Democratic attorney general candidate Teresa Hensley touts courtroom experience

Democratic attorney general candidate Teresa Hensley said she has had plenty of experience prosecuting criminals.

Hensley, a former Cass County prosecutor, stressed her legal experience during a visit Tuesday to Cape Girardeau.

She said she has “more experience than all three of the other candidates combined.”

The three other candidates running include Democrat Jake Zimmerman of St. Louis and Republicans Josh Hawley and Kurt Schaefer, both of Columbia, Missouri.

“Missourians deserve someone who has directed and counseled attorneys on how to handle cases in the courts,” Hensley said.

Hensley said she has 24 years of courtroom experience, including a decade as Cass County’s top prosecutor.

She obtained convictions in all 21 murder cases she handled. She also said she successfully prosecuted hundreds of child-abuse and sexual-assault cases, and cracked down on scams against the elderly.

The attorney general is the state’s top law-enforcement officer, she said. Hensley said the position involves managing a staff of 180 assistant attorneys general and handling civil and criminal cases from five offices across the state.

While Hensley said she has “sent a lot of folks to prison,” she also has worked with special courts dealing with drunken driving and drug offenses.

“We had some real success with DWI and drug courts,” she said before a campaign event.

If elected, Hensley said she would work to establish special courts throughout the state to deal with people with mental-health needs. She argued those with mental-health problems should not be locked up when an alternative sentence could work better.

As prosecutor, she said she often would seek alternative solutions, such as requiring offenders to undergo mental-health evaluations and therapies and mandating they take their medicines to stay out of prison.

Hensley said her courtroom experience makes her “ready to do the attorney general job on Day One.”

If elected, Hensley would be the first woman to serve as Missouri attorney general.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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