By Dewey Terrill

JC Post

GEARY COUNTY —A Kansas sheriff accused of felony theft and misdemeanor misuse of public funds has entered a no contest plea.

On Friday Geary County Sheriff Tony Wolf entered the plea deal and that saw the court dismiss two other felony counts with prejudice. They cannot be refiled.

The recommended sentence for Wolf is 12 months probation on the misdemeanor and in the other allegation a presumptive probation matter with the probation in both cases to run concurrently at the same time, with no jail time. Wolf must also make restitution totaling $2,200 in the theft case.

Formal sentencing has been scheduled on June 28th.

Wolf will be also be required to forfeit his position as Geary County Sheriff effective immediately. A letter of resignation must be submitted to the governor.

According to the factual basis outlined in court on Friday, Wolf authorized an expense of $530 against a County credit card to purchase tires for a friend’s vehicle. He claimed it was a payment to a confidential informant for drug information which was false.

There was a reference to a text which Wolf told the friend, “This is what friends do for each other.” Wolf later admitted to a KBI agent the tires were purchased for a friend. Those funds were credited by the vendor back to the credit card and Wolf later paid the vendor.

In the second case Wolf used state asset forfeiture funds to purchase items ranging from weapons, ammunition and a scope. Wolf turned in a list on those, but it did not include six items including a scope. He will make the $2,200 restitution in that case.

In court Friday Wolf appeared with his attorney, Barry Clark, Manhattan while Assistant Dickinson County Attorney Darryl Hawkins served as the Special Prosecutor in the case. During the proceedings Wolf acknowledged he understood the charges and waived his right to a preliminary hearing. The jury trial scheduled in the case that on the misdemeanor count, plus a felony theft charge that has now been dismissed, was scheduled May 8th and 9th in District court. It will be withdrawn from the court docket.

Wolf was first elected Geary County Sheriff in 2012 and reelected in 2016. He began working for the Sheriff’s Department as a corrections officer in 1996 and later moved to the patrol division.

NIXA, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri woman who was 17 when she sold prescription drugs to a classmate who died of an overdose has been sentenced to 120 days in jail and five years of probation.

Alexandra Gonzalez, of Nixa, also was ordered Thursday to perform 300 hours of community service for selling Xanax to 18-year-old Austin Clark. He died in June 2016 after ingesting toxic amounts of the anti-anxiety drug as well as methadone.

Gonzalez’s attorney, Joseph Passanise, says his client had been racked with guilt and didn’t intend for Clark to die.

Clark’s parents say their son was battling a drug addiction but he had been clean for months. His father, Brett Clark, said it “feels like a part of my soul has been ripped out.”

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By JOHN HANNA 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ highest court ruled for the first time Friday that the state constitution protects abortion rights and blocked a first-in-the-nation ban on a common second trimester method for ending pregnancies.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling represented a big victory for abortion rights supporters in a state with a Republican-controlled Legislature hostile to their cause. It comes with other, GOP-controlled states moving to ban most abortionsin direct challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortions across the nation.

The Kansas decision prevents the state from enforcing a 2015 law that could have greatly limited second trimester abortions. But even worse for abortion opponents, the ruling clears the way for legal challenges to a string of abortion restrictions approved in recent years by state lawmakers under past Republican governors.

The court said vague language protecting “equal and inalienable rights” in the first section of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights grants a “natural right of personal autonomy” that includes the right to “control one’s own body.” Because that right is independent of the U.S. Constitution, Kansas courts could strike down restrictions that have been upheld by the federal courts.

“This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life — decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy,” the court’s unsigned majority opinion said.

Justices ruled 6-1 on the language in state constitution. Justice Caleb Stegall, the only appointee of a conservative Republican governor, declared in his dissenting opinion that the ruling “fundamentally alters the structure of our government” to “arbitrarily grant a regulatory reprieve” for abortion.

The ruling immediately prompted abortion opponents to call for amending the state constitution. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who took office in January, is a strong abortion-rights supporter, but the Legislature still has solid anti-abortion majorities.

“The liberal, activist Supreme Court showed just how out of touch they are with Kansas values,” Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican, said in a statement issued minutes after the decision. “We understand that life is sacred, beginning at conception, and we must always stand and defend the most vulnerable among us, the unborn.”

