Cowley County District Judge Jim Pringle admitted it’s won’t be easy deciding if he will admit wrenching testimony from women who say Justin Thurber followed them, harassed them and molested them for years before Jodi Sanderholm’s killing.
“This would make a law school professor lethal, licking his chops about what questions he could put on a law exam,” Pringle said of the 17 different decisions ahead of him.
Prosecutors are seeking to admit the testimony at Thurber’s capital murder trial, of what’s usually known as “prior bad acts.” Usually, that kind of testimony is inadmissible, but under Kansas law it can be permitted under certain circumstances.
Those include:
- If evidence shows a pattern of behavior consistent with the crimes being charged
- If it relates to an important aspect of a case.
- It is valuable in helping to understand a case.
Thurber’s public defenders argue the testimony isn’t relevant to Sanderholm’s death.
Daniel Collins decided to go to trial instead of plea bargaining with the U.S. government, and he ended up with fewer convictions two buddies who pleaded guilty.
A jury convicted the 18-year-old Collins on one count of setting off a bundle of commercial fireworks that damaged an apartment building on south Seneca this past August. But jurors found Collins not guilty of bombing another building and stealing the fireworks from a storage unit.
Antonio Ray and Nathan Gunter pleaded guilty to two counts arson by explosives.
How much of a bang did they get that morning? They’ll spend as much time in prison as most young men their age spend in college – they face at least five years. And there is no parole from federal prison.
Some might really wonder what the judge ate for breakfast when seeing prison sentences tacked on to death sentences, as most recently with Scott Cheever. It’s not like he’s going to serve prison time after he’s executed.
But lawyers will tell you there are good reasons for this in the legal world. First, no one really knows what’s going to happen with the death penalty in the future, especially in Kansas, where there hasn’t been an execution since 1965. The death penalty could be abolished. The legislature could change the law.
Also, on appeal, each conviction of each crime is reviewed separately, so the judge needs to sentence each count by itself. Plus, as Judge Mike Ward pointed out in Cheever’s sentence, all those attempted murder convictions he received — for firing on deputies and state troopers trying to arrest him — all had victims. And they all deserve to see justice.
Of course, if the state does carry out Cheever’s execution, the other sentences are meaningless. But down the road if the law or sentence changes, he still has to serve his 61 years for the other crimes.
Says Marc Bennett, an assistant district attorney in Sedgwick County: “We have every reason to seek the longest possible sentence to ensure that the worst offenders are kept away from society, no matter what unforeseen event takes place in the appellate process or in the legislature.”
Turns out the man accused of trying to pick up a 14-year-old girl from school last month for sex also claimed to be carrying on psychic conversations with the teenager.
The girl told school officials she’d never seen Jesus Gallardo-Gonzalez before. But the 36-year-old man told police the girl had spoken to him through telepathy. He said she’d sent him a mental message to pick her up from Curtis Middle School and “had shared problems in her life with him while communicating psychically,” according to a police report.
His case is on hold pending a mental competency evaluation.
Don’t let the name fool you. I have no reason to believe that the sentiment suggested by the name of this blog, taken from a famous quote by a federal judge, determines how cases really are decided in Kansas.
But when we heard lawyers say it, it made those of us who cover the courthouse smile. We thought it might catch your attention, too.
The intent of this blog is to keep you up with the happenings of the courts in Wichita and surrounding. I’ve covered the state and federal courthouses for The Wichita Eagle since 2000. I have been a working journalist for 30 years.
Most of what I write ends up as stories on Kansas.com and in the Eagle. But there’s more going on at the courthouse than what usually fits into those stories.
This is the place to find background, notes, quotes and tidbits that may enhance your understanding of our courts and the way cases are tried in this part of the country.
Most of the judges I know take their jobs seriously. They don’t base their decisions on how they’re feeling that day.
As for my part, what I post here and even how often may sometimes depend on what the reporter ate for breakfast.