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State Courts

What the Judge Ate for Breakfast

News from inside Wichita's courts.
By Ron Sylvester

Post Frequency: 1.3/day

Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 22:37:55

25 random things about covering a capital murder trial

Posted on February 18, 2009
A lot of the people using this meme have blogged about trivial stuff. My time has been absorbed by the grim reality of the justice system, so that’s what I’ve chosen to write about. Here are thoughts, observations and personal notes that are helping me process the trial I’ve covered the past three weeks — [...

Anti-death advocates speak out about Thurber?s sentence

Posted on February 17, 2009
Sue Norton sat with the family of Justin Thurber as a jury said he should receive a death sentence for killing Jodi Sanderholm two years ago. Norton now lives in Arkansas City but she’s from Oklahoma, where her father and stepmother were killed in January 1990...

Thurber trial expected to last two weeks

Posted on February 03, 2009
I’m spending my days for the next couple of weeks in Winfield, covering the capital murder trial of Justin Thurber. Thurber is accused of raping and killing 19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm on Jan. 5, 2007. He could get the death penalty if convicted...

Wichita woman wrote $200,000 in business checks to herself

Posted on January 29, 2009
Becky Vanderhoff-Huber was an office manager for Plains Petroleum when she started writing company checks to her self. For more than a year, she wrote checks in her own name, and by the time the company found out she’d stolen nearly $200,000. This morning, Sedgwick County District Judge Mark Vining sentenced the 32-year-old mother of [...

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Kansas judge says ?cram down? mortgage bill will help troubled homeowners

Posted on January 28, 2009
The chief bankruptcy judge in Kansas says he and his colleagues are in the best position to help troubled homeowners, if they?re given the authority they need by a new bill going through Congress. The bill, which Tuesday passed the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, would allow judges to reduce, or ?cram down,? mortgages to meet market [...

Judge files written order on Schneider evidence

Posted on January 28, 2009
As his ruling awaits appeal, U.S. Senior District Judge Monti Belot today issued a written order detailing his limitations of evidence in the case of a Haysville doctor as his wife. Belot issued the written order after ruling from the bench on Monday that prosecutors could present evidence to the jury on only four of [...

Man gets 20 years for pimping teenage girl

Posted on January 23, 2009
Marlin Williams is off to prison for the next two decades, because he took a 15-year-old girl from Wichita to work the streets of Dallas as a prostitute. Williams, 38, was sentenced to 246 months in prison last week, and courthouse sources say he continued to blame the teenage girl for his predicament...

Prosecutors say mom had history of prostituting daughters

Posted on January 23, 2009
A 48-year-old Wichita woman is accused of prostituting her 5-year-old daughter, but prosecutors say it wasn’t the first time. Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston is seeking a judge’s permission to introduce testimony from two of the woman’s grown daughters, who said she sold them for sex when they were between the ages of 8 and [...

Wichita school bus driver charged with fondling 6-year-old

Posted on January 21, 2009
A 73-year-old Wichita school bus driver has been charged with fondling a 6-year-old girl. Billy J. Reynolds made his first appearance Tuesday morning to hear charges against him on four counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Prosecutors say he engaged in lewd touching of the girl from October until his arrest Jan...

Trial begins of man charged with raping blind, mentally disabled woman

Posted on January 21, 2009
Ricardo Adkins, 28, picked up an 18-year-old woman at a bus stop near 21st and Woodlawn on April 24. The woman, who is mentally disabled and legally blind, said he raped her. Adkins said they had consensual sex. Assistant Sedgwick County District Attorney Justin Edwards outlined the state’s case in his opening statements to the jury [...

Wichita tennis coach will go to trial accused of sex with teen

Posted on January 20, 2009
Wichita tennis coach Barry Fields will face trial this spring, accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl who attended his family’s academy. Fields, 44, helps run BK Tennis Academy, which opened in 1992 and serves about 200 young tennis players each month...

Former Haysville doctor will stay out of jail awaiting trial

Posted on January 15, 2009
A federal judge in Wichita ruled today that a former Haysville doctor will remain free awaiting trial next month on charges that he over-prescribed painkillers, resulting in the deaths of 59 patients. U.S. District Judge Monti Belot denied a request by the prosecution to revoke Stephen Schneider’s bond...

Man accused of shooting Rosann Kapaun ruled competent to stand trial

Posted on January 15, 2009
Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess this morning reinstated the case against Charles Cullum, who is accused of shooting Rosann Kapaun nearly two years ago. Cullum’s case had been taken off the docket last spring for him to undergo a mental evaluation...

Murder charges gets more serious for Wichita woman

Posted on January 14, 2009
Gloria Ibarra told police she stabbed Kevin Hadley in an argument over $35. This morning, after hearing Wichita homicide detective Tim Relph recount his conversation with Ibarra, Sedgwick County District Judge Joseph Bribiesca granted a prosecutor’s request to change the charges against her from second-degree murder to first-degree premeditated murder...

