Our mission is to be ministers of justice. As the Supreme Court of Missouri once wrote about the prosecuting attorney:

In this jurisdiction it is recognized that this public office is one of consequence and responsibility. That status of the prosecuting attorney as a public office is given dignity and importance by our statutes. With every other attorney at law a prosecuting attorney is, of course, an officer of the court in a larger sense; but he is not a mere lackey of the court nor are his conclusions in the discharge of his official duties and responsibilities, in anywise subservient to the views of the judge as to the handling of the State’s cases. A public prosecutor is a responsible officer chosen for his office by the suffrage of the people. He is accountable to the law, and to the people. He is vested with personal discretion entrusted to him as a minister of justice, and not as a mere legal attorney. He is disqualified from becoming in any way entangled with private interests or grievances in any way connected with charges of crime. He is expected to be impartial in abstaining from prosecuting as well as in prosecuting, and to guard the real interests of public justice in favor of all concerned. State v. Smith, 258 S.W.2d 590, 593 (Mo. Supreme Court en banc 1953) (emphasis added).

This is the standard by which the Taney County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office adheres.