In previous cases, Kansas’ highest court avoided the question, allowing U.S. Supreme Court decisions to determine what restrictions would be allowed. But a state district court judge ruled in issuing an injunction to block the 2015 law that the Kansas Constitution grants its own protections.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court for a trial on the lawsuit challenging the law but kept the judge’s injunction in place, saying the lawsuit was likely to succeed in invalidating the law.

The decision Friday comes two years after the Kansas court heard arguments from attorneys, an unusually long delay for a ruling. Iowa’s Supreme Court issued a similar decisionin 2018.

The Kansas Bill of Rights says residents’ natural rights include “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that “free governments” were created for their “equal protection and benefit.”

The state’s attorneys argued there is no evidence that when the state constitution was written in 1859, its drafters contemplated abortion rights. In the Kansas Territory, abortion was illegal except to save a woman’s life, and that policy carried over in the new state’s laws.

The Kansas law at issue would bar physicians from using forceps or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces, using the non-medical term “dismemberment abortion” to describe the procedure. Such instruments are commonly used in dilation and evacuation procedure, which the Center for Reproductive Rights has described as the safest and most common abortion procedure in the U.S. in the second trimester.

The Kansas law was model legislation drafted by the National Right to Life Committee. The group says similar bans have been enacted in 10 other states — Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio and North Dakota.

Abortion providers reported performing 484 dilation and evacuation procedures in Kansas in 2018, according to state health department statistics. That was 6.9% of the state’s total abortions; most pregnancies were terminated during the first trimester.

The lawsuit against the Kansas law was filed by Drs. Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser, a father and daughter who operated a women’s health center together in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. Hodes has since retired.

After the district judge’s ruling put the law on hold, the Kansas Court of Appeals split 7-7, allowing the judge’s decision to stand.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court is preparing to rule on whether the state constitution protects abortion rights.

The court announced that it would issue a decision Friday in a lawsuit filed by two abortion providers in 2015 against a Kansas law banning a common second-trimester procedure.

A trial-court judge ruled that the state constitution’s Bill of Rights provides protections for abortion rights that are independent of protections under the U.S. Constitution.

If the Kansas Supreme Court agrees, state courts could invalidate abortion restrictions upheld by the federal courts. Such a decision also would likely spur an attempt from abortion opponents to amend the state constitution.

The law’s fate also is at issue. It was the first of its kind in the nation in 2015 but has yet to be enforced.

LONGTON, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say one of two brothers hurt in an all-terrain vehicle crash in rural southeast Kansas has died from his injuries.

Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Rick Wingate identified the boy as 6-year-old Owen Cannon, of Longton. His 9-year-old brother was driving the ATV when it crashed into a pickup truck on April 18 while cresting a hill on an Elk County gravel road.

Both boys were flown away from the wreck. The truck driver wasn’t hurt. A GoFundMe says the older boy had a broken leg, while Owen had swelling on his brain and cracked vertebrae in his neck.

Wingate says the investigation is ongoing.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — A new retirement home of sorts gives homeless senior dogs that don’t get adopted from shelters a place to romp and roam.

Shep’s Place Senior Dog Sanctuary opened about two weeks ago in the Kansas City suburb of Independence.

Founder Russell Clothier says that he came up with the idea after he started volunteering at shelters and saw elderly dogs never finding a new home. He decided the dogs need to be spending their “golden days in retirement.”

The sanctuary is named after a 10-year-old beagle-basset hound mix that Clothier adopted. It has kennels for around 20 dogs to be housed together and a large yard. Clothier says the sanctuary takes only dogs that “fall through the cracks” and can’t find a home through a shelter.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say officers have shot and wounded a suspected robber after he fired at them at a drugstore in Kansas City, Kansas.

The shooting happened around 6 p.m. Thursday after officers responded to a reported robbery at a CVS store. Police Chief Terry Zeigler says the suspected robbery came out of the store and shot at police. Officers then returned fire, hitting the suspect. Zeigler said later in a tweet that the suspect was taken to a hospital and was in stable condition. His name wasn’t immediately released.

Zeigler says no officers were hurt.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas City Chiefs effectively suspended Tyreek Hill from all team-related activities Thursday night while they investigate an audio recording that aired on a local TV station in which the star wide receiver’s fiancee accused him of abusing their 3-year-old son.

The recording surfaced one day after prosecutors said they believed abuse had occurred in Hill’s home last month but that they could not press charges because it was unclear who committed the crime.

