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Burlison & Nixon: Why it matters

May 13, 2009

Today’s Post-Dispatch contains an article about one of Jay Nixon’s top aides, Rex Burlison, who is under fire for his ownership of a property linked to several murders and many other criminal incidents. Several points need to be made:

1) Problems have been endemic at this Burlison-owned property for years—and as far back as 2003, city officials had determined that the club was a “nuisance” (KC Daily Record, October 16, 2007). This week, KSDK’s Mike Owens obtained a 14-page-long list of police calls to the property since May 2007. If Burlison was serious about protecting the clubs patrons—and the residents of St. Louis—he would have ordered his tenets to clean up their act or vacate his property.

2) Burlison takes issue with the Missouri Republican Party’s criticism of his apparent mismanagement of the property. He calls our statement “unfair” and “untrue.” As outlined above, Burlison had the power to demand that the club provide a safe environment, yet he failed to do so. In fact, a jury agreed that he was partially liable for a 2003 murder that took place outside another club on Burlison’s property, awarding the family of the victim $3.5 million after they filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

3) It is absurd for Jay Nixon to claim that he was unaware of Burlison’s troubled properties. Remember: Burlison, one of then-Attorney General Nixon’s top deputies, was party to a wrongful death lawsuit which resulted in a $3.5 million judgment, wound its way through the Missouri judicial system for nearly four years, and ended at Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals.

Our points still stand: Burlison has for years proven unable or unwilling to provide a safe environment at his properties, yet Governor Nixon entrusted him with representing the State of Missouri in the St. Louis area. Nixon must come clean about what he knew and when he knew it.