Prosecutor Booted After Romance With Illegal Alien Sex Crime Suspect

Missouri just learned the hard way what happens when an elected prosecutor treats her office like a private dating service for the accused.

Ray County Prosecuting Attorney Camille Johnston has been stripped of her authority after Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed a quo warranto petition accusing her of a sustained pattern of intimate relationships with people tied to criminal cases under her watch.

One of those relationships involved an illegal alien charged with felony sex crimes. A judge immediately barred Johnston from exercising any official power. She is no longer the Ray County prosecutor while the case proceeds.

This is not a paperwork error or a gray-area ethics slip. According to the petition, Johnston lived with Juan David Gutierrez, a Mexican national illegally present in the United States since 2019, and carried on a romantic and intimate relationship with him.

She knew he was a suspect in a Ray County sexual assault as early as September 2020. She still failed to recuse herself from the investigation. She knew his whereabouts after he left the state. She did not tell law enforcement. She visited him in Mississippi. She vacationed with him in Florida. And in 2023 she transferred the title of her own vehicle to him, an act the attorney general says helped him abscond while under investigation for sexual offenses.

“When an elected official treats public office like their personal playground, betraying the public trust, ignoring legal obligations, and putting self-interest first, removal isn’t a suggestion, it’s a necessity,” Hanaway said. “Johnston’s record reflects a sustained pattern of misconduct and willful neglect that has undermined the integrity of the prosecutor’s office and poses a serious threat to public safety. In Missouri, public office is public trust, not a personal entitlement, and no one is above accountability.”

Gutierrez was eventually charged with sodomy and attempted sodomy in connection with a 2019 assault. The case had been closed by the attorney general’s office in 2022 before a private investigator and a former sheriff forced it back open. He was arrested in Ohio and is now held on an immigration detainer.

The local court has already appointed the attorney general’s office to prosecute the matter because Johnston’s office was compromised from the start.

The illegal alien relationship was only one piece. The petition also alleges Johnston maintained a romantic relationship with a criminal defense attorney who represented defendants in cases her office was prosecuting, never disclosed it, and never sought a special prosecutor. It further claims she had another intimate relationship with a man charged in a domestic-violence case in her own county.

When a staff member discovered that conflict, Johnston allegedly fired the employee in retaliation. Throughout, she created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation by verbally berating her own staff. In each instance, the petition says, she recognized the impropriety yet continued the conduct, withheld the truth, and falsely denied the relationships when questioned.

This is what open borders and soft-on-crime culture produce when they infect the justice system itself. An illegal alien commits a serious sex crime. The local prosecutor is romantically involved with him. The investigation is delayed for years. The suspect is given a vehicle and the opportunity to disappear.

Victims are left waiting while the person sworn to protect them is allegedly helping the accused stay one step ahead of the law. Scripture does not mince words about this kind of corruption: “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14).

Missouri’s attorney general has done the right thing by moving quickly. Johnston’s attorney has declined comment. She has until late July to respond. An interim prosecutor is expected to be appointed soon. The question now is whether the rest of the country is watching.

Because if a prosecutor can carry on with an illegal alien sex-crime suspect, transfer him a car, and still keep her badge until the state attorney general is forced to intervene, then the public trust is already in the grave and the rest of us are just arguing over the headstone.

Public office is not a personal playground. It is a public trust. And no one is above accountability.