Public defender Lacy Gilmour compares her case to that of the prosecution in a recent theft trial before Judge Kaufman, and how it won an acquittal for her client.
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A jury found Adrian Hopper not guilty on two counts of first-degree murder in a verdict late Monday afternoon before Judge Warren Wilbert.
Hopper, 28, had been charged in the shooting deaths of DeAndre Reed and Princess Sears on Jan. 8, 2007. Reed, 24, died that night after being shot in the apartment he shared with Sears in the 400 block of North Oliver. Sears, 23, died as a result of her gunshot wounds three weeks later after she’d left the hospital.
The defense had attacked Sears’ identification of a picture her father showed her in the hospital of Hopper and produced family and friends saying he had been in Topeka the night of the shooting.
Hopper won’t go free, however. He faces prison sentences as a result of two other convictions related to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Jay Collins had a rough night last October. His Great Dane ripping his face apart was just the beginning.
Collins, 29, grabbed a knife, according to records from his trial last week, to defend himself against the dog attack, resulting in 17 stitches from his lip across his cheek. He had bite marks across both arms.
When police arrived, Collins didn’t know that he had killed the dog. Two Wichita police officers saw him with the knife and ordered him to drop it. Still in shock, Collins dropped the knife after several commands but didn’t immediately get down on the ground under the officers’ orders so they fired a Taser at him – three times. Then they arrested him for not dropping the knife on their first command.
A jury found Collins not guilty of assault on a law enforcement officer.