It wasn’t all that long ago, back when Kim Gardner was in charge, that young attorneys starting as St. Louis city prosecutors were thrust into a pressure cooker of high stakes and high consequences with little to no support.
“It’s not just [that] you were thrown to the wolves. It was pure chaos,” says Andrew Russek, a violent crimes prosecutor who started in 2022. “I loved it, but a lot of people it drove nuts and they left.”
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In the latter days of Gardner’s never-not chaotic tenure as St. Louis Circuit Attorney, prosecutors talked about developing ulcers, one quit after texts about him expecting Gardner to soon be in jail became public, and another resigned via a scathing public letter blasting Gardner’s “toxic” leadership. At the office’s nadir, staffing went from 53 attorneys to just 24, and only two violent crimes prosecutors remained (there are now five, plus a supervisor).
But Gabe Gore, who was sworn in to begin his first full term as circuit attorney earlier this month, came aboard promising a new day. And the culture for new prosecutors in the office has done a 180.
Ryan Dowd joined the office in November 2024. He worked in journalism before going to law school and says that the circuit attorney’s office has a similar esprit de corps as a newsroom.
“When you’re working in newsrooms … it’s such a mission-driven place. You’re a bunch of people, you know, crammed into a small room trying to put the paper out,” he says. “And that’s what working here has felt like so far.”
Dowd’s last name might be familiar to court watchers. “I’ve thought about carrying a laminated family tree around,” Dowd jokes. His parents aren’t attorneys, but there are plenty in the family. Ed Dowd, the former U.S. Attorney who co-founded the prominent Dowd Bennett firm, is his dad’s cousin; Dowds have served as judges in both appellate and circuit court.
Dowd isn’t the only (relatively) new hire with a name familiar to St. Louisans. Prosecutor John Edwards is the son of Jimmie Edwards, the longtime juvenile court judge and city’s former director of public safety. Dominic Cusumano, who has already helped try a murder case, is the son of longtime sportscaster Frank Cusumano.
Kate Cogan, who originally wanted to be a detective before going to law school, said that when she started in the office in August, she immediately felt plugged into a support system. She recalls that she’d recently been in the office of a prosecutor who handles felony cases, who wasn’t her official office mentor but was still being generous with his time. “He was like, ‘Okay, this is how you do it. Not that you’d be doing this at this stage, but for when you move up, this is how the process works.’” Cogan adds: “The willingness to sit down and explain stuff is so beneficial.”
The new culture is bolstered by increased support staff, which Russek says is in many ways the biggest game changer from Gardner to Gore. Back when he started, there was little trained support staff—too few paralegals, no one making an internal calendar to help keep track of who was supposed to be in which court and when. There are now seven paralegals on staff, office spokeswoman Christine Bertelson says.
“We’re prepared and ready for anything that happens down there. Anything we need to know, we’re ready for that,” says Dowd. “The support staff has been great so far.”
Gore says he’s proud of the new hires. “The Circuit Attorney’s Office’s fall of 2025 class is an extremely talented and mission-driven group,” he says. “We are pleased with the performance, growth, and development of the class. These young attorneys represent the future of the CAO and will play a key role in building our office into one of the highest performing prosecuting attorney’s offices in the country. To achieve this vision, we will need to make significant investments in compensation, training and technology.”
The job remains intense. New hires like Dowd and Cogan are at the top of the prosecutorial funnel, meaning they handle everything when it first comes in, taking care of preliminary hearings until the case is handed off to an attorney who will handle it for the long haul.
Much of the young prosecutors’ energy is spent handling bond cases, when a person charged with a crime makes their first appearance in front of a judge shortly after being arrested. These hearings, which happen back-to-back-to-back in rapid-fire fashion, generally consist of prosecutors arguing with defense attorneys about whether a given defendant should be in jail or, if not, what sort of supervision they need as their case works its way through the court.
“They’re intense. They’re difficult,” Cogan says. “We get the list of confines at 7:30 in the morning, and then you have to learn everything you can about these cases in three hours. They do take a lot out of you. You’re dealing with someone’s life.”
Dowd says that the reason you take a job like this is because you want experience right away.
Just the other night he was chatting with a few friends who started at a big-name law firm.
“They may only get to argue a motion after practicing for seven years,” he says. “And, on our side, we do that the first day here.”
