Page says case against him should be dismissed over ‘selective prosecution’

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page will be in court today, seeking to have the criminal charges against him thrown out. It’s crunch time: The case is set to go to trial in just two weeks. 

Page’s argument is that he is being targeted for selective prosecution, singled out despite numerous officials participating in the same behavior he is being charged with felonies over. His lawyers say they have identified 34 public entities—among them Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, and the Clayton School District—that sent virtually identical mailers as the county under Page, likewise using public funds to educate voters in ways that might be characterized as advocacy.

And yet, they write, “No person has ever been charged criminally in the State of Missouri with this statute prior to this case.” 

They argue that Page was charged, unlike those others, for one simple reason: He’s a Democrat who got crosswise with the state’s Republican leaders—most notably in a knock-down, drag-out legal battle over whether he or they had the right to appoint the next county prosecutor. 

They won, appointing Melissa Price Smith, who would later recuse herself when a government watchdog filed a complaint against the mailer, leading to its referral to the state attorney general.

“While prosecutorial discretion is broad, it is not unbounded,” write attorneys Matthew Radefeld and Jeff Jensen. “It may not be deliberately based upon an unjustifiable standard such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification.” 

And in Page’s case, they say, “The record demonstrates objective, documented, and materially identical conduct by multiple similarly situated political actors who were not prosecuted, but the Democratic Party County Executive Defendant who recently challenged the power of the Republican Party is facing 19 years in prison.”

A spokesman for Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said the office does not comment on pending litigation.