Chiefs general manager Brett Veach read a statement after the conclusion of the first round of the NFL draft that said the team became aware of the recording between Hill and his fiancee, Crystal Espinal, in “real-time” — just like the general public.

Afterward, Veach called Hill’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, and informed him that Hill would no longer be allowed to work out with the team. The Chiefs are in the midst of voluntary offseason workouts.

“We were deeply disturbed by what we heard. We have deep concern for Crystal, and are concerned for Tyreek, but we have real concern for the child,” Veach said in his statement. “We are going to continue to gather information and we will make the right decision.”

Veach declined to take any questions. Chiefs coach Andy Reid and chairman Clark Hunt, who also were in the building for the start of the draft, were not made available.

Police were called to Hill’s home twice last month and investigators determined their child had been injured. On Wednesday, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said charges would not be filed but that he was “deeply troubled” by the situation and said “we believe a crime has occurred.”

Howe also said the case could be reopened if new information surfaced.

Hill released a statement through his attorney earlier Thursday in which he said his “son’s health and happiness is my number one priority.” Hill said his focus is on “working hard to be the best person for my family and our community that I can be, and the best player to help our team win.”

Less than eight hours later, KCTV in Kansas City aired part of an 11-minute audio file in which Espinal tells Hill that when asked about an injury to the child’s arm, the boy replied:, “Daddy did it.”

Hill denied any role in what happened to the child, saying: “He says Daddy does a lot of things.”

Espinal also tells Hill their son is “terrified of you.”

Hill replies, “You need to be terrified of me, too, bitch.”

Later in the conversation, Espinal asks Hill, “What do you do when the child is bad? You make him open up his arms and you punch him in the chest.”

KCTV said the audio was sent to the station without disclosing from whom. The station said it had shared the audio with Howe’s office, which did not return a message late Thursday.

Hill is a two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver with a history of domestic issues, including a case in which he was accused of punching Espinal while she was pregnant and they were attending Oklahoma State.

Hill’s attorney, Trey Pettlon, has said that the wide receiver has cooperated with law enforcement throughout the investigation. Pettlon also said that Hill waived his Fifth Amendment rights, answered questions from law enforcement and the Department of Children and Families, and that he would continue to cooperate with authorities as they provide a safe environment for the child.

That statement was thrown into question by the audio, during which Espinal indicates she covered for Hill while answering questions from investigators: “Now I really want you to sit and think about it,” she tells Hill, “because I rode for you against that detective.”

Howe would not say who has custody of the child other than to say he is safe.

“We’re talking about a minor, a child, and the system and DCF and in child investigations, we have to be very cognizant about protecting the rights of the child,” Howe said Wednesday. “We have to respect the wishes of the individuals involved in the case.”

Hill is entering the final year of his rookie contract, and the Chiefs have little depth at wide receiver. That means it is possible the Chiefs could target a pass-catcher when they make one of their three picks Friday night — they traded their first-round pick to Seattle earlier this week as part of a package to acquire pass rusher Frank Clark, who has his own history of domestic violence.

Last year, the Chiefs released star running back Kareem Hunt following a video that showed him pushing and kicking a woman in a hotel hallway.

Before the audio of Hill was broadcast, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell warned about making any judgments before getting all the facts. But he did make it clear that Hill could be punished under the league’s personal conduct policy, regardless of the legal situation.

“You don’t make a decision without having those facts,” Goodell said.

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OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A television station aired audio Thursday it says shows Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill telling his fiancee about punching and using a belt to discipline their son one day after prosecutors reluctantly declined to file charges in a domestic incident.

Police were called to Hill’s home twice last month and investigators determined the 3-year-old child had been injured. On Wednesday, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said charges would not be filed, but acknowledged he was “deeply troubled” by the situation and said “we believe a crime has occurred.” He said there was not enough evidence to conclusively establish who committed it.

Hill released a statement through his attorney earlier Thursday in which he said his “son’s health and happiness is my number one priority.” Hill also said that his focus is on “working hard to be the best person for my family and our community that I can be, and the best player to help our team win.”

Less than eight hours later, KCTV in Kansas City aired part of an 11-minute audio file in which Hill’s fiancee, Crystal Espinal, tells Hill their son had said, “Daddy did it.”

Hill denies any role in what happened to the child’s arm, adding: “He says Daddy does a lot of things.”

She also tells Hill their son is “terrified of you.”

Hill replies, “You need to be terrified of me, too, bitch.”

