COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – An appeals court has exonerated a central Missouri man who was sentenced to prison in 2016 for driving while intoxicated as a “prior and persistent offender.”

The Columbia Missourian reports that the Western District Court of Appeals found Tuesday there was insufficient evidence to connect Richard Wilhite’s intoxication to his operating of a motor vehicle.

Wilhite’s 2016 case was his ninth DWI conviction.

The affidavit says officers arrested Wilhite after strangers spotted him wandering a road near a crashed truck on Aug. 25, 2015. Officers say Wilhite denied being at the scene of the crash or consuming any intoxicants, and refused to provide a blood sample. A blood alcohol test hours later revealed Wilhite was intoxicated.

The court says it overturned the conviction because it’s unclear if Wilhite was intoxicated at the time he was operating the vehicle.

Wilhite’s attorney says the Sturgeon man appreciates the ruling.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Republican Kris Kobach is making tax cuts a cornerstone of his campaign for Kansas governor and publicly chiding GOP Gov. Jeff Colyer and other rivals for not joining him in signing a pledge not to increase taxes.

Wink and I are the only candidates to sign the No Tax Hike Pledge, and I keep my promises. The huge increases in spending in the Colyer budget means more tax increases are coming from this administration. We need conservative leadership in Topeka. https://t.co/guKWuB6DVs #ksleg pic.twitter.com/6hWhZ9eImU

— Kris W. Kobach (@KrisKobach1787) June 7, 2018

Kobach, who is currently Kansas secretary of state, is promising to push for lower income and sales tax rates and tighter controls on local property taxes a year after bipartisan supermajorities in the state Legislature rolled back past income tax cuts championed by former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. Last year’s tax increase came after persistent budget woes soured many voters on Brownback’s tax-cutting experiment.

Kobach’s aggressive stance ahead of the Aug. 7 primary election demonstrates the enduring appeal of tax cuts for the GOP’s conservative base even after Brownback’s experiment caused other states to look at Kansas and take a more cautious approach on taxes.

Colyer, who was Brownback’s lieutenant governor for seven years before Brownback resigned to take an ambassador’s post, also promises to work with legislators to ease the tax burden without making specific promises and he questions Kobach’s commitment to lowering taxes.

But Kobach argued Thursday that the mistake “the Brownback-Colyer administration” made was not cutting spending aggressively enough.

“When you cut taxes, you must also cut spending,” Kobach said. “Colyer is spending like a drunken sailor.”

Kansas expects the spending on general government programs and services financed with state tax dollars to rise 4.5 percent under its next annual budget. It’s largely because the state plans to phase in a $548 million increase in funding for public schools over five years in response to a Kansas Supreme court mandate.

Campaign spokesman Kendall Marr pointed to Colyer’s leading an overhaul of the state’s Medicaid health coverage for the needy while he was lieutenant governor as an example of how Colyer helped Kansas control its spending.

And another Colyer aide, Kara Fullmer, dismissed Kobach’s goading over the Americans for Tax Reform pledge that Kobach signed on April 17, the annual income tax filing deadline.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Fullmer said.

She pointed to a vote Kobach made in 2000 as an Overland Park City Council member to boost the city’s excise tax almost 21 percent. It’s paid by developers on each square foot of land to help cover the cost of sewers and streets in new housing subdivisions.

Kobach called it a fee paid by a limited group and said raising it allowed the city to keep property taxes down for all home and business owners.

The other two major GOP candidates, Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer and former state Sen. Jim Barnett, a Topeka physician, also have not signed the anti-tax pledge.

Barnett, appealing to moderate Republicans, predicted that Kobach’s push for tax cuts would “tank the state’s budget.”

As for signing an anti-tax pledge, he said: “It would be reckless on the part of the governor to tie his or her hands.”

Selzer said he would “lean in” on government costs and “focus on making Kansas grow.”

“Kansas needs to grow or we’ll never be able to adequately invest in the things we need at the state level,” Selzer said.

Meanwhile, the three major Democratic candidates — ex-Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, state Sen. Laura Kelly of Topeka, and former state Agricultural Secretary Joshua Svaty — are attacking Brownback’s fiscal legacy. They’re attempting to tie Colyer to it and see Kobach as doubling down.

