By Grant Heiman
KU Statehouse News Service

TOPEKA — A recent bill introduced to the Kansas House of Representatives changes the criminal penalties for abusing a child.

House Bill 2394 decreases the level of severity for child abuse while adding the separate crime of aggravated abuse of a child.

“This legislation is extremely important to proportionately respond to extreme and serious abuse of a child,” said Kim Parker, prosecutor coordinator for the Kansas County and District Attorney’s Association.

The current Kansas statutes regarding child abuse group all acts of child abuse together as severity level 5 regardless of the amount of harm done to the child. For example, rape is a severity level 1 felony while a first-time misdemeanor is a severity level 10.

“Many of the acts of abuse perpetrated on children are overlooked by [the current] statute,” Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson said in his testimony to the committee. “Furthermore, many acts of abuse against children vary in the nature of their severity, a consideration also not taken into account by our current statutory language.”

The bill would decrease the level of severity from 5 to 7, or 9, depending on the nature of the abuse. The change in severity would alter sentencing regulations to “proportionately respond to extreme and serious abuse of a child,” according to Parker.

The Office of Judicial Administration notes the bill could increase the number of cases filed in district court, which would result in more time spent by court employees and judges processing and deciding these cases. A financial effect cannot be estimated until the judicial branch has operated under the bill’s provisions.

The KCDAA and the Leavenworth County attorney supported the bill while the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police, Kansas Sheriffs Association and Kansas Peace Officers Association testified as neutral.

The neutral groups recognized the positive intentions of the bill but noted that the vagueness within the bill “may unintentionally include law enforcement use of force or restraints.”

Grant Heiman is a University of Kansas junior from Wichita majoring in journalism.

Game Wardens with the Kansas Department of Wildlife Parks and Tourism are mourning the death of a special K-9.  On their social media page, wardens reported that K-9 died Tuesday just 14 months following her retirement.

According to the wardens, “Meg is credited with making a multitude of poaching cases, apprehension of many fugitives, and providing critical evidence recovery in murder investigations.

She has also been credited for saving lives including a three-year-old girl in Jackson County in 2016 who went missing from her home during an extremely hot day.

Meg was a true public servant, and a Kansas Game Warden to the end. We will miss you girl, rest easy.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Roundup weed killer was a substantial factor in a California man’s cancer, a jury determined Tuesday in the first phase of a trial that attorneys said could help determine the fate of hundreds of similar lawsuits.

<a href=”https://salinapost.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2017-03-17-at-9.41.37-AM.png”><img class=”size-medium wp-image-266358″ src=”https://salinapost.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2017-03-17-at-9.41.37-AM-300×279.png” alt=”” width=”300″ height=”279″></a> Roundup, the Monsanto brand name pesticide built on the chemical glyphosate, is used on farm fields and on lawns and gardens.<br>FILE: by GRANT GERLOCK / courtesy HARVEST PUBLIC MEDIA

The unanimous verdict by the six-person jury in federal court in San Francisco came in a lawsuit filed against Roundup’s manufacturer, agribusiness giant Monsanto. Edwin Hardeman, 70, was the second plaintiff to go to trial out of thousands around the country who claim the weed killer causes cancer.

Monsanto says studies have established that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is safe.

A San Francisco jury in August awarded another man $289 million after determining Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A judge later slashed the award to $78 million, and Monsanto has appealed.

Hardeman’s trial is before a different judge and may be more significant. U.S. Judge Vince Chhabria is overseeing hundreds of Roundup lawsuits and has deemed Hardeman’s case and two others “bellwether trials.”

The outcome of such cases can help attorneys decide whether to keep fighting similar lawsuits or settle them. Legal experts said a jury verdict in favor of Hardeman and the other test plaintiffs would give their attorneys a strong bargaining position in any settlement talks for the remaining cases before Chhabria.

The judge had split Hardeman’s trial into two phases. Hardeman’s attorneys first had to convince jurors that using Roundup was a significant factor in his cancer before they could make arguments for damages.

The trial will now proceed to the second phase to determine whether the company is liable and if so, for how much.

Hardeman declined to comment outside court.

