MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.

Former real estate broker Jerrick Hawkins will serve three years in prison for charges stemming from a real estate loan scheme that cost lenders and the federal government more than $2 million.

The Missouri House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday advanced legislation to reorganize Missouri’s criminal code. The next step for House Bill 210 is a debate on the House floor.

Clay County Circuit Judge Anthony Rex Gabbert fills the vacancy on the Kansas City-based appeals court created by the retirement in February of Judge James Smart Jr.

Thanks to furloughs in other offices, judges in the U.S. District Court based in St. Louis won’t schedule criminal proceedings on the second and fourth Fridays of each month starting April 26.

The six-month suspension the Missouri Supreme Court imposed on St. Louis Associate Circuit Judge Barbara Peebles isn’t what the Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline wanted. And it isn’t what the judge wanted.

Still, attorney Paul D’Agrosa, who represented Peebles, has a reason to be happy with the decision. “I’m pleased because it is not a removal,” he said.

Platte County Circuit Judge Lee Hull Owens Jr. said in an order that the state could not use a bullet removed from a victim of the shooting, citing “egregious, flagrant, cavalier disregard of evidentiary procedures and process.”

The Missouri Supreme Court on Friday issued an order canceling the arguments, all of which involve constitutional challenges to criminal statutes that the defendants say are violations of the state constitution’s ban on retrospective laws.

The Missouri Supreme Court suspended Judge Barbara Peebles from office for six months. The suspension, which begins Monday, is without pay.

A group of former neighbors who claim their high rates of cancer come from pollution around Coldwater Creek in North St. Louis County have had all but one of their claims in a federal lawsuit tossed out. Their attorney, though, said he isn’t worried and that the plaintiffs will find relief through the remaining count.

Annette Clark, the former Saint Louis University Law School dean who left her job amid a public fight with SLU President Lawrence Biondi, has been named dean of Seattle University School of Law.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Springfield, reacts to a ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court last year that threw out the state’s $350,000 cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits.