Common Law: Terms of probation

Tuesday9:23 a.m.

We’ve received several questions about what happens to people getting probation. As we’ve explained before, it’s not a free walk. While people don’t stay locked up, their life is restricted. Most of the people we’ve seen receive probation get standard terms they must follow. Judge David Kaufman went through those limitations in the recent sentencing of a bar bouncer. It took Kaufman 18 minutes to fully explain the terms of probation. We’ve condensed it to 2 minutes. (Watch video after the jump)

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Common Law: Youthful squabble nets felony

Oct. 2, 20091:47 p.m.

Dominique Willis, 18, got into an argument over $10. Willis punched another young man and took the money. He was charged with aggravated robbery and faced four years in prison, unless a judge departed from sentencing laws to grant probation.

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Common Law, No. 19: If she’d been more violent, state would help her

Sept. 3, 20098:30 a.m.

Legislators pass laws. Judges uphold them. But when people bring their problems to court, judges catch the idiosyncrasies lawmakers miss. Judge David Kaufman found such flaws in Senate Bill 123, which provides state funds to help pay for drug treatment while people are on probation. Kaufman recently faced a young woman convicted of possessing methamphetamine and making minimal wages. The judge found she’d only be eligible for aid to help her drug problem if she was a more violent criminal.

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Common Law No. 18: Battling drug addiction through prison

Sept. 2, 20098:30 a.m.

Devon Thompson was on probation for drug possession, when he started using again and stopped seeing his supervising officer. When police showed up to serve him his arrest warrant, he told them he was someone else. After being sentenced to 24 months in prison on the drug charges, he went before Judge Ben Burgess for sentencing on obstruction of justice. Prosecutors asked for the judge to add nine months to Thompson’s sentence. Public defender Lacy Gilmour asked for probation. The judge had to decide if an extra nine months in prison would help a drug addict.

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Common Law, episode 11: Seeking sentencing consistency

Aug. 18, 20098:30 a.m.

Oscar Ortiz was one of four men convicted of an armed robbery that netted them $7 last year. Three different judges granted the others probation but prosecutors asked Judge David Kaufman to send Ortiz to prison. Ortiz, supported by his family, told Kaufman that seven months in the county jail was enough for him to know he didn’t want more time behind bars.

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Judge: Number of jail beds don’t impact court decisions

July 17, 20084:10 p.m.

Whether or not the county builds new jail space into its budget, business in the criminal courts division will go on as usual.

Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost, chief of the criminal courts division, said jail space doesn’t figure into decisions on sentencing or bail. We asked Yost if County Manager Bill Buchanan’s recommendation to not put a $54 million jail expansion into next year’s budget would affect the courts.

“We are all well aware of the problem, of course,” Yost said, “but we need to do what we think is appropriate with each case, and hope there is a place to house those who get incarcerated.”

Bond is set by the severity of the crimes and the risk that a defendant will flee.

“Thus, most low-level felony cases and misdemeanors will be able to bond out easily anyway,” Yost said. “Defendants in the more serious cases probably won’t.”

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Don’t let that pacemaker stop you from going to prison

June 27, 20088:58 p.m.

A federal judge in Wichita who turned 101 this week denied a request today to delay prison for a 76-year-old former doctor who underwent surgery this week to install a pacemaker in his heart.

U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley Brown ordered Wilbur Hilst to report to prison Monday to begin serving a 33-month sentence for illegally distributing prescription drugs over the Internet. Hilst had pleaded guilty to conspiracy for selling drugs online from his Red Mesa pharmacy in Wichita.

Hilst’s lawyers said in his motion that he was scheduled to have a pacemaker installed this week. Prosecutors argued Hilst could get the aftercare he needed in prison.

Brown turned 101 on June 22.

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Goff initially didn’t know about prison break plans, mom says

June 12, 20085:16 p.m.

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.

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Even buildings under construction can be burglarized

April 28, 20083:29 p.m.

Donald Storey took a band saw from construction site at Wesley Medicalstory.jpg Center but argued that he shouldn’t be convicted of burglary of a building, since the structure wasn’t finished.

Wrong, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled this morning. The Supreme Court upheld previous rulings by Sedgwick County District Judge Rebecca Pilshaw and the Court of Appeals, saying even though the building didn’t have doors, Storey still shouldn’t have gone in there without permission. He cut the lock box, took the band saw and put it in his trunk, before police arrested him at the scene.

“Under the facts of this case, an unfinished medical center consisting of a roof, a concrete floor, installed electrical work, and four brick walls with openings for yet-to-be-installed windows and doors constituted a building (under the law),” the court ruled.

Not everyone agreed.”Carried to the extreme, … the pouring of a concrete floor would be sufficient to make all property left on top of that floor amenable to a burglary,” Justice Lee Johnson wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Storey, 38, finished his sentence in December, but the felony conviction will increase his sentence if he’s convicted of future crimes.

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Plea turns up record child porn stash

April 1, 20086:44 p.m.

Prosecutor Marc Bennett offered an unusual deal to Henry Nelson, a local photographer charged with having sex with an 8-year-old.

Bennett would accept a guilty plea to aggravated indecent liberties, reduced from rape, if Nelson would turn over his computer so authorities could search it without having to obtain a warrant. Bennett agreed not to charge him with extra crimes, but he could use anything he found to argue for a harsher sentence. Nelson complied.

The search turned up 30,000 sexually explicit photographs of minors — the most ever found in Wichita.

At sentencing today, Nelson’s lawyers asked for probation. After hearing about the child porn collection, Judge Joseph Bribiesca sent Nelson to prison.

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