Later in the conversation, Espinal asks Hill, “What do you do when the child is bad? You make him open up his arms and you punch him in the chest.”

KCTV said the audio was sent to the station without disclosing from whom. The station said it had shared the audio with Howe’s office, which did not return a message left late Thursday. Howe has acknowledged that the case could be reopened if there was new evidence.

Neither the Chiefs nor an attorney for Hill responded to a request for comment.

Hill is a two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver with a history of domestic issues, including a case in which he was accused of punching Espinal while she was pregnant and they were attending Oklahoma State.

Chiefs coach Andy Reid and general manager Brett Veach sidestepped questions about Hill’s legal situation last week, even as the wide receiver reported for the start of offseason workouts.

Howe said the NFL attempted to contact the district attorney’s office to gather information for its own investigation. The league could still punish Hill even if he is not charged with a crime.

Hill’s attorney, Trey Pettlon, has said that the wide receiver has cooperated with law enforcement throughout the investigation. Pettlon also said that Hill waived his Fifth Amendment rights, answered questions from law enforcement and the Department of Children and Families, and that he would continue to cooperate with authorities as they provide a safe environment for the child.

Howe would not say who has custody of the child because of an ongoing DCF investigation.

“We’re talking about a minor, a child, and the system and DCF and in child investigations, we have to be very cognizant about protecting the rights of the child,” Howe said. “We have to respect the wishes of the individuals involved in the case.”

Hill is entering the final year of his rookie contract, and the Chiefs have little depth at wide receiver. That means it is possible the Chiefs could target a pass-catcher when they make one of their three picks Friday night — they traded their first-round pick to Seattle earlier this week as part of a package to acquire pass rusher Frank Clark, who has his own history of domestic violence.

It’s unclear whether the new audio of Hill will change the Chiefs’ approach, though they did set a precedent late last year when it comes to domestic violence cases. That’s when they released star running back Kareem Hunt following a video that showed him pushing and kicking a woman in a hotel hallway.

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OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Chiefs star wide receiver Tyreek Hill maintained his innocence Thursday after prosecutors in suburban Kansas City declined to charge him in a domestic incident involving his fiancee and 3-year-old son even after concluding a crime occurred.

Hill said in a statement provided by his attorney that his “son’s health and happiness is my number one priority.” Hill also said that his focus is on “working hard to be the best person for my family and our community that I can be, and the best player to help our team win.”

Police were called to the Hill’s home twice last month, and investigators determined that his child had been injured the second time. On Wednesday, the district attorney in Johnson County, Kansas, declined to press charges because he could not determine who was responsible for the injuries.

“We are deeply troubled by this situation,” DA Steve Howe said. “We believe a crime has occurred, however, the evidence in this case does not conclusively establish who committed this crime.”

The Chiefs said they were aware of the prosecutor’s decision but declined further comment. Howe said the NFL attempted to contact the district attorney’s office to gather information for its own investigation. The league could still punish Hill even though he was not charged with a crime. The league has declined to comment on the case.

Hill’s attorney, Trey Pettlon, said that the receiver has cooperated with law enforcement throughout the investigation. Pettlon also said that Hill waived his Fifth Amendment rights, answered questions from law enforcement and the Department of Children and Families, and that he would continue to cooperate with authorities as they provide a safe environment for the child.

Howe would not say who has custody of the child because of an ongoing DCF investigation.

“We’re talking about a minor, a child, and the system and DCF and in child investigations, we have to be very cognizant about protecting the rights of the child,” he said. “We have to respect the wishes of the individuals involved in the case.”

Chiefs coach Andy Reid and general manager Brett Veach sidestepped questions about Hill’s legal situation last week as the wide receiver reported for the start of offseason workouts.

Hill is a two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver with a history of domestic issues, including a case in which he was accused of punching his fiancee, Crystal Espinal, while he was at Oklahoma State.

Hill is entering the final year of his rookie contract, and the Chiefs have little depth at wide receiver. That means it is possible the Chiefs could target a pass-catcher when they make one of their three picks Friday night — they traded their first-round pick to Seattle earlier this week as part of a package to acquire pass rusher Frank Clark.

“I don’t know if it changes the priorities. We have a good group of guys that we really like,” Veach said of Hill’s situation. “I think we have some guys that are still here that maybe people don’t know about or realize that we know more about. But receiver, if there is a receiver that we like, early on we absolutely wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”