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A 40-year-old southern Missouri woman who sent threatening messages to several people in support of the Islamic State will spend years in federal prison.

Federal prosecutors say Safya Roe Yassin, of Buffalo, was sentenced Thursday to nine years in federal prison without parole.

Federal prosecutor say Yassin used several Twitter accounts to transmit information she believed was from the Islamic State, including soliciting violence against two FBI employees and two former members of the military and their families. Prosecutors say those four victims were targeted only because of their service to the U.S.

Using the name “Muslimah,” Yassin tweeted messages supporting ISIS or reposted messages she knew were from ISIS operatives.

Some of the tweets including identifying information of the victims with the phrase “Wanted to Kill.”

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to prison for causing a high-speed crash in a Lawrence residential neighborhood that resulted in injuries to two people.

A judge sentenced 45-year-old Justin Crawford on Wednesday to nearly 3.5 years in prison, with credit for 10 months already served. The Topeka man will also serve two years’ probation and pay more than $5,800 in restitution to a crime victim compensation fund.

Crawford pleaded no contest to felony aggravated battery for seriously injuring two women in the car he hit Sept. 7, 2012. Prosecutors say he had been driving at high speeds after being given pain medication from several hospitals earlier that day.

Crawford’s attorney says he accepts responsibility for the crash and injuries.

HANNIBAL, Mo. (AP) – A man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his father with a crossbow and hiding the corpse in a freezer inside a northeast Missouri home.

The Hannibal Courier-Post reports that 32-year-old Carl Goldberg, formerly of Las Vegas, was sentenced Thursday. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in February.

The body of Carl Maxwell was found in October 2015 inside a freezer in a Hannibal home, but authorities believe he was killed in February 2015.

In a written confession, Goldberg said he and Maxwell were involved in an argument, after which Maxwell fell asleep in a chair. Goldberg said he used the crossbow to shoot Maxwell in the chest as the older man slept. After about 20 minutes, he shot Maxwell a second time in the head.

WACO, Texas (AP) — Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” series, have settled with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on allegations that they used inadequate protection while removing lead paint during renovations.

Under the deal with the EPA, Magnolia Waco Properties LLC, doing business as Magnolia Homes, will ensure compliance with lead-based paint regulations in future renovations. It also promises to educate the public on lead-based paint hazards.

In a statement Tuesday, the EPA says it reviewed video footage from several seasons of “Fixer Upper.” EPA says it found violations of regulations governing lead-based paint exposure.

Magnolia also has agreed to pay a $40,000 civil penalty and spend $160,000 to abate lead-based paint hazards in homes and child-occupied facilities in Waco.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Kansas City police say a crash involving an armored truck sent thousands of dollars in coins spilling across a highway.

The accident Thursday when the armored truck stopped at an intersection in northern Kansas City was hit from behind by a truck.

The force of the collision dumped about $25,000 in coins onto Missouri Highway 152. The highway was closed for about four hours as employees from the armored car company used shovels, brooms, leaf blowers, and then vacuums to clean it all up.

The driver of the truck was critically injured. The armored truck driver was not injured.

NEOSHO, Mo. (AP) – An Arkansas woman accused in a man’s death in Missouri has pleaded guilty to abandonment of his corpse.

The Joplin Globe reports that 40-year-old Brandy House received a suspended sentence and supervised probation in a plea bargain Monday.

House and 37-year-old Derek Reeves were charged in 2015 with abandonment of the corpse of 43-year-old Luther Wren along a McDonald County road.

Police say a witness reported a murder in a Neosho RV park that year and accused Reeves of being responsible. Reeves and House lived in the RV park for some time. Reeves led investigators to the body but denied killing him.

A medical examiner couldn’t determine the cause of death because of the corpse’s decomposed state.

Reeves pleaded guilty to abandoning the corpse and other changes in 2016.

By DAN MARGOLIES

More than 1,300 phone calls between public defenders and inmates awaiting trial at the Leavenworth detention facility were improperly recorded over a two-year period, according to newly disclosed information in a civil lawsuit.

The blockbuster revelation comes as the Federal Public Defender’s office and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas seek to resolve a long-running and contentious dispute over audio and video recording of attorney-client meetings and phone calls at the prison.