Wichita girl says relative raped, abused her for four years as mother did nothing

Posted on January 13, 2009
Warning: Contains graphic content. A 36-year-old Wichita man is scheduled to go to trial later this month charged with repeated sex acts against a young relative over four years. Robin Adams is charged with raping, fondling and abusing the girl from the time she was 7 until she was 11...

What does it take to make a lawyer happy?

Posted on January 13, 2009
When dealing with serious issues, it pays to keep a sense of humor. Stephen and Linda Schneider are charged with over-prescribing painkillers, leading to the deaths of 59 patients. But even they got a chuckle out of the banter between Judge Monti Belot and defense lawyer Lawrence Williamson at a pretrial hearing this afternoon...

On the boardwalk: Wichita man cited for beating seagull

Posted on January 12, 2009
Laguna Beach police cited a Wichita man on “suspicion of animal cruelty” after he beat a seagull with a stick when it attacked him and his wife while swooping down on their ice cream. The Orange County Register reports that Dragan Djuric, 50, was waving a stick trying to fend off several aggressive — and endangered [...

What more do you need to know about Paul Morrison and Linda Carter?

Posted on January 08, 2009
People have been asking me this week about what Linda Carter’s affair with former Attorney General Paul Morrison has to do with a criminal case against Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller. Tiller’s lawyer Dan Monnat tried to show that Morrison so wanted to please Carter that he’d do anything for her...

Courtroom drama resumes today in Kansas v. Tiller

Posted on January 06, 2009
A former Kansas attorney general who crusaded against abortion, his successor and the successor’s former lover are all scheduled to take the stand in a Wichita courtroom this week. Sound like a political soap opera? No, it’s just the latest hearing in the case of Kansas v...

A packed courtroom says farewell to Judge Pilshaw

Posted on January 05, 2009
The cake was decorated to look like law books with a gavel on top. The books carried the dates of Judge Rebecca Pilshaw’s reign on the Sedgwick County District Court bench: 1993-2008. A courtroom packed with lawyers, fellow judges, police and court staff ate the cake and sipped punch in a farewell reception for Rebecca [...

Wichita police officer to go to trial with sex discrimination suit

Posted on December 22, 2008
A Wichita police officer’s claims that she was sexually discriminated against should go to trial, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge Monti Belot to dismiss the lawsuit by other women working for the WPD but reinstated the case of Greta Semsroth...

A new face joins Wichita?s Parents of Murdered Children

Posted on December 18, 2008
I did a double take when I saw Andrea Brooks in the courtroom of a trial that didn’t involve her murdered sister, Chelsea. Now Andrea, 20, is volunteering with Wichita’s chapter of Parents of Murdered Children. Andrea and her family said Parents of Murdered Children helped them through their difficulty navigating the court system as [...

Office manager?s sentence: two years in federal prison for fraud

Posted on December 18, 2008
A 51-year-old Wichita woman will spend more than two years in a federal prison for stealing more than $300,000 from the doctor?s office where she worked. U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley Brown sentenced Frances E. Holt to 27 months in prison on Wednesday...

Harper returns home after serving time for shooting PI

Posted on December 10, 2008
The man who shot Wichita private eye Emory Goad said through his lawyer that he was too old and sick to go to prison. But two years later, 79-year-old John Harper called after returning from serving his time and said he’s never felt better. “I came out healthier,” Harper said...

How much prison time should a fake Indian chief get?

Posted on December 09, 2008
Malcolm Webber will soon face sentencing as the convicted chief of a fake American Indian tribe that duped thousands of illegal immigrants out of money with the promise of U.S. citizenship. Lawyers in the case are asking U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley Brown to consider sentences between eight months and 18 years for the 70-year-old Webber...

County public defender?s office stops taking cases

Posted on December 08, 2008
UPDATED: With judge’s plan to appoint private attorneys and quotes from the judge. The Sedgwick County Regional Public Defenders office has stopped taking cases for at least two weeks, its chief said this morning. “We have an obligation to offer ethical representation, and we just can’t keep going on like we’re have been,” Steve Osburn said...

Hey, lawyers: I?m more trusted than you ? kind of, for now

Posted on December 04, 2008
I always say that when I married an attorney we were both shocked, shocked, to learn that each other’s profession had a code of ethics. The public might agree. A Gallup poll released this week shows the public rated journalists above lawyers in their perceptions of ethics and honesty...

Judge again admonishes Schneiders? lawyers

Posted on December 03, 2008
Judge Monti Belot continues to admonish lawyers for motions they’re filing on behalf of Stephen and Linda Schneider, as the couple await trial charged with more than 30 federal crimes related to their prescription practices for painkillers at their Haysville clinic...

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