MONTGOMERY COUNTY – A Kansas sheriff is under investigation in connection with a DUI arrest.
Sheriff Dierks -photo courtesy Montgomery Co.
According to a media release from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, on March 1, Montgomery County Sheriff Robert W. Dierks, 55, was served a summons to appear in Montgomery County District Court following an investigation by KBI agents.
Dierks is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, March 6, on one count of Interference with a Law Enforcement Officer; Obstruction, or in the alternative, Attempted Obstruction; and one count of Intimidation of a Witness; Attempt to Prevent or Dissuade. According to the summons, the alleged crimes occurred on Jan. 27, 2018, in Montgomery County related to a DUI arrest.
The Fourteenth Judicial District entered an order appointing Todd Hiatt, an attorney from Shawnee County, to serve as special assistant county attorney for the case.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Two men who ran a brothel in Columbia have been sentenced to federal prison.
Manthe -photo Boone Co.
Barry Manthe was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison and Ronald Clark was sentenced to 30 months. Both men pleaded guilty to using the internet to promote a prostitution business.
Another man, Kenneth Jones, was sentenced in December to 15 years in federal prison for the sex trafficking of a minor.
The FBI learned in June 2016 that Jones was forcing a 17-year-old runaway from Wisconsin into prostitution. She was found at a Columbia residence that Manthe and Clark operated as a brothel. The girl told investigators that Manthe placed ads in on the website Backpage, Clark collected a fee from the prostitutes and Jones got the rest of the money.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man has been sentenced for sex crimes involving a 13-year-old Alabama girl who was brought to Missouri by the man’s mother and grandmother.
Twenty-two-year-old Michael James Collins was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison without parole.
Investigators say Collins met the girl on a dating website in July 2017. At the time, Collins was a registered sex offender on probation for a previous conviction for sexual misconduct involving a child.
He admitted in November that he paid his grandmother $400 to bring the girl from Alabama to Missouri. His mother was with his grandmother when they picked up the girl.
Collins says he had sex with the girl in a van while the women were taking him to and from work and the Community Supervision Center in Fulton.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A new study says expanding Medicaid in Kansas would have a net cost of $47.4 million in the first year.
Image courtesy KHI.org
The nonprofit Kansas Health Institute estimated in the study released Tuesday that an additional 130,000 low-income adults and children would sign up if the program was expanded. That accounts for adults who already are eligible but may not know it, as well as those who already have insurance but would switch if state assistance were available.
The number is lower than previous estimates that 150,000 would sign up for the coverage. KHI policy executive and lead author Kari Bruffett says that’s because economic improvements have left fewer people uninsured.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has made expansion a top priority, although Republican leaders are opposed.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Senate has approved legislation aimed at sharply limiting the large legal awards coming out of the St. Louis court system in cases where multiple plaintiffs combine similar lawsuits.
Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar
Republicans have tried for years to outlaw awards like one in February in which 22 women were awarded $4.7 billion after claiming that Johnson & Johnson baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. Many of the plaintiffs were not from Missouri.
The attempt to change the law was helped this year when the Missouri Supreme Court halted the practice after the Johnson & Johnson verdict was reached, said Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, who led the GOP effort.
Under the proposed change, an incident must have occurred in the same county or the parties in the lawsuit must live in the same county, The St. Louis-Post Dispatch reported. The Senate approved the bill Monday on a 24-7 vote. It now goes to the House.
Sen. Scott Sifton, D-Affton, acknowledged that the current practice needs to be addressed but said the proposal approved Monday could have the unintended consequence of clogging the court system if each individual must file a separate lawsuit.
Sifton, an attorney who is considering running for governor next year, held an overnight filibuster on the proposal last month to find time for a compromise. His fellow Democrats argued during the filibuster that the proposed change would make the claims process inconvenient and more expensive.
“I think plaintiff joinder is something that allows us to resolve important disputes more efficiently,” Sifton said. “In that regard, I am still concerned you are going to see more lawsuits than you otherwise would.”
The new proposal exempted lawsuits that were filed before the state Supreme Court’s decision and that are scheduled to go to trial before Aug. 28.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Stephanie Mott, a well-known advocate for LGBTQ rights in Kansas, has died.
Pastor Sarah Oglesby-Dunegan of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Topeka says Mott was hospitalized Sunday after apparently suffering a heart attack. She died Monday at the age of 61.
Mott was a mental health clinician at Valeo in Topeka. She led the Kansas Democratic Party’s LGBT caucus, and managed the Topeka chapter of Equality Kansas.
We are all devastated by the loss of Stephanie Mott. We cannot find adequate words to express our grief at her passing, but we will find solace in the knowledge that her life and her work will make Kansas a better place for future generations. #ksleg#lgbtqpic.twitter.com/f16InIHkMp
Kansas Democratic Party chairwoman Vicki Hiatt and executive director Ethan Corson said in a statement that Mott was courageous in the face of cowardice while advocating for vulnerable people.
