David Mueller Will Challenge Kim Gardner in 2024

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Courtesy David Mueller

Criminal defense attorney David Mueller.

Criminal defense attorney David Mueller says he will run for St. Louis Circuit Attorney, making him the first challenger to announce a campaign against embattled incumbent Kim Gardner. 

Mueller, a 37-year-old St. Louis native and political newcomer, tells the RFT he feels called to run for the city's top prosecutor job because, after decades of population decline, he thinks the city is at an inflection point.

"We're losing 7,000 residents a year," he says. "We're going to go from the 20th largest [metro region] in the country to the 30th in a decade. If we don't change it now, the next Busch Stadium is going to be built in Pacific.

"We have to keep people, we have to attract people. We've got the new NGA going in. It's an opportunity. People are excited about the city. They're excited about Cortex. But if we fail in this moment, I really believe that the city is in danger.

Mueller grew up in the suburb of Normandy and got his law degree from the George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C., before moving back to St. Louis in 2013. He took a job as a public defender, working in the St. Louis County trial office. After growing up in north county and then starting as a public defender shortly before the 2014 Ferguson protests, he says he’s witnessed over-policing by tiny municipal police departments and the other systemic issues that plague the region’s policing and courts.

Now a resident of Tower Grove South, Mueller says he voted for Gardner but that she hasn't lived up to the promises of the racial justice platform she ran on. He cites the case of a client, Levi Henning, who was prosecuted by Gardner's office, as what ultimately motivated him to seek the circuit attorney job.

Henning, 21, was first charged in March 2021 with the murder of Carieal J. Doss. That August, police processed DNA evidence collected from the scene that suggested someone else was there, but Mueller says prosecutors waited six months to disclose that evidence to him — and even then didn't drop the charges. Mueller says the Circuit Attorney's Office also had ballistics evidence that tied the killing to a murder committed by another man, but prosecutors sat on that for over a year. Gardner's office finally dropped all the charges against Henning last month, but only after the young man spent two years in and out of jail.

Mueller says that case was more egregious than anything he saw during his time as a public defender in St. Louis County (and that was a time when the county’s top prosecutor was Bob McCulloch).

"When I think about systemic problems in [Gardner’s] office, I think about my clients, the young men sitting in the Justice Center without any hope of resolution in a timely fashion," Mueller said as the charges against Henning were dismissed. "It's not justice to hold somebody for a year before you can get a case for the grand jury."

Gardner announced last month that she will seek a third term. She was elected to the office in 2016 after winning a four-way race in the August Democratic primary and facing no opponent in the November general election. In the 2020 cycle, Gardner bested former Assistant Circuit Attorney Mary Pat Carl by 20 percent in the primary and faced only token Republican opposition in the general.

Mueller says that Gardner has undoubtedly been the victim of racist and sexist attacks for the past six years. "But unfortunately, what's also true is that for six years, she has blamed everyone else for everything that was happening.

"The problem is that she's fighting everybody all the time," he says. "Not just the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, not just the Ethical Society of Police. She's fighting every single one of the judges. She's fighting the mayor's office, she's fighting the Board of Aldermen, she's fighting the treasurer and the comptroller. And now she's fighting with the Attorney General's Office. "

Mueller says that if he were elected circuit attorney he'd make a priority of chipping away at the office's case backlog, and that he would personally prosecute cases.

"Miss Gardner does not have a caseload. I don't know of any case she's first chaired since her time in the Circuit Attorney's Office," he says. "You have to address the backlog first. For me, that means doing it yourself. You need a lot of help. But I'm willing to lead from the front."

Though he'll be campaigning against Gardner for the next year, Mueller is adamant that he doesn't support Attorney General Andrew Bailey's current efforts to remove Gardner from office.

"To have Jefferson City politicians come in and try to remove a legally elected circuit attorney is not appropriate," Mueller says. "I trust that the voters of St. Louis City will see for themselves what's happening, and that they will make the right decision next August."