An attorney for a couple charged with gun offenses following a Black Lives Matter protest has penned a sharp response to an assistant circuit attorney who described the lawyer as a "slimeball" in a leaked email.
Albert Watkins, who represents Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis couple charged with felony misuse of firearms after brandishing firearms outside their home as protesters passed by in June, wrote a letter on Tuesday to the city's chief warrant officer, Chris Hinckley.
Written tongue in cheek, Watkins suggested that "slimeball lives matter"
Watkins said he was writing unsolicited to the leaked email sent to Detective Curtis Burgdorf, who is the lead investigator in the McCloskey case.
The email asked why the Watkins had the handgun that Patricia McCloskey was seen holding outside her house as the protesters walked by.
According to reports, Hinckley stated about Watkins in the email: "That guy is a slime ball, by many accounts."
In the letter to Hinckley, Watkins wrote: "I am struggling with your inquiry not because it is difficult to answer but rather because its answer requires nothing more than a room temperature IQ to garner.
"Without further belaboring the obvious, I was doing my job." He quoted Judge Judy, the court room television host, as reportedly saying: "Beauty fades, stupid is forever."
Watkins added: "With respect to your post-inquiry edict, I respectfully suggest slimeball lives matter."
The attorney, claiming he was not insulted by the name, said that "slimeballs may be despicable and, interestingly, in high demand when the going gets tough."
He added: "One man's slimeball is another man's savior."
Emails sent by the assistant circuit attorney to Burgdorf were leaked to news organizations, with some detailing how the police balked at some of the characterizations used by the city attorney when drawing up the warrant.
According to one, sent the day before the warrant was served in July, Hinckley was urging police to execute it "now."
“At this point, everything points to these weapons being real and loaded, but no one has asked or confirmed,” he wrote in one email. “Come trial, they’ll say they were waving around a BB gun and an air rifle.”
The McCloskeys had their weapons seized. The rifle Mark McCloskey was holding was usable, but the hand gun held by Patricia McCloskey was not.
According to documents related to the case, Hinckley ordered the crime lab to disassemble and reassemble the gun before signing a court motion stating that it was “capable of lethal use” at the time she pointed it at protesters.
Police, including Burgdort, had concerns about some of the language used in the warrant, including that Patricia McCloskey was “armed with a semi-automatic handgun.”
Burgdorf said it should read "what appears to be a semi-automatic handgun.”