A state lawmaker's recent arrest for failing to appear in court is unlikely to jeopardize her standing in the Missouri House, according to a local election law attorney.
State Rep. LaKeySha Bosley (D-St. Louis) was arrested on May 1 due to an outstanding warrant when police stopped her in Jefferson City, according to media reports.
“The failure to appear would not be the basis to remove a state representative from office,” said Missouri attorney Marc Ellinger, president of the Republican National Lawyers Association. “As I recall, the underlying charges are relatively minor and may have been traffic related. I don't think anybody would be removed for that.”
Ellinger
| Ellinger Law website
As previously reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Bosley blamed a Perry County error on the fact that she was jailed, required to post bond and later released.
“The irony is that lots of people get these warrants issued because they don't realize how important it is when a ticket says, ‘Be in court,’ that you have to be in court,” Ellinger told the St. Louis Record. “If you have a warrant, you should take care of it. Any lawyer would tell you to address that.”
Bosley, who was elected to the Missouri General Assembly in 2018, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“When it's a warrant for a traffic ticket or something like that, people forget about them because they're not used to that process and it can cause real trouble because if you have a warrant outstanding, you get pulled over, you are likely going to be arrested," Ellinger said in an interview at the May 12 RNLA policy conference in Washington, D.C. "So, if you get a traffic ticket, you should make sure that you properly get it taken care of. So those warrants don't issue and so that you appear in court when your court dates are assigned."
Since her arrest, Bosley has posted on Twitter about her legislative pursuits, which include establishing a conviction review unit and decreasing the maternal mortality rate by expanding postpartum programs.
"Happy to bring measures of some restorative justice to wrongfully convicted Missourians," Bosley tweeted on May 11. "Creating a Conviction Review Unit and increasing restitution payments and services to exonerees. This will go a long way to make whole people who have been wronged by the state."
Bosley’s attorney, her half-brother Freeman R. Bosley Jr. who was once mayor of St. Louis, has since filed a recall of the warrant.