A violent stretch of 2022 that began near Halls Ferry Circle and later erupted inside the downtown St. Louis jail caught up with James B. Brison on Thursday, when a judge sentenced the 44-year-old to 16 years in prison. The punishment follows guilty pleas in two separate attacks that left his girlfriend wounded and a corrections officer seriously injured.
Guilty Pleas, Charges and Sentence
Prosecutors say Brison admitted he shot his girlfriend during an argument inside a car near the Halls Ferry Circle in January 2022. Several months later, in June 2022, he took part in a violent assault on a corrections officer at the City Justice Center downtown. According to authorities, the officer suffered stab wounds to the head, face and arms and also sustained a broken hand.
Brison pleaded guilty to a slate of felonies, including first-degree domestic assault, unlawful gun possession, possession of a controlled substance, first-degree assault on a special victim, delivery or possession of a weapon at a jail and two counts of armed criminal action. Taken together, those convictions add up to a 16-year prison term.
Investigators also previously accused another man, Marcus Ausler, in the jail attack, but his case in that incident was dismissed. Ausler is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a 2018 first-degree murder conviction, according to First Alert 4.
Where It Happened and Why It Matters
The jail assault unfolded inside the City Justice Center in downtown St. Louis, which the city lists at 200 South Tucker Boulevard. The shooting involving Brison and his girlfriend took place near the Halls Ferry Circle in north St. Louis.
The City Justice Center has been under sustained scrutiny after a series of in-custody deaths and ongoing questions about conditions, medical care and transparency, documented by St. Louis Public Radio. Local coverage has also tracked other assaults, plea deals and reform efforts tied to the lockup, including a case in which a downtown jail attacker received 10 years for beating a St. Louis guard, underscoring persistent concerns about safety and staffing inside the facility.
Legal Notes
Under Missouri law, first-degree domestic assault is treated as a serious felony. RSMo §565.072 defines domestic assault in the first degree and generally classifies it as a Class B felony, unless serious physical injury elevates it to a Class A felony. The state’s armed criminal action statute, RSMo §571.015, creates a separate, additional penalty when a felony is committed with a deadly weapon, including mandatory minimum prison terms in many situations.
Those statutes provided the backbone for the charges in Brison’s case. His guilty pleas close out two high-profile incidents from 2022 and send him into the state prison system for a combined 16-year sentence, at a time when St. Louis is still wrestling publicly with how to keep people safe inside its downtown jail.
