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Missouri Court Cases Vanish from Public View Through ‘Security Level’ System
A Missouri House candidate’s history of domestic violence. A Highway Patrol trooper’s sexual abuse of a fellow officer at a work conference. A lawsuit between prominent St. Louis attorneys.
All of these cases were removed from Missouri’s public court database. Searching for them online, it appeared as if they never existed.
Cases assigned a high enough “security level” can’t be viewed by the public through Missouri’s online courts database or in person at courthouses. Judges who assign a security level of five, for example, have needed virtually no justification to make these cases disappear.
“Sometimes, the parties might request security level five as part of a settlement, or something like that,” said Dan Curry, an attorney for the Missouri Press Association. “Because one or both, plaintiff and the defendant, don’t want to have whatever happened in the court be easily found.”
Curry said unless the news media or members of the public are following a security level five case, it’s a “whole lot harder” to see what’s happening.
A case can also be removed for days before trial to prevent jurors from accessing documents. While people involved with the cases can still get access, a lack of clarity surrounding how the system works leads to reports of people missing hearings and wrongly thinking charges were dropped.
When cases are sealed at a certain security level, members of the public and journalists can’t even verify their existence. Some unsealed examples identified by the Columbia Missourian contain information pertaining to public servants and officials. The mere existence of these cases — and any related allegations — was previously hidden.
This can conflict with the idea of open courts that Curry said is important to democracy.
“Especially if you read through some of the case law in Missouri and what’s in the constitution about open courts and open records, then I think (lawyers) would know … not only is it a good idea for a democracy, but also legally in Missouri, these things should be open as a default setting,” he said.
What are security levels?
Missouri court cases are given a security level ranging from one to nine. A level one means the case or document is fully open to the public, whereas a level nine is reserved for cases made confidential after expungement.
The meaning of each security level is specified on The Missouri Bar’s website. Cases might be confidential because they involve juvenile matters. Or maybe they were entered in error. Many levels have a list of three possible scenarios they could be used for.
Security level five is an exception. The only explanation written for level five is “cases under court order.”
When a case is assigned a security level of five, it disappears completely from Missouri’s public court database. That includes information such as the name of the case, scheduling for future hearings and the final judgment.
In an order published Dec. 16, the Supreme Court of Missouri outlined new requirements for sealing cases set to take effect July 1. The standards state sealing records should “overcome a presumption that judicial records should be open for public inspection.”
Curry outlined his thoughts on the order in a column for the Missouri Press Association. He wrote certain changes could make it easier to access records by specifying rules that were previously open-ended.
However, one rule change may make access harder. The order lists 19 types of records that are automatically confidential. Curry wrote the first 18 items are specific and consistent with state law, but the last is a “catch-all” that appears to not require judges to find compelling justification for closure.
The specific wording of record type 19 is: “Any other record sealed, expunged, or closed by statute, Supreme Court rule, or order of a court of record.”
“The worry is this — in some ways the new rules make it easier for a court to close files than before,” Curry wrote. “If a judge desires to make case records confidential, the rules place no conditions or constraints on that decision. This could lead to case files continuing to disappear.”
In a news release, court officials said “over the coming months, the Court plans to provide additional information to help ensure consistent and successful implementation of the rule revisions.”
Under the current rules, if one tries to search using a level five case’s number online, a red error pops up reading, “Your query returned no matches to be viewed at this site. Please try another search or contact the court directly.”
Contacting the court directly yields similar results. On a phone call attempting to get information and documents, court staff repeatedly told Columbia Missourian reporters they couldn’t know anything as the cases were under security level five.
One employee said to a reporter, “I’m not even sure how you got the case number.”
Cases under security level five are hidden unless a judge unseals them. Sometimes, this happens as a situation draws media attention.
One example involved a 2023 lawsuit between political candidates. Former state Rep. Justin Hicks sued Max Calfo, who was running for his seat, for publishing images from a 2010 case in which Hicks was accused of grabbing a woman by the neck and choking her.
Judge Christopher McDonough sealed the politician’s lawsuit at a security level of five, according to court documents. The judge’s order contained the reasoning that “permitting public access to this cause would invariably reveal the existence of the confidential records.”
The case was later unsealed after garnering significant media attention.
Years ago, one of Curry’s clients was offered money in a settlement agreement. A condition of the agreement was raising the security level. Curry said especially if someone has hospital bills, they can be incentivized to accept conditions like raising the security level despite being proponents for open courts.
“If it’s a big enough money, a big enough amount of money for the plaintiffs, for the victim or the injured party, you know, maybe they need that money for medical care,” he said. “Maybe they need that money for housing. There’s real life consequences.”
