JEFFERSON CITY — The state public defender’s office came under fire this week from state lawmakers for employing a man convicted of two felonies in connection to the 2007 murder of his stepdaughter.

The state worker under scrutiny, David Spears, received an 11-year prison sentence in 2012 after pleading guilty to child endangerment and hindering prosecution, both felonies, in the death of 9-year-old Rowan Ford in southwest Missouri.

Spears was released from prison on parole in March 2015 and began working for the state the next year. He was paid $40,842 last year as a secretary for the Missouri State Public Defender, records show.

His co-defendant, Christopher Collings, was executed in December after being convicted of Rowan’s rape and murder.

Joplin television station KODE spotlighted Spears’ status as a public defender’s office employee on Dec. 3, the same day the state of Missouri executed Collings. Spears did not immediately respond Friday to a message left on his work voicemail.

People are also reading…

In addition to employing Spears, the Missouri State Public Defender represented Collings during the appeals process, raising conflict-of-interest concerns.

On Thursday, during a House Budget Committee hearing, Chairman Dirk Deaton, R-Seneca, said the public defender at least insinuated in court filings “perhaps some doubt on his (Collings’) conviction” or perhaps “he should not have ultimately received the death sentence” because “maybe we should be looking at Mr. Spears.”

He said it was “insane” the public defender argued Collings shouldn’t die “because we know the guy who did it, because he works for us.”

Deaton said he believes people deserve second chances but that “not everybody deserves to work for state government. ... nobody’s owed a taxpayer job.”

He called it “one of the worst lapses in judgment I have ever seen.”

Mary Fox, director of the Missouri State Public Defender, responded: “I don’t think anybody is owed a state job, but I will say that if a person is successfully performing, then there is not a reason to terminate.”

But, with regard to Spears’ employment while the public defender represented Collings, Fox said if she had been director at the time and been aware of that, it “would have been a problem.”

Longtime St. Louis public defender Mary Fox was picked to run Missouri's public defender system.

She said she did not become aware of the conflict of interest until the time of Collings’ execution.

KODE, citing court statements, reported Stephen Reynolds, the district defender at the agency’s Clayton office, hired Spears. Reynolds was married to Sharon Turlington, Spears’ former trial attorney.

Fox said the courts and the governor rejected allegations by Collings in his clemency petition “and went forward with the execution.”

She went on to say Spears “was not convicted of the murder, was not convicted of the sexual assault.”

The crime

Rowan’s body was found in a cave six days after she went missing from her Stella, Missouri, home on Nov. 3, 2007. Police said she had been strangled.

According to KODE, both Collings and Spears initially confessed to the murder and rape, though Spears struck a plea deal and avoided harsher punishment.

A transcript of Spears’ statement to police, cited in the clemency petition, said Spears told police that Collings handed him a cord and Spears killed Rowan.

“I choke her with it. I realize she’s gone. She’s ... she’s really gone,” Spears said, according to the transcript. Meanwhile, court documents said it was Spears who led authorities to the sinkhole where the body was found.

Collings was a friend of Spears’ and lived for several months in 2007 at the home Rowan shared with her mother, Colleen Munson, and Spears.

Collings told authorities that he drank heavily and smoked marijuana with Spears and another man in the hours before the attack on Rowan, according to court records. Collings said he picked up the still-sleeping child from her bed, took her to the camper where he lived, and assaulted her.

Collings planned to take Rowan back home, leading her outside the camper facing away from him so that she couldn’t identify him, he said in his confession.

But when moonlight lit up the darkness, Rowan was able to see Collings, he told police. He said he “freaked out,” grabbed a rope from a nearby pickup truck, and strangled her.