Warren County interim Prosecuting Attorney Hannah Schweissguth Dunakey has been removed from office by Circuit Judge Richard Scheibe as hundreds of cases are now affected by an affair she had with a Warren County sheriff's deputy.

The affair became public in December 2024 as Dunakey acknowledged she had a conflict of interest in letters sent to then-Presiding Judge Jason Lamb and Sheriff Kevin Harrison. In his Feb. 6 court order terminating Dunakey’s appointment as county prosecutor, Scheibe wrote 220 pending cases and another dozen awaiting charging decisions involved the deputy, identified as Sgt. Jason Maskey.

Dunakey was appointed interim prosecuting attorney March 2024 by Jason Lamb. She took over from Keith Freie, who had been serving as interim prosecuting attorney since Kelly King resigned in October 2023 to accept a job as the state’s deputy attorney general.

DOWNLOAD THE ORDER TERMINATING HANNAH DUNAKEY'S APPOINTMENT

Warren County Sheriff Kevin Harrison confirmed Maskey resigned as deputy from the department. Maskey is currently employed with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

In Scheibe’s court order, Dunakey engaged in a months-long affair with Maskey. Both were married. Dunakey participated in night-time ride-alongs with Maskey and observed his work.

The Missouri Supreme Court prohibits a lawyer from handling any case where the lawyer is a witness.

Maskey also omitted Dunakey’s presence as a witness in the reports he filed and Dunakey omitted her presence as a witness in disclosures made by the state to the defense, according to the court filing.

Prior to the relationship becoming public, Dunakey did nothing to mitigate or address the conflict. Instead, she moved the bulk of Maskey’s cases to a so-called “rocket-docket” with an out-of-circuit judge. At that docket, defendants were allowed to resolve their cases without conviction and receive two-year terms of probation regardless of their criminal histories or the facts of the case, the order stated.

When the affair became public, Dunakey wrote a letter dated Dec. 16 to Lamb acknowledging a potential personal conflict between her and Maskey and asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed in cases where Maskey was considered an “essential witness.”

In a letter to Harrison, Dunakey also claimed that the situation she created was a common one and listed prior prosecutors that she alleged had done the same. However, prior prosecutors who dated law enforcement officers were both neither married nor they did not work on cases from the same counties as those they dated, according to Scheibe.

The circuit judge also wrote in the court filing that Dunakey’s work had created numerous other problems.

Those issues included criminal charges not filed within the required time frame, discovery responses were delayed, orders compelling disclosure had been disregarded, witness lists had not been filed and cases had been frequently dismissed and refiled — more than 200 times in the past year. Scheibe also wrote that “nonsensical” sentencing offers were made and there were multiple instances of cases being filed after the statute of limitations had expired.

In addition, Dunakey is alleged to have lied to the associate circuit judge, circuit clerk and chief deputy clerk about an idea to have law enforcement stop writing court date on tickets because she was having trouble keeping up with the filings. All three officials told her not to because of the “significant issues” it would cause and Dunakey assured them she would not. Later on, it was discovered Dunakey had filed over 100 tickets with no court dates on them.

“If the clerks had not gone above and beyond to look into the odd number of filings over 100 local citizens would have been in jail for failure to appear without ever having been giving notice to be in court in the first place,” Scheibe wrote.

See more on this story in the Feb. 13 print edition of The Record.