Opening statements are set for 9 a.m. Tuesday in the murder trial of Kamaronte Jones.
Jones was 17 at the time he was accused of killing Keith “Fritter” Peters, 18, on Aug. 26, 2007, during a party in the 1600 block of East Fortuna. Police said Peters was shot to death when he tried to break up a fight.
The Fritter Foundation was established in Peters’ honor help steer young people to an alternative to street gangs.
Assistant Sedgwick County District Attorney C.J. Rieg is prosecuting. Public defender Mark Orr represents Jones, now 18. Ben Burgess is the judge.
A jury was seated today.
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.
You can follow updates in the feed in the left hand margin of this page, or by following this page on Twitter.com.
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.
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.
Marc Bennett has been promoted to chief deputy district attorney to head a new trial division in Sedgwick County.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston announced this morning that Bennett would head a division that would concentrate on cases involving sex offenses and offenders, domestic violence,crimes against children and crimes against elderly or dependent adults.
Kevin O’Connor is the chief deputy of the trial division handling all other cases, including murder, robbery and crimes against law enforcement.
The capital murder trial of Ted Burnett is going on this week, and we’re covering it live from the courtroom on Twitter.
Twitter is a micro-blogging, social networking platform where millions of people answer the question “What are you doing?” with short messages. What I’m doing is covering the Burnett trial and I’m posting updates live from the courtroom, including details you won’t necessarily read in the print edition of The Eagle.
Anne Reed, a trial lawyer and jury consultant from Milwaukee has been following my “tweets” and explained it this way in her blog, Deliberations.
You can also follow the updates here on Kansas.com.
You can interact if you sign up (it’s free) and put “@rsylvester” before your message to leave a comment or question. Be patient. Between Twittering and keeping track of the trial, it gets pretty hectic in the courtroom.
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.
