A St. Peters man and his sunflowers have changed the way that many Missourians found guilty in municipal courts can seek new trials in the higher circuit court system.
“Now the game has changed, the balance of power has shifted,” says Bevis Schock, the attorney for Chris Bank, a St. Peters man involved in a years’ long legal battle with his city over the sunflowers in his yard.
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Bank’s tiff with St. Peters began in 2021 when the city cited him for a municipal property maintenance ordinance violation because his front lawn sported about 600 sunflowers planted in neat rows. That ordinance stated that 70 percent of a front lawn needed to be grass.
The ensuing years saw myriad twists and turns, including a woman cutting down all his flowers, the city changing the ordinance so that sunflowers were classified as a crop, and at least one commentator recommending that Bank just move to the city of St. Louis where no one would give him grief about his front yard. It all came to a head last October when Bank went to trial in municipal court and was found guilty by a judge. He was ordered to pay a $168.50 fine.
Enter Schock.
Schock is one of the leading libertarian-minded attorneys in the region. He is a member of the Holy Joe society, which bills itself as a government watchdog and has thwarted taxpayer money going to the city’s guaranteed basic income program as well as been a perpetual thorn in the side of people they believe are wasting government money.
After Bank’s loss in municipal court, Schock took the case. He demanded what is called a trial de novo in circuit court, which is essentially a do over, as if the previous trial had never happened. Historically, people whose cases came out of municipal court and want a new trial could only get what is called a bench trial—held before a judge with no jury.
Schock wanted a jury trial. The request was denied by a St. Charles County circuit court judge. Schock filed a writ to the Missouri Court of Appeals. “A writ is used to go to an appellate court while a case is still going on,” Schock explains. “They’re kind of rare because higher court judges don’t like to fool around with things until it’s done in the lower court.”
St. Peters argued that Bank did not have a right to a jury trial because he was facing only a “petty offense” and prosecutors were not seeking incarceration.
Schock disagreed. “I said under Missouri statutes, case law, and rules, my client is entitled to a jury trial.”
A few days ago, an appellate court sided with Schock. A three-judge panel wrote that the city’s argument was based on a state law that only applied to municipal courts, not circuit court, where Bank was seeking his new trial.
All of this has implications for people who don’t have a front lawn filled with flowers, Schock says.
Good DWI attorneys can do their best work in front of a jury. Same goes for attorneys defending someone charged with low-level assault after something like a bar fight. “That’s always been the joke in the system. ‘Oh, you won’t plead guilty? Let’s have a bench trial. It’s a slow plea,’” Schock says. A good criminal defense attorney who may face high odds in front of a judge often has a better chance of persuading a jury to see reasonable doubt.
Even though Schock himself is libertarian-minded, the appellate ruling is being welcomed by a wide swath of defense attorneys.
William Waller, a managing attorney with ArchCity Defenders, also refers to bench trials as slow guilty pleas, even in state court, “and that’s doubly true of municipal court.”
“So many of these [municipal] cases are either so bogus or so obviously deficient or predatory in terms of the charges they pursue, and the lack of evidence, that if you get that in front of a jury, it’s a very different response,” he says. “Some of these municipalities are still prosecuting marijuana cases, despite Amendment 3. You think a jury is going to tolerate that?”
“You almost always want a jury if you can have one,” adds Waller.
This does not affect all Missourians, though, only those receiving violations from municipalities categorized as third and fourth- class cities, which tend to be municipalities with populations between 500 and 30,000. Think of everywhere from St. Ann to Bellefontaine Neighbors to Town and Country.
It also does not apply to charter cities like St. Louis City. Though, Waller notes, ArchCity has been in talks with the Board of Aldermen about getting an ordinance guaranteeing that same right to a jury as part of revising the archaic city code.
As for Bank and his sunflowers, Schock says to expect his new trial, in front of a jury, sometime around the end of this year.