“This has been a long time coming for Mr. Hardeman,” said one of his attorneys, Jennifer Moore. “He’s very pleased he had his day in court, and we’re looking forward to phase two.”

Many government regulators have rejected a link between cancer and glyphosate. Monsanto has vehemently denied such a connection, saying hundreds of studies have established that the chemical is safe.

Bayer, which acquired Monsanto last year, said in a statement after the verdict that it continues to “believe firmly that the science confirms glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer.”

“We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsanto’s conduct has been appropriate and the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardeman’s cancer,” it said.

Monsanto developed glyphosate in the 1970s, and the weed killer is now sold in more than 160 countries and widely used in the U.S.

The herbicide came under increasing scrutiny after the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified it as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015.

Lawsuits against Monsanto followed. The company has attacked the international research agency’s opinion as an outlier.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate is safe for people when used in accordance with label directions.

Hardeman started using Roundup products to treat poison oak, overgrowth and weeds on his Sonoma County property in the 1980s and continued using them through 2012, according to his attorneys. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2015.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that local courts can’t throw people back in jail for not paying previous jail debts, a practice that critics said led to modern-day debtors’ prisons.

At issue are boarding costs for time spent in county jails, which are commonly referred to as board bills. Judges wrote in a unanimous decision that while inmates are responsible for those costs, “if such responsibilities fall delinquent, the debts cannot be taxed as court costs and the failure to pay that debt cannot result in another incarceration.”

ACLU of Missouri Legal Director Tony Rothert praised judges for reaffirming that “people cannot be imprisoned for being poor.”

“We know several counties have abused the court process for years to lock up Missourians because they could not afford their freedom,” Rothert said in a statement. “That ends today.”

The case stems from two Missouri men who fell behind on paying the cost of their own imprisonment in county jail and were ordered to return to court repeatedly regarding their bills.

One of the men, George Richey, was ordered to pay $3,150 after serving time in the St. Clair County jail for violating an order of protection. When he didn’t pay, he was sent back to jail for another 65 days and charged another $2,275.

Judges in the decision wrote that the lower courts were wrong to intervene because “express statutory authority permitting jail board bills to be taxed as court costs does not exist.”

“The courts should not have required them to repeatedly appear to account for debts the courts could not legally designate as court costs, and, in Richey’s case, the circuit court should not have sent him back to jail for failing to make those payments,” judges wrote in the ruling.

Attorney Josh Jones defended the practice in court proceedings. On Tuesday, he said the ruling could mean taxpayers shoulder more of the burden for county jail costs.

“The practical reality is it’s going to reduce the amount paid by the people that actually committed the offenses, and practically it’s going to increase the amount paid by taxpayers for feeding and housing prisoners,” Jones said.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly withdrawing a nominee for the Kansas Court of Appeals over political posts on his Twitter feed.

A pro-life group influential in Kansas politics has called on a trial-court judge to step down after political posts on his Twitter feed sunk his nomination for the Kansas Court of Appeals.

Kansans for Life said Tuesday that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s decision to withdraw her nomination of Judge Jeffry Jack for the state’s second-highest court is a good first step.

But Executive Director Mary Kay Culp said the group believes Jack also should resign from his current position of Labette County district judge.

Jack’s Twitter page included posts from 2017 criticizing President Donald Trump and expressing support for gun control and abortion rights. Some used vulgar language.

Jack asked to have his name withdrawn Monday night after Republicans predicted he would not be confirmed by the GOP-controlled state Senate.

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A Kansas judge whose Twitter feed sunk his nomination to the state’s second-highest court says he was expressing personal opinions that do not influence his work on the bench.

In a statement Tuesday, Judge Jeffry Jack also criticized Senate President Susan Wagle for opposing his confirmation to the Kansas Court of Appeals before he had a hearing.

His Twitter page showed hundreds of tweets and retweets from 2017 that criticized President Donald Trump and expressed support for gun control and abortion rights. Some included vulgar language.

Kelly withdrew Jack’s nomination Tuesday.

Jack said his tweets were “anti-violence, anti-discrimination and anti-hypocrisy.” He said he assumed he was expressing personal opinions to a small group of followers and did not understand that his tweets were accessible to the public.