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State Rep. Lane Roberts, a Republican of Joplin, has led the charge against the agency for its employment of David Spears (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications). 

Republican leaders of the Missouri House on Tuesday joined the chorus of lawmakers blasting the state public defender’s office for employing a man who was convicted of two felonies in connection to the 2007 rape and murder of his stepdaughter. 

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In a joint statement issued Tuesday, House Speaker Jon Patterson and other members of the chamber’s GOP leadership wrote that unless the situation is “rectif[ied]…immediately,” they will support efforts to reject Missouri State Public Defender’s entire budget for next year. The organization provides legal representation to indigent Missourians accused of crimes.

The controversy surrounds the employment of a secretary at Missouri State Public Defender system named David Spears.

He worked at the public defender’s office as a clerk typist in Clayton from 2016 to 2019 and returned in 2020 to the West Plains office as an administrative assistant, where he is a current employee.

Last year he made $40,842, according to the state’s public salary database.

Spears is a former client of the Missouri State Public Defender system himself. 

Spears pleaded guilty to two felonies in 2012 — the class C felony of endangering the welfare of a child and class D felony of hindering prosecution — in the 2007 case involving the murder of his stepdaughter, Rowan Ford. 

He was sentenced to 11 years and released in 2015 on parole.

According to news reports at the time, Spears left Ford at home alone that night to go drinking, and then didn’t cooperate in disclosing the reason for his absence to police. 

Spears’ friend, Christopher Collings, who had previously been living with them, was convicted of the rape and murder of Ford, which took place in the small Southwestern Missouri town of Stella. She was 9 years old. Collings was executed for the crime by lethal injection in December.

Initially, prosecutors charged both Spears and Collings with rape and sexual assault of Ford, after both confessed separately. But the charges against Spears were dropped because no physical evidence supported his involvement and Collings insisted he acted alone. An expert witness at trial said Spears’ confession was coerced by police. 

Spears’ employment has been the target of lawmakers’ outrage for the last several months, after receiving publicity in the wake of Collings’ December execution. One of the arguments Collings’ appellate attorneys made while attempting to halt his execution was that Spears’ confession should have cast doubt on Collings’ conviction.

“The continued employment of David Spears within the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office is a serious lapse in judgment that undermines public trust in our institutions,” House leadership wrote in the joint statement Tuesday.

The letter continues: “While we believe in second chances, there are clear and reasonable limits—especially when it comes to those who have pled guilty to hindering the prosecution of a heinous crime like the murder of Rowan Ford.” 

The statement follows a contentious hearing last week in the House Budget Committee, in which lawmakers grilled the director of the state public defense system and threatened to jeopardize its entire budget unless Spears is terminated.

Mary Fox, director of Missouri State Public Defender, declined to comment for this story. In the budget hearing last week, she defended Spears’ employment.

“We all agree it was a horrible case, no question about it, and it caused trauma…and that trauma continues long after the crime,” Fox testified. 

“But Mr. Spears, the person who is employed by the public defender system, was not convicted of the murder, was not convicted of the sexual assaults,” Fox said “And in fact, according to the prosecutor at the time, his convictions were for leaving his stepdaughter alone to go drinking with friends and asking a friend to lie to law enforcement about why he left the child alone.”

Spears received the maximum sentence allowable, Fox noted, and he served his time and is off parole. 

“We as an agency and, I think, Missouri as a state, believe that people with criminal convictions should be able to be employed, even by the state,” she told lawmakers.

Missouri since 2016 has held a “ban the box” hiring practice in state government, in which state agencies wait until later in the hiring practice to review information about criminal histories. It’s designed to provide second chances to those with criminal histories and help them assimilate back into society. 

State Rep. Lane Roberts, a Republican of Joplin, who was a police chief in southwestern Missouri at the time of Ford’s murder, has led the charge against the agency and spoke at the budget hearing last week. 

