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ST. LOUIS — The Janis Mensah trial never should have happened.

The ӣ����Ƶ city counselor’s office — which is prosecuting Mensah for trespass and resisting arrest for a 2023 incident at the City Justice Center — and Mensah’s attorneys agreed on that point during opening arguments in the case Wednesday.

"There was plenty of opportunity to avoid the whole thing,” said Christopher Carenza, an assistant city counselor.

Maureen Hanlon, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm , echoed the sentiment. Hanlon represents Mensah, the former co-chairperson of the Detention Facilities Oversight Board.

“I agree that this was an unnecessary situation,” Hanlon told the jury that will decide Mensah’s fate.

But the two attorneys disagree on why Mensah got arrested in the first place. 

Mensah showed up at the jail, in the role of an oversight board co-chair, for a visit after another in a long string of jail deaths. After being denied entry, Mensah refused to leave the facility. Jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, whom Mensah had been vocal in criticizing, called the police and had Mensah arrested.

The case, Hanlon said, is really about whether the city wants citizen oversight of its jail. In that regard, the trial — nearly two years after Mensah’s arrest — comes at an interesting time.

Clemons-Abdullah is long gone, having been replaced by former Mayor Tishaura O. Jones after the drumbeat of criticism grew too loud. Jones is no longer leading the city, and now, Mayor Cara Spencer has her own jail death to deal with.

Samuel Hayes Jr., 31, died Saturday night after being placed in a restraint chair. His death will be investigated by the Force Investigative Unit of the ӣ����Ƶ Metropolitan Police Department — the same department that arrested Mensah when trying to investigate jail deaths.

In 2023, the police department was under the control of the city and was represented by the same city counselor’s office. But now, with control of the police department in the hands of the state, questions of oversight are squishy at best.

Last week, for instance, City Counselor Mike Garvin wrote a memo to another body: the Civilian Oversight Board. That board accepts and investigates complaints about the police department. Garvin told the members they should stand down and cease operations, citing the new state takeover law.

So who is overseeing the police and the jail in ӣ����Ƶ?

That’s a good question, says Board of Alderman President Megan Green.

“We’re in a situation where there’s a lack of transparency now that we have a state appointed board,” Green said in an interview.

She’s upset that the city counselor is shutting down civilian oversight without a fight. Green is a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the state control law. Citizens in the city fought long and hard to have control of their police department and to have a board of residents that can take complaints.

Oversight bodies should be valued, Green says. “It’s about public awareness and transparency, and the building of trust between the community and the police department.”

That’s why Mensah went to the jail on Aug. 31, 2023. Somebody had died. Mensah wanted to talk to the jail commissioner and talk to detainees, as the statute that created the Detention Facilities Oversight Board allowed.

Since the time Mensah was charged, the new jail director has issued a report outlining problems that mirror much of the criticism Mensah and others had made previously. And now, with another detainee death, there are new questions about operations at the jail.

The ultimate oversight board — a jury of Mensah’s peers — will decide whether it was a crime to sit in the lobby of the City Justice Center and refuse to leave. But will law enforcement have the sort of civilian oversight fought for by residents for decades?

The jury is still out on that question.