Courtroom Drama Defines Hearing to Remove Ellisville Mayor

While the setting for last night's removal hearing's for Ellisville Mayor Adam Paul was an elementary school, those in the audience probably felt like they were sitting through a courtroom drama.

Witnesses were called to the stand, fierce cross-examinations undertaken and frequent calls of "objection!" made as special prosecutor Keith Cheung presented the city's case against the embattled mayor. Attorney John Maupin served as a hearing officer, acting as a kind of judge, while attorney Chet Pleban represented Paul. 

The night begin with Pleban going on the offensive, attacking the integrity of the hearing process. He argued that the lawyers hired by the city as special counsel, Cheung and Maupin, should be disqualified and that the entire city council was biased and prejudiced against Paul.

Pleban made several preliminary motions to this effect, but each was overruled by Maupin, whose ability to impartially serve as the hearing officer for the proceedings was questioned by Pleban.

He pointed out that Maupin had, on March 4, received an email from the Ellisville city attorney that contained a draft of the “findings of fact and conclusions of law.” In other words, Pleban said they had been given a verdict before the first piece of evidence had even been introduced.

“I don’t understand how you can rule objectively and serve your six clients,” Pleban said.

Maupin himself will not be sitting in judgment of Paul. The decision to remove him will be made by a vote of the city council following the conclusion of the hearing, which is scheduled to resume at 7 p.m. tonight at Ellisville Elementary, provided the venue is available. 

The preliminary motions from Pleban took several hours, much of it spent arguing whether or not he could call individual council members to the stand along with the city’s attorney Paul Martin, who himself has become a central figure in the political drama. Martin drafted the list of charges against Paul and recommended that the council hire Cheung and Maupin as the special counsel for the hearing.

However, Martin was not present at the school Monday evening. Pleban said he had been attempting to serve him with a subpoena to appear at the hearing since Thursday, but that Martin was “long gone.”

The calls were refuted by Maupin on the basis that Pleban had already either gathered their testimony through deposition or had been given a chance to depose them. Cheung argued that each side had been operating under a time crunch made necessary by the city Charter’s requirement that the hearing be held no later than 30 days after it was requested.

In fact, Cheung used the preliminary portion of the trial to introduce a brand new charge, alleging that Paul had failed to make himself available for a deposition.

“People have had plenty of time to go on radio shows,” he said, referring to Paul’s appearance on many St. Louis programs last week. “We haven’t even gotten the one [deposition] we asked for.”

The momentum of the hearing shifted to Cheung after the preliminary motions ended and he began to call witness, beginning with process server Antoinette Kovar. Kovar testified that Paul tried to avoid receiving the subpoena, going so far as to lie to her face when she knocked on the door of his residence on March 26.

Kovar said when she knocked his door, it was answered by an individual she later recognized as Adam Paul. That individual, she said, told her “[Paul] is not here” and slammed the door in her face.

Her testimony also revealed that an unspecified “altercation” occurred after she then attempted to read the subpoena to Paul through the closed door. Under heavy questioning from Pleban during cross-examination, she declined to give any details, indicating that there is no ongoing police investigation relating to it and she had been advised not to speak concerning the incident.

Other witness included a relocation specialist hired by the Sansone Group, Ellisville Police Department officers and Police Chief Tom Felgate. Their testimony covered accusations that Paul had called the specialist without council approval, wanted to be given a gun and a badge and allowed his own supporters to disrupt council meetings while ordering police officers to remove opponents.

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