not for shenanigans related to the holiday. The committee member of the St. Charles County Republican Central Committee was exercising his First Amendment political speech and associational rights on a St. Peters’ public sidewalk located outside the Francis Howell High School gymnasium, where the St. Charles County Republican Caucus was held. The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri filed a suit, on Stafford’s behalf, against the City of St. Peters and St. Peters Police Officer Tim Hickey on April 15, 2013.

Nearly all of Linn State Technical College students who were subjected to a suspicionless drug test in September 2011 will not have the results of those tests reported to the school. On March 22, United States District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey ruled that most of the 500 students who were tested, with the exception of students enrolled in the aviation maintenance, heavy equipment operations and industrial electricity programs, will likely succeed in their claim that the test violated their constitutional right to not be searched. Students enrolled in the remaining 30 programs cannot be drug tested.