Upcoming jury trials
Judges sometimes raise the security level on cases shortly before a jury trial is scheduled. The reasoning is often that if public, jurors could look up information before the trial.
One example from Boone County involves a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper found guilty of sexually abusing a police officer and preventing her from leaving a hotel room during a work conference.
According to the Missouri courts database, this case was put under a security level of three for 10 days around the time of the trial.
While different from level five, William Hux, court administrator for Missouri’s 13th judicial circuit, wrote in an email level three also prevents the public from viewing cases. Involved parties retain access, he wrote.
People involved with cases can still be negatively impacted by a lack of clarity around the security level process. Finding specific information can be difficult when the mere existence of cases disappears from public searches online.
Amanda Mendez, editor-in-chief of the Howell County News in rural, southern Missouri, said she’s had several community members reach out after cases disappeared from the public courts database.
One woman told Mendez she missed her divorce hearing because her case’s security level was upgraded. The woman, Mendez said, was unable to view her case online and didn’t know how to find information on scheduling.
In another instance, Mendez said the family of a victim of child sex abuse was spun into panic, thinking charges were suddenly dropped.
As for cases disappearing before trial, Doug Thomson was previously a trial judge in Nodaway County, which has roughly 12% the population of Boone County. He said jurors accessing cases or even driving to crime scenes is an elevated concern in rural counties.
Much of that is due to the fact rural counties simply have fewer cases, so jurors are either told or can figure out the specific cases they’re being summoned for ahead of time.
“You simply have to understand that if we’ve got a jury trial coming up, and it’s a small county, it’s kind of a big deal,” Thomson said.
When jurors looked up cases ahead of time, Thomson said they were questioned by the court during the selection process to decide if they should be allowed to stay in the jury.
Thomson sits on the Missouri Press-Bar Commission, a group intended to “foster better communications between the media and the bench and bar,” according to its website. He said through that work, the disappearing cases were recently brought to his attention.
“All of a sudden, there’s just simply nothing there,” Thomson said. “But there is a reason sometimes, you know, at least in my experience in a small county.”
In the Dec. 16 order, the Missouri Supreme Court updated rules to say future cases will not be restricted ahead of jury trials without a “court order setting forth specific written findings supporting a compelling justification to restrict access.”
Inconsistent labeling
Identifying what security level a case was set at can be difficult due to inconsistent documentation. In the example of the former Highway Patrol trooper, Missouri’s public court database lists in plain text the case would be at security level three and on what specific days.
Finding the security level of the politician’s lawsuit is a little harder. It’s not written anywhere on the case’s online profile. Instead, the case level is listed in the judge’s order to seal, which ends with, “This Cause is to remain under seal, at level five.”
Those are both situations in which the security level could be identified by the public after the case was unsealed. Many times, it can’t.
In a suspected security level five or three case from St. Charles County involving a murder, no level was listed online or in any available documents. Columbia Missourian reporters got access to both the motion to increase the security level and the judge’s order granting it.
However, neither document mentioned the specific level — just that it was raised. The court employee who provided the documents wrote in an email there was no way to determine the level.
A similar situation exists in a 2022 lawsuit against prominent St. Louis attorney Jerome Schlichter.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, all traces of the lawsuit were completely removed from the Missouri public courts database. Even so, no documents related to the sealing or unsealing are linked online, such as was the case with the politician’s lawsuit.
Paper copies of the motion to seal, order to seal and order to unseal received from the Civil Courts Building in St. Louis once again do not list the specific security level, only that it was raised and dropped back down.
Because of the freedom judges have to assign these levels, Curry said their use can vary greatly court-to-court. Some judges do not seal cases ahead of upcoming jury trials, like Thomson did.
Whether the newly revised court rules will make a significant difference in the sealing of records won’t be known until they go into effect in July and could depend on what additional guidance is provided.
“Throughout the extensive analysis we have undertaken, our ultimate goal has been to clarify the nature of confidential information and to simplify the redaction process,” Chief Justice W. Brent Powell said in a news release. “We believe today’s order will result in better access to public court records while protecting any truly confidential information they may contain.”
Under the current use of the guidelines, sometimes judges ordered security levels to drop after attracting media attention. Sometimes, the cases unsealed after a trial concluded. And in some cases, they still remain closed to the public.
“Judges are such a wide array of personalities and perspectives and thoughts on the matter,” Curry said. “I’m sure there’ll be some judges who would say, ‘Hey, if this gets this case resolved and the parties are all agreement, then no skin off my back to give you guys what you want.’”
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