A day after her daughter was sentenced to five years in federal prison, Amber Goff’s mother said she wants to set the record straight about her daughter’s participation in helping two men escape from a state penitentiary.
Goff, 24, said in her plea this spring she had bought a prepaid cell phone last summer, which was then smuggled by someone else to Steven Ford and Jesse Bell at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. Goff added minutes onto the phone, which Ford and Bell used to plan their escape.
But Goff, who still worked as a correction officer in the state pen at the time, wasn’t aware of their plans to escape, her mother Laurie Nutter told me this morning.
Nutter said Goff didn’t know of the plan to escape until 11 days before the men made their break on Oct. 28. Then Goff arranged to cut through fences inside the prison grounds and left the men wire cutters and provided guns to help them escape. They were arrested later in New Mexico.
“She wasn’t quite as involved in this incident as the officials would like the public to think,” Nutter said.
Lawyers for Wichita abortion provider George Tiller say they’ve turned in nearly two years worth of patient records subpoenaed by a grand jury.
Laura Shaneyfelt, who represents Tiller, said patient files for 2004 and most of 2005 have already been turned over and the rest are expected to be complete by week’s end. The grand jury had ordered five years’ worth of files by women who sought late-term abortions at Tiller’s clinic.
“The process is necessarily time consuming to insure complete protection of his patients’ privacy,” Shaneyfelt said.
But it will take more time before the grand jury gets to see all the files. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in May that after Tiller’s lawyers strike all identifying information from the patient records, an independent doctor and lawyer appointed by the court must also review the records and take out information irrelevant to the grand jury’s investigation. The grand jury is looking into whether Tiller complied with Kansas law’s regarding late-term abortions. Its term expires July 8.
U.S. District Judge Monti Belot has taken senior status, but his caseload hasn’t changed. Some judges take senior status to lighten their workload or as a precursor for retirement. But not in Wichita.
“How could I ever get away with working less when Judge Brown still works full-time?” Belot asked.
Wesley E. Brown, also on senior status, still hears a full caseload. He turns 101 on June 22. Belot, 65, once worked as a law clerk for Brown.
Belot’s senior status also opens up a district court vacancy in Wichita. President Bush could nominate someone for the position before he leaves office. Current U.S. Attorney for Kansas Eric Melgren, a Bush appointee, has been mentioned as a possibility, but he’s not talking.
There may not be any hurry. As Belot continues to handle his full caseload, there are 16 other judicial vacancies around the country rated as “emergencies” by administrators of the U.S. courts. One has been vacant for 14 years.
When a judge asks a lawyer for exhibits to support an argument, it helps to return the judge’s phone call.
U.S. District Judge Monti Belot said he didn’t get that call, or the documents he was seeking, after his staff phoned a lawyer for Linda Schneider.
Linda Schneider and her husband, former doctor Stephen Schneider, face more than 30 charges stemming from the prescribing of painkillers at their Haysville clinic.
“Let me make something clear to all counsel: when a member of my staff calls, the call will be returned the same day it is received,” Belot wrote in a letter dated today. “My staff will not deal with your confusing and unresponsive telephone answering systems. If the call is not returned, I will dispatch a U.S. marshal to bring to the courthouse the lawyer who did not return the call.”
Marshals typically escort people to the courthouse in handcuffs.
Wichita’s Amy Lemley will become the first woman in Kansas admitted into the American College of Trial Lawyers.
Lemley is set to be inducted this fall to the elite organization, which still is predominantly
male after 58 years. Lemley has participated in more than 60 trials since 1982. She practices primarily in the area of defending health care providers being sued for malpractice. She is the leader of the general litigation department for Foulston Siefkin, the state’s largest law firm.
Admission to the American College of Trial Lawyers is by invitation only and its rolls can never exceed 1 percent of all lawyers in any state.
Another Wichita lawyer, Mike Stout, is the current president.
Kansas earned only a C- grade for the way it keeps track of judicial ethics in a report card issued by a legal watchdog group.
HALT stands for “Help Abolish Legal Tyranny” and describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group.” Its report on judicial ethics graded each state in seven areas, including transparency, gift restrictions and meaningful sanctions.
Kansas received a failing grade in gift restrictions. “The state does not place meaningful limitations on the reimbursements and compensation that judges may accept in connection with corporate and special interest funded trips,” the report said.
See the grade card here.
