ST. LOUIS: Gardner meltdown deepens: Who falsely put prosecutor’s electronic signature on 28 cases? “If that turns out to be accurate, hoo boy. It’s one thing to be incompetent and fail to appear at hearings. It’s quite another to put false representations on court documents, let alone forge signatures — electronic or otherwise — while doing so. Those are actual crimes, which might explain why Arshi abruptly quit after discovering what happened.”

Discovering.

Plus: “Even without the forgery issue, Gardner and her office has a few big legal problems ahead of them. Defense attorneys will waste no time in demanding dismissals as well as sanctions against the circuit attorney’s office in these cases for falsely representing itself in those documents. Judges might well be tempted to agree, especially on sanctions against Gardner and others in her office. How big of a problem might depend on what Arshi has to say about what happened, and Arshi might not have much choice in how much she shares. It seems very likely that she will get called in some of those cases to verify that she didn’t sign the documents and didn’t direct anyone to apply her signature as judges attempt to unravel what Gardner’s office did. Defense attorneys won’t pass up an opportunity to interrogate a prosecutor under oath on potential corruption issues, to be sure. And on top of this sits the issue of Gardner’s utter incompetence.”

Incompetence? She’s not there to be a lawyer. She’s an errand-girl sent by grocery clerks, and she’s performed her assigned errands.