Hugh Eastwood and Bevis Schock, the Clayton lawyers whose victories at the Missouri Supreme Court hastened the decline of red light cameras in the state, have been back at it. They sued the city of Hannibal for ticketing a middle-aged man for a traffic violation, when the photo that triggered the citation clearly showed a young woman at the wheel.
The case didn’t end the way the attorneys hoped: After Hannibal dismissed the ticket, a Marion County judge told them they no longer had standing to pursue their lawsuit. In March, the appeals court agreed.
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Though the attorneys lost the battle, they’re still winning the war: Hannibal has decided to no longer use red light cameras. The Hannibal City Council made the decision, KQHA reported, “after discussing legal issues surrounding the former red light camera policy” in a closed-door session.
To Eastwood, that feels like a victory. “My question is, is that truly a coincidence, where they just wait till the lawsuit was over to say, ‘OK, we’ve got a problem here’?” he asks. Equally important: He believes Hannibal was alone in Missouri in even attempting a photo enforcement program.
Why It Matters: The city of St. Louis has been slowly moving toward restarting its red light camera program, 10 years after Schock and Eastwood got it struck down by the state’s highest court. The Board of Aldermen passed a bill authorizing the cameras more than a year ago, and a spokesman for Aldermanic President Megan Green said a committee solicited vendors, scored them, and made a recommendation to the Streets Department back in October 2024. Now a spokesman for Mayor Cara Spencer, who inherited that recommendation, says it’s under evaluation.
Whatever vendor the city chooses, it will need to walk a fine line to satisfy past court rulings. In the Hannibal case, 43-year-old Chad Wells was issued a citation for running a red light. The photo showed a younger woman at the wheel, but the prosecutor refused even to discuss the case with Wells unless he signed an affidavit naming the driver. That’s when Wells hired a lawyer—and then Hannibal swiftly dismissed the case.
Ultimately, the appellate court found that Wells couldn’t sue Hannibal after that, because the city was no longer prosecuting him— and that fears of future prosecution “are entirely speculative and do not constitute an imminent threat of future injury.” Therefore, he couldn’t challenge the program’s constitutionality. (The court’s opinion, it’s worth noting, was unpublished and does not set precedent.)
But Hannibal may have realized that its practice of demanding that vehicle owners name the actual driver or face prosecution wouldn’t hold up to court scrutiny. The Missouri Supreme Court found in 2015 that the city of St. Louis’ program was unconstitutional because it unfairly shifted the burden of proof onto the defendant. Without that swift dismissal, Hannibal’s practices may have run into a similar problem.
What’s Next: St. Louis will have to thread a needle to restart its program successfully. Eastwood, for one, will be watching. The attorney suspects his phone will ring even if he does nothing to encourage people to call him.
“I understand the city’s hurting for money, but in my experience, nothing is more unpopular in the St. Louis region than red light cameras. Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, you’re Black, you’re white, you’re rich, you’re poor, you live in Chesterfield, you live in North City, whatever, everybody hates them.”
