Moniteau County Prosecutor Shayne Healea's jury trial on five criminal charges will begin Sept. 4 in Shelbyville - nearly four years after the accident in Columbia that prompted the charges - and with the Missouri attorney general's office still serving as special prosecutor, Shelby County Circuit Judge Rick Tucker ruled Friday.
The trial is scheduled to take three days.
Healea, currently seeking his third, four-year term as Moniteau County's prosecutor, was accused of backing his pickup truck, with the tailgate down, into the rear wall of Addison's Restaurant in Columbia, knocking a portion of the wall into the restaurant and injuring several people.
The October 2014 accident happened during the University of Missouri's Homecoming weekend.
The attorney general's office was appointed special prosecutor after Boone County Prosecutor Dan Knight recused himself and his office, because Knight and Healea both were officers of the statewide Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.
A Boone County grand jury charged Healea with leaving the scene of an accident where there was an injury or property damage, and with four counts of second-degree assault for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, resulting in injury.
The case eventually was moved to Shelby County on a change of venue.
But things got complicated when Healea's attorney, Shane Farrow, of Jefferson City - who once served as an assistant Cole County prosecutor - argued the whole case should be dismissed because Healea's federal constitutional rights were violated while he was in Columbia Police custody at the police station.
After his arrest, Healea asked to call his attorney, and the police placed him in a holding cell so he could make the call.
But the police made a recording of that 20-minute conversation and included that recording in the evidence file given to the attorney general's office - although the disc containing the recording didn't identify the contents properly, so officials said no one in the attorney general's office knew that recording was on the disc.
Tucker appointed his predecessor, senior Judge Hadley Grimm, as a special master to hear Farrow's arguments and the state's counter-arguments.
Grimm determined Healea's right to have a private conversation with his attorney had been violated when Columbia Police made the recording and that the recording also violated both state law and the police department's own policy.
But, he added, the violation wasn't serious enough to block the charges and halt the trial.
"The audio portion is not of good quality; portions of (Healea's) conversation were able to be understood, but other parts were not," Grimm wrote in his five-page report that was released last month after the Missouri Supreme Court ordered its release.
"Most of the attorney's conversation was unintelligible or completely inaudible on the tape," Grimm found, adding: "What I did not hear in the conversation between (Healea) and his attorney was any discussion concerning trial strategy, credibility of witnesses, which witnesses to call or not to call" or other issues that might be connected with presenting Healea's case to a court.
Grimm also found none of the key prosecution officials had listened to the recording, including the Columbia police arresting officer, an investigator for the attorney general's office and Assistant Attorney General Darrell Moore, who is prosecuting the case for the attorney general.
Grimm agreed that, if the recorded conversation had included "matters of trial strategy, the knowledge of which could materially aid the prosecution to the detriment of the Defendant's right to a fair trial, the ultimate remedy should be the dismissal of all charges."
But, since that didn't happen, he said, "A remedy less drastic than dismissal of all charges, such as an order excluding all evidence concerning the conversation, should be sufficient to eliminate any prejudice to (Healea's) fundamental right to a fair trial before an impartial jury."
Farrow had asked the state Supreme Court to order the attorney general's office removed from the case - because they had possessed the recording for at least two years without revealing its existence to Healea and Farrow - but the high court ruled May 1 it didn't need to decide that request "because the trial court did not refuse to rule on" that issue.
Farrow has not commented publicly on any aspect of the case or the various court rulings and didn't say Friday whether he would appeal Tucker's ruling that keeps the attorney general as the special prosecutor.
Attorney General Josh Hawley's office also didn't comment on Friday's ruling but has said in the past, "We will continue to prosecute this case vigorously."
Farrow also asked Tucker to order the Columbia police to remove the video from its storage system.
Tucker's docket entry shows he continued that hearing "until the State subpoenas a representative from the Columbia Police Department or the State provides an affidavit that the recordings in question have been properly destroyed."