I’ve been filing live updates from Cherish’s McCullough’s trial on charges of first-degree murder in a convenience store stabbing last summer.
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What’s this Twitter thing? It allows you to keep track of your friends, and they keep track of you, very short messages (140 characters or less), including our coverage of notable trials.
Cherish McCullough was 19 when she was booked and charged with first-degree murder. Her case could soon swirl with controversy over a community’s value of human life.
McCullough has pleaded not guilty of stabbing 27-year-old LaShanda Callaway after an argument in a convenience store at 2601 N. Hillside. At her trial, which begins next week, the public is expected to see for the first time a security video of the stabbing that raised concerns beyond the crime itself.
Soon after Callaway’s death on June 24, 2007, Wichita police chief Norman Williams told Eagle columnist Mark McCormick that the video showed people continuing to shop, some even snapping cell-phone pictures of the fallen woman.
Jury selection is expected to start Monday. Richard Ney will represent McCullough for the defense. C.J. Rieg is prosecuting.
Two of three men charged in the robbery and killing of a 47-year-old Wichita man last summer received their sentences Wednesday.
Sedgwick County District Judge Terry Pullman sentenced Corey Logan, 23, to eight years in prison for his role in the shooting death of Stanley Bloom. Logan pleaded guilty March 5 to voluntary manslaughter. He’ll also be under three years’ supervision after being released from prison.
Frederick Smith, 22, received a six-year suspended sentence after his April 2 plea of no contest to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery and two counts of aiding a felon. A no-contest plea doesn’t admit guilt but concedes the state has enough evidence to earn a conviction at trial. It results in the same conviction as a guilty plea. Pullman also ordered three years’ probation for Smith.
Both are expected to testify against John Sampson, 42, who is accused of shooting Bloom. Sampson awaits trial, charged with first-degree premeditated murder. Police found Bloom on July 10, 2007, dead in the bedroom of his home at 313 N. Millwood, in the Delano neighborhood.
The three men remained at large for months. Smith was arrested in December during a traffic stop. Logan was found after being arrested on an unrelated case in Missouri and was returned to Wichita to face these charges. Sampson was arrested and charged in January.
Two murder cases to go trial in Wichita next week, both with robbery as the possible motives.
Adrian Hopper, 28, faces trial before Judge Warren Wilbert. Hopper is charged with breaking into an apartment near Central and Oliver in January 2007 and shooting Deandre Reed and Princess Sears.
Reed, 24, died later that night. Sears, 23, was sent home from the hospital but died the next month. Sal Intagliata is prosecuting the case. Steven Rosel represents Hopper.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Kim Parker, meanwhile, will argue against defense lawyer Richard Ney in the case of Eric Huerta. Huerta, 20, was charged with killing Chad Clayton, 27, May 2007. Judge Rebecca Pilshaw will preside over the case. Huerta is also a co-defendant in the killing of Rosann Kapaun, 33, in a shooting five days earlier. That case is set for trial separately.
The trials begin with jury selection Monday in Sedgwick County District Court. Each trial is expected to last four days or more.
Update: Huerta’s trial has been continued. No new date has yet been set.
No matter how his murder trial turns out, Steven Novotny’s legal troubles may be just beginning.
Novotny also is named in a federal racketeering indictment prosecutors say targets the Crips street gang. In that case, Novotny is accused of threatening a man with a gun in 2004 and distributing drugs for the Crips.
Jurors didn’t hear evidence of gang relations during the murder trial.
Lawyer Val Wachtel gave the defense perspective on premeditation, a week after this post gave a prosecutor’s view.
In his closing statements for his client, Eric Martinez, Wachtel told the jury:
“Prosecutors like to say premeditation is like what deciding what to wear in the morning. But I think premeditated murder requires more work than what tie to put on in the morning.”
Murder is easy to understand. But premeditated murder? Prosecutors say premeditation can be difficult.
It can especially be confusing since Kansas law doesn’t specify exactly how long someone has to think an action over before it becomes premeditation. It can’t be an instant before, but courts say you don’t have to think it over long.
Ann Swegle, deputy district attorney for Sedgwick County gave the best description of premeditation I’ve heard in her closing arguments of the Reginald Johnson murder trial.
“We premeditate all the time in our lives – we just don’t call it that,” Swegle told the jury. “We plan what we’re going to wear to work. We plan what we’re going to eat, at some point, before we eat. This morning, I decided I wanted another cup of coffee. It didn’t take me long. I just walked over to the coffee pot.”
The jury convicted Johnson of first-degree murder – premeditated.
Prosecutors sometimes have trouble locating witnesses for a murder trial. But Elizabeth Munos not only showed up to testify in the trial of Eric Martinez, she did so just days after giving birth.
Munos had a baby on Saturday and took the stand on Tuesday to say that Martinez fired the shots that killed his uncle David Martinez and wounded his cousin Adrian Martinez last summer.
“We’ll try to make this quick, so you can get back to that baby,” prosecutor Shannon Wilson said as she began her questioning.
Update: Wilson later said that Munos’ labor went so quick, she ended up giving birth in the restroom at Via Christi Medical Center/St. Joseph’s campus. Father Angel Martinez helped deliver the couple’s fourth baby.
A western Kansas man faces a charge of first-degree murder because prosecutors say he gave drugs to a man who died of an overdose.
The Hays Daily News reports that David Knapp is accused of murder, after 46-year-old Frank A. Brown died at a motel in October 2006 while taking the prescription pain-killer fentanyl.
In Kansas, someone can be convicted of felony murder if they are involved in an “inherently dangerous felony” that results in someone dying. In this case, prosecutors Brown died of the overdose while Knapp was committing the crime of crime of illegal distribution of drugs. Knapp is tentatively scheduled for trial next month.