STLPR⁠0%

A judge and politician sought secrecy through the courts. Their plans have gone awry⁠82%

By Danny Wicentowski⁠0%

12/19/2025, 8:51:20 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 6 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Appeal to Authority, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 41% saturation with 103 hits. Analysis detected 301 faulty-reasoning hits from 251 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 74.9% and a BS Rank of ⁠82% (3,045 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 81.90% of the article peer group.

The Legal Roundtable takes up cases involving secrecy, lawsuits and discipline. 
A Missouri legislator facing accusations of assault. 
A St. Charles judge hauled before a disciplinary panel to explain why he dressed up as Elvis Presley. 
In both instances, the public figures at the center of these separate cases sought secrecy to keep their behavior out of the public eye — however, their legal maneuvers are now in the spotlight. 
In this December edition of the Legal Roundtable, our panel of expert attorneys dissects the cases of St. Charles Judge Matthew Thornhill and Missouri state Sen. Steve Roberts. 
This month’s panel of attorneys include former prosecutor Nicole Gorovsky; Mark Smith, the former vice chancellor and dean of career services at Washington University; and former federal prosecutor Javad Khazaeli. 
Along with the cases involving legal secrecy, the panel discusses Kim Gardner’s attempt to keep her law license, pharmaceutical giant Bayer's appeal of a jury verdict to the Missouri Supreme Court, and the City of Des Peres’ new law that aims to stop panhandling. 
To hear the full conversation with the Legal Roundtable, listen to “St. Louis on the Air” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or click the play button below. 
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. 
The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. 
The production intern is Darrious Varner. 
The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. 
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
Anchoring Bias
2.8%
Availability Heuristic
0%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Confirmation Bias
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Framing Effect
20.7%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Halo Effect
23.1%
Hindsight Bias
0%
Horn Effect
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Loss Aversion
0%
Negativity Bias
41%
Optimism Bias
9.2%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Overconfidence Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
0%
Primacy Effect
0%
Recency Bias
0%
Representativeness Heuristic
0%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
0%
Anecdotal
0%
Appeal to Authority
23.1%
Appeal to Emotion
0%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Bandwagon
0%
Begging the Question
0%
Burden of Proof
0%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Composition/Division
0%
False Dilemma
0%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Hasty Generalization
0%
Middle Ground
0%
No True Scotsman
0%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
0%
Red Herring
0%
Slippery Slope
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Straw Man
0%
Tu Quoque
0%

251 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.