A few days after a judge called the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office a “rudderless ship of chaos,” another violent crimes prosecutor is off the boat.
Assistant Circuit Attorney Alex Polta has parted ways with Kim Gardner’s office, leaving the city’s violent crimes unit with only three prosecutors remaining, according to a document shared with the RFT.
Polta has been with the CAO for more than six years. Among his high-profile cases was the prosecution of Soulard bar owner Josh Lundak, who shot and killed an unarmed man in McKinley Heights in 2020.
In early April, Polta took extended medical leave, seemingly with the blessing of the office. Text messages showed that when Polta told chief warrant officer Chris Hinckley about the planned leave, Hinckley texted back, “Be/get well.”
However, a few weeks later, when no one showed up to the first day of a murder trial in a case assigned to Polta, Judge Scott Millikan threatened to hold Gardner or someone else from her office in contempt of court.
Responding to Judge Millikan, Gardner’s attorneys wrote in court filings that no one in her office could have known about the trial starting “with the possible exception of Mr. Polta.”
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At an April 24 hearing before Judge Millikan, Polta appeared in court and said, “There really is no excuse for nobody showing up for trial” but he also indicated his supervisors were well aware he was on leave.
Ultimately there was no finding of contempt in that case — though Gardner’s office saw a different outcome in another contempt hearing handled by a different judge three days later.
The text messages released between Polta and Hinckley as part of the contempt filings also showed Polta telling his supervisor that he half-expected Gardner to be in jail by the middle of May. What might have proven equally uncomfortable for office relations is that, while on leave, Polta was the subject of a KSDK article stating he was mulling a run for Gardner’s job.
On Thursday, Gardner sent Polta a letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the RFT. In it, the circuit attorney tells Polta that he was never approved to take leave, “yet you have not reported to work and have failed to cover assigned duties.”
The letter goes on to say that Polta had until 5 p.m. Friday, April 28, to either resume his duties as normal or to provide documentation supporting his leave.
The letter concludes: “If you do neither of the above, we will assume that you have abandoned your position with the Office, and we will process your resignation accordingly.”
At 4:21 p.m. Friday — a bit shy of that 5 p.m. deadline — Gardner sent a terse message to her office: “Team: We want to wish Alexander Polta well on his new endeavors.”
When asked by text what those new endeavors were, Polta replied, “The future is vast.”
According to documents sent to the RFT, the three prosecutors remaining in violent crimes are Srikant Chigurupati, Chris Desilets (who is facing a contempt of court charge after twice failing to show up for court hearings), and Adam Field.
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