Missouri Lawyers Awards 2024: Gabe Gore

Circuit Attorney, St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office , St. Louis

The latter half of 2023 was certainly an active time for Gabe Gore.

“To me, the biggest work we’ve done during my seven months in the office has been bringing back a senior leadership team of experienced prosecutors,” said Gore, a 54-year-old University of Chicago alumnus.

Appointed by Governor Mike Parson, Gore assumed the position at the end of May after the resignation of Kimberly Gardner. The former partner at Dowd Bennett has faced major challenges but has risen to the occasion making steady progress on a backlog of 250 homicide cases. He called that a “slow, grinding process”.

“Last I checked, we had disposed of approximately 55 of those cases,” Gore said. “The homicide backlog is something we are going to be living with for quite some time because those are complex cases that just don’t move quickly.”

Even faster results are being achieved clearing the backlog of applications for warrants in the warrant office. Gore said he believes that part of the job will be complete by the end of the first quarter of this year.

He feels things are on the right course and have gone “better than I could have ever expected”.

“I think we are on a very good trajectory,” he said. “We are still rebuilding staff and rebuilding office culture and we’ve just got to stay focused on that.”

New cases are proceeding apace. From June 1 to Dec. 1, the office charged about 2,650 cases representing a 45 percent increase over the same period the previous year.

“Things have gone very well but that is not to say that we don’t still have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us,” he noted.

Gore hopes to see that work through and has announced his candidacy to retain the job in the upcoming election. He said that his vision for the future will focus on investing in people, community engagement, diversion and the establishment of a Conviction Integrity Unit.

This will be his first time running for public office.