Everyone came to court expecting Gary Washburn to plead guilty for fleecing two 80-something women out of nearly $100,000. But Washburn’s rant ended up confusing just about everyone, especially the lawyers. Judges don’t take guilty pleas lightly, so Joe Kisner kept probing. Washburn said he wanted to accept the plea deal from the state, but his rambling said otherwise. Kisner looked to a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court decision known as “Alford” for guidance. Washburn’s attempts to plead guilty are difficult to describe. Better to just watch.
Seems like tough economic times play out in the courtrooms, too: A homeless man spent two weeks in the county jail for stealing food and some CDs, and an unemployed man falsified work time sheets. Both pleaded guilty to low-level felony thefts today in Sedgwick County District Court.
The homeless man, Brandon Smith, said during his plea that his house burned down, leaving him and his wife destitute. He later stole a loaf of bread and sandwich meat from a grocery store in May. In June, he’d also pocketed some compact discs. Judge Eric Yost granted a motion to reduce Smith’s bond from $10,000, releasing him from a two-week stay in the overcrowded county jail on his own recognizance.
The unemployed man, Jerry Goodman, said he had gotten some advance work orders from a contract labor company. But the jobs didn’t materialize. “They didn’t give me any work, and I turned them in as hours,” Goodman told the judge at his plea. He ended up collecting more than $1,800, resulting in a felony on Goodman’s record. He had been free awaiting his plea.
Updated: A man who has been described in court hearings as a deputy “chief” and a man who told people he was a “police officer” of the reservation for a non-existent American Indian tribe have decided to plead guilty.
They are the latest to admit guilt in the scheme of the Kaweah Indian Nation, a fake tribe that purported to sell memberships to illegal immigrants for hundreds of dollars with the false promise of legal citizenship.
Chuck Flynn has been charged with being one of the top officers of the so-called Kaweah Indian tribe. He’s set for a change of plea hearing at 11 a.m. Thursday before U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley E. Brown.
Britton Bergman also is set for plea before Brown, on Aug. 1 rescheduled for 10:15 a.m.Tuesday. Bergman, a college student, had claimed to be a policeman for the Kaweah’s at their office in Wichita.
What they’re pleading guilty to won’t become public until after the hearings.
Malcom Webber, the leader who also went by “Grand Chief Thunderbird IV,” and other defendants are set for trial Aug. 5.
Eduviges del Carmen Zamora was in this country as a legal resident when she went to work selling memberships in a fake Indian tribe to illegal aliens in Wichita.
Zamora pleaded guilty this morning to having knowledge of a felony that she didn’t report to authorities. The felony in this case is mail fraud.
She worked as a secretary in the Wichita home office of the unrecognized Kaweah Indian tribe, one of the most fascinating cases to be going through the justice system here.
Prosecutors say illegal immigrants in nearly a dozen states spent some $200 each for memberships in the fake Kaweah Indian tribe with the hopes that it would give them the proper papers to stay in the country. Malcom Webber is charged as the leader under the alias of “Grand Chief Thunderbird the IV.” Trial is set for Webber, who was 69 when he was charged last September, and the other defendants later this year.
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.
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.