The stakes are enormous: If it’s found that prosecutors impermissibly listened in on privileged attorney-client calls, that could result in those clients’ charges or convictions being thrown out.

The latest disclosure emerged last week in a lawsuit against the detention facility’s operator, CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, and the contractor responsible for its phone system, Securus Technologies Inc. The lawsuit was filed in 2016 by two attorneys, David Johnson and Adam Crane, who alleged their phone calls and meetings with clients were impermissibly recorded.

Crane no longer is a plaintiff, but Johnson last week moved to have the suit certified as a class action on behalf of all attorneys whose conversations or meetings were recorded at Leavenworth. In his motion, he said that, based on records obtained during discovery, 1,338 phone calls placed by detainees to their public defender attorneys had been recorded between 2011 and 2013.

The disclosure came as news to the Kansas Federal Public Defenders’ office, which, in turn, moved for a protective order in separate, ongoing litigation over the recordings at Leavenworth. That litigation, which prompted the judge to appoint a special master to investigate the issue, seeks a complete accounting of the recordings and the extent to which inmates’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel may have been violated.

In its motion, the public defender’s office says that “well before 2011,” it had asked to have its phone numbers placed on a list of attorney numbers not to be recorded, in accordance with CoreCivic (CCA) protocol. CoreCivic operates the Leavenworth Detention Center on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service.

“Having complied with CCA protocol,” the motion states, “we understood that CCA phone calls from our clients would not be recorded.”

The public defender’s office says its motion serves to notify the U.S. Attorney’s office, the U.S. Marshals Service, CoreCivic and Securus that its attorneys’ phone calls to the detention facility, “regardless of any recorded preamble, is constitutionally and statutorily protected as attorney-client communication and as attorney work-product. Any access to, review of, or production to any other person or entity violates those protections.”

A spokeswoman for CoreCivic said the company does not comment on active litigation. An attorney for Securus did not return a phone call seeking comment. Melody Brannon, who heads the Kansas Federal Public Defender’s office, declined to comment.

As part of his investigation, the special master, David R. Cohen, had found that some 200 attorney phone calls had been recorded at Leavenworth — and those phone calls included not just those involving public defenders but other criminal defense attorneys as well.

Cohen, asked about the discrepancy between the 200 phone calls he uncovered and the more than 1,300 uncovered in the proposed class-action lawsuit, said they almost certainly referred to “different universes of calls.”

“I examined about 49,000 phone calls that the government produced to me, which it had obtained in connection with their investigation into the (Core Civic) drug conspiracy case,” Cohen said, referring to the case in which the disclosures that attorney-client calls had been recorded first surfaced.

“I suspect (the class-action lawsuit) is referring to all of the calls that Securus recorded during some time period, not just the ones the government gave me in connection with their drug conspiracy investigation.”

Cohen said the larger number suggested that “the issue of the government having access to or possibly listening to calls between inmates and their attorneys may be more widespread than my numbers reflected, because I was only looking at a specific case and a limited collection of calls.”

It’s unclear whether this latest revelation about the extent to which attorney-client calls were recorded at Leavenworth will have an effect on negotiations between the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Federal Public Defender’s office to resolve the issue.

Last month, the U.S. Attorney for Kansas, Stephen McAllister, said that his office was prepared to work out an agreement with the public defender’s office. His announcement came midway through a hearing in which the the public defender’s office asked the judge to find McAllister’s office in contempt after it ceased cooperating with Cohen’s investigation.

McAllister’s office has been at the center of the tapings controversy because, in at least a handful of instances, it has acknowledged that prosecutors listened in on some of the taped calls.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson, who appointed Cohen as special master, directed him to look at whether CoreCivic had turned over privileged recordings of attorney-client meetings and calls to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The U.S. Attorney’s office and the public defender’s office have been at loggerheads since the initial revelations of the tapings surfaced nearly two years ago. The U.S. Attorney’s office wants Cohen’s investigation limited to editing out and retaining privileged attorney-client matters. The public defender’s office wants him to examine whether CoreCivic routinely recorded attorney-client meetings and turned them over to prosecutors.

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies