Judge removes Missouri attorney general from any further prosecution of Mark Woodworth

A Platte County judge on Wednesday said he could find no reason why lawyers with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office should continue prosecuting Mark Woodworth.

Owens Lee Hull appointed Livingston County Prosecutor Adam Warren to carry on in place of the attorney general as Woodworth approaches his third trial for the 1990 shooting death of Cathy Robertson in Chillicothe, Missouri.

Woodworth’s case is an impossibly tortured legal spectacle; the 39-year-old has been convicted twice, but appeals courts both times overturned those convictions amid serious questions over a dubious investigation into Robertson’s death, prosecutorial misconduct, judicial fairness and a flagrant conflict of interest by Woodworth’s original attorney.

The Missouri Supreme Court and another judge who was assigned to look over the case spotted so many problems with Woodworth’s case that they concluded a reasonable jury probably wouldn’t have convicted Woodworth.

Yet the state is seeking a third trial. A detailed account of Woodworth’s case can be found here in a recent feature by The Pitch.

Woodworth is free on bond after the Missouri Supreme Court threw out his second conviction last year. 

Robert Ramsey, an Illinois attorney who represents Woodworth, declined to discuss Hull’s ruling on Wednesday.

But in earlier filings with the court, Ramsey painted a picture of an obstructionist attorney general’s office that would not make key witnesses available for depositions over the course of several months.

“That these prosecutors seem so hell-bent on a retrial, having never acknowledged even in a minimal way the severe, egregious conduct involved in the investigation and forensic evidence gathering process, necessarily suggests an improper interest in this prosecution,” Ramsey wrote. “These prosecutors should not be rewarded by being allowed to continually engage in the bad faith conduct exemplified in this case.”