Stevens named to Eastern District

In an appointment that came nearly as quickly as the one that created the vacancy, Gov. Mike Parson on Oct. 22 appointed Cristian M. Stevens to the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District.

Stevens, who currently serves as first assistant attorney general in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, will fill the vacancy created by Judge Robin Ransom’s appointment to the Missouri Supreme Court.

In an interview, Stevens said he expects it will be a few weeks before he begins to hear cases in the Eastern District as he ties up his supervisory duties and takes on a role that is different from anything he’s done before.

“Rather than being an advocate for a client, it’s being a neutral arbiter of the law and of justice,” he said. “That’s something that’s attractive to me.”

Stevens was named just eight days after the Appellate Judicial Commission nominated him as a finalist for the position. Similarly, Parson picked Ransom for the high court seat in May just three days after she was selected as a nominee.

Also nominated were Kathleen S. Hamilton of HeplerBroom and Jeffery T. McPherson of Armstrong Teasdale.

Stevens has been with the attorney general’s office since 2019, and from 2002 to 2017 he was with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri for 15 years.

While trial judges are routinely picked from the ranks of prosecutors, it’s a rarer feature on the resumes of appellate judges. Stevens will be one of just three judges in the three appellate districts with significant prior experience at the attorney general’s office.

As first assistant attorney general, Stevens supervised about 150 attorneys in the agency’s civil and criminal divisions, both of which include appellate work. He led the office’s Safer Streets Initiative, a first-of-its-kind program that pairs assistant attorneys general with federal prosecutors to combat violent crime.

During his 15-year tenure in the U.S. attorney’s office, he led numerous high-profile prosecutions, including the federal investigation of the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Stevens received the U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service in 2015.

Stevens also has significant experience in large law firms. Between his prosecutorial stints, he was a partner at Armstrong Teasdale from 2017 to 2019. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2002, he was with Bryan Cave, where he was part of a team that won a $75 million verdict in favor of a St. Louis-based medical monitoring company. At the time, the verdict was the largest commercial jury award in the history of the St. Louis federal court.

“I’m a trial lawyer; that’s the way I see myself,” Stevens told Missouri Lawyers Weekly in 2018 while at Armstrong Teasdale. “Whether you’re in court on a criminal case or a civil case, it’s really not all that different.”

Reflecting on those career turns now, Stevens said he thinks his blend of roles as a prosecutor, large-firm lawyer and supervisor will be an asset to the appellate court.

“Being a lawyer who has spent the large part of his career in the courtroom is great experience, and I’d like to think that has helped prepare me for the position,” he said.

Stevens earned his law degree in 1998 from the University of Missouri. He went on to clerk for Judge Pasco M. Bowman II, then the chief judge for the 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

He said his decision to become a lawyer was influenced by his maternal grandfather, Edmund W. Albright, a trial attorney whose solo practice was based in a building visible from the Old Post Office in St. Louis, which houses both the attorney general’s St. Louis office and the Court of Appeals Eastern District.

“As a young man I respected him as much as anyone,” Stevens said. “I’m sure that had plenty to do with my decision to want to go into the law and be a lawyer.”

This story has been updated with comments from Cristian Stevens. It also has been corrected to reflect the number of judges who have significant prior experience at the attorney general’s office.