“I’ve heard people say, ‘Well yeah but he’s paid his debt to society, and yeah we want to rehabilitate him,’” Roberts said at the hearing, about Spears.

“Director, I just plain don’t care,” Roberts added. “I don’t care about the reputation of the public defenders. I don’t care that he’s doing a good job. He has not, and will never, pay his debt to Rowan Ford.”

House Budget Committee Chairman Dirk Deaton, a Republican of Noel, devoted all of Thursday’s budget hearing to this issue, putting the agency’s funding for next year in limbo.

“I will say, and I do, I believe people deserve second chances,” Deaton said. “…Not everybody deserves to work for state government, and that would be my firm belief and position. Nobody’s owed a taxpayer job, and a salary, and this is just the worst one of the worst lapses in judgment I have ever seen.”

None of the lawmakers in the budget hearing defended Spears’ employment. State Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson, called his employment “disgusting.” 

“I’m shaking, like I’m physically ill, so I’m going to leave after I say this.  Let me just say I’m a ‘no’ on this entire [budget] book,” she said, before leaving the room. 

Rep. Jeff Vernetti, a Republican of Camdenton, called it the “most ridiculous presentation we’ve heard” before he, too, walked out of the hearing.

The issue of Spears’ employment gained attention late last year.

In December, Roberts, along with 15 current and former state representatives sent a letter to the Missouri State Public Defender Commission calling for Spears’ termination. 

“The rationale by which the public defender’s office determined that hiring David Spears was a good idea absolutely defies reason,” Roberts wrote.

The letter states “at the very least he helped Collings dispose of the body” — which Fox disputed in the budget hearing.

The commission, the governing body of the Missouri State Public Defender, is composed of six members, all of whom were appointed by former Gov. Mike Parson.

In a Jan. 16 response letter, the commission said they don’t have the authority to terminate a clerical employee, but that they had developed a new policy in response to the concerns.

The commission developed a new policy surrounding background checks, so that the director and chair of the commission must be consulted when any background check returns a bad report. Additionally, Fox said at the hearing, agency policy was changed to add conflict of interest evaluations in hiring.

The conflict of interest issue in this case is that the public defender’s office was representing Collings at the time Spears was hired, in appellate litigation. 

Fox in the House budget hearing said under the new policies, Spears wouldn’t have been eligible for employment when the office was representing Collings.

“If I had been the director at that time and aware of that, that would have been a problem,” Fox said, adding she didn’t become aware until last year.

Deaton and Roberts at the hearing last week said those policy changes are insufficient.

“We called upon you to take this action, and what I got was an explanation of why you can’t do what needs to be done,” Roberts said.

Lawmakers at the hearing continued to forward the argument that Spears helped murder, or cover up the murder of, Ford, which the prosecution at the time dismissed.

“There was no evidence that Mr. Spears took any action to help Collings avoid apprehension and prosecution,” the letter from the public defense commission last month stated. 

Roberts and Fox disagreed at the hearing over the facts of the case, particularly whether Spears had led law enforcement to the girl’s body.

In 2012, the prosecutor in the case published a statement regarding the decision to drop murder and sexual assault charges against Spears: 

“I am completely aware that the general public is convinced that David Spears was involved. I am also completely aware that the general public wants to see him receive punishment for his alleged involvement,” Barry County prosecuting attorney Johnnie Cox wrote at the time.

“This type of crime should outrage everyone,” Cox wrote. “I was outraged when I first heard about it. However, as a prosecutor I am a minister of justice and must do what the law requires, what the facts require and what fairness and justice require.”  

According to a December article in the Joplin Globe, Cox, now a circuit judge, recently stated again that Spears was “absolutely not” responsible for the murder or rape. 

Roberts said he would ask Deaton to deny any new budget requests for the agency until Spears is terminated.

“It is a token response,” Roberts said. “…I want to know how you’re going to terminate him, not why you can’t.”

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