Equality Kansas said in a statement that the group will find solace in the knowledge that Mott’s work will make Kansas a better place for future generations.
General Mills Monday announced a commitment to advance regenerative agriculture practices on one million acres of farmland by 2030. The company will partner with organic and conventional farmers, suppliers and farm advisors in key growing regions to drive the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.
In a press release, General Mills claimed that the global food system accounts for roughly one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and 70 percent of water consumption. The company says Regenerative agriculture is a holistic method of farming deploying practices designed to protect and enhance natural resources and farming communities. The practices focus on pulling carbon from the air and storing it in the soil in addition to helping the land be more resilient to extreme weather events.
The company says it will partner with key suppliers to drive adoption across key ingredients including oats, wheat, corn, dairy feed and sugar beets. General Mills is also granting $650,000 to non-profit organization Kiss the Ground to support farmer training and coaching through Soil Health Academies.
Physicians at the University of Kansas Hospital perform surgery. Some KU doctors are weighing in on new rules for distributing livers for transplant. THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM
Doctors at the University of Kansas Hospital say a change in the distribution of livers across the country could result in Kansans waiting longer for life-saving transplants.
So they’re backing a bill in the Kansas Legislature that would allow residents who donate their organs to specify whether they want them used to benefit Kansas transplant patients.
“The purpose of the Kansas Donor Rights act is to bring the conversation to the forefront,” said Sean Kumer, a liver transplant surgeon at KU.
Changes in the system used to distribute livers for transplant essentially nationalizing the system have yet to be finalized.
For years, organs have been distributed within regions. That worked well for states, like Kansas, where donor rates were high. It worked less well in states, such as New York and California, where the need for donated organs was high but donor rates were relatively low.
“Here in the Midwest we have a very giving population,” Kumer said, noting that Kansas’ donor rate is consistently around 80 percent compared to 55 percent on the East and West coasts.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ordered the scrapping of the geography-based system after six patients awaiting transplants in California, New York and Massachusetts sued the agency.
“The practical effect of the new policy will be to redistribute livers from states and regions with high rates of organ donation to areas that have historically underperformed,” U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Roy Blunt of Missouri said recently in a guest commentary in The Kansas City Star.
The new policy would disproportionately affect patients rural areas, the senators said.
“This shortsighted liver allocation policy … will not only mean fewer life-saving organs in our part of the country, but it will also adversely affect health outcomes throughout the Midwest,” they said.
In an interview with Modern Healthcare, Sander Florman, director of transplantation for New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, defended the new allocation system.
“In a system that is fundamentally handicapped by having too few organs for too many patients that need them, decisions need to be made and should favor saving the most lives and helping the sickest of our patients first,” Florman said.
If that is the criteria, Kumer said, preference should be given to regions where higher percentages of patients are dying while awaiting surgery. In Kansas, he said, approximately 20 percent of liver transplant patients die on the waiting list compared to about 8 percent in New York.
“Our (mortality) numbers are going to increase and theirs are going to decrease and that’s just not the way we should be running our system,” Kumer said.
The legality of the Kansas legislation could hinge on whether the courts buy the argument that an organ donation is a personal gift, Kumer said.
“It’s a gift, not a natural resource,” he said. “Donors and their families … should have the choice of where they want their organs to go.”
The bill was introduced late, but its chances of passing are improved by the fact that it has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, an Overland Park Republican.
“It will get a hearing soon and we will address it this session,” Denning said.
Jim McLean is the senior correspondent for the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.
President Donald Trump has asked China to immediately remove all tariffs on U.S. agricultural products because trade talks are going well between the two nations. Trump also delayed plans to impose more tariffs on China last week, scheduled as a motivator to conduct negotiations. The request to remove agriculture tariffs includes beef, pork, soybeans and others.
Trump called the request “very important for our great farmers.” The tariffs are part of the tit-for-tat trade war last year when China retaliated over U.S. tariffs by targeting agriculture. Earlier this year, Derek Haigwood, a representative of the American Soybean Association, said he expects to see the impact of trade issues in the next, 2018/2019, marketing year. That’ because shipments to China virtually halted when the trade war began.
Despite the trade woes in the 2017/2018 marketing year, farmers exported a record 2.6 billion bushels of U.S. soy and soy products.
KINGSVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A 54-year-old western Missouri has been charged in the shooting death of his brother.
Victor Sanders photo Johnson Co. Sheriff
Victor Sanders, of Kingsville, was charged Monday with voluntary manslaughter, armed criminal action and three other felonies in the death of his 57-year-old brother, Michael Sanders, of Odessa.
Michael Sanders was found dead Sunday at his brother’s home in Kingsville.
A probable cause statement says Victor Sanders admitted to shooting his brother several times during an argument over a sibling who is incarcerated. Victor Sanders said he shot Michael when his brother lunged at him.
Court records show Victor Sanders had several convictions for first-degree assault and possession and distribution of a controlled substance.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Sanders.
General Mills Monday announced a commitment to advance regenerative agriculture practices on one million acres of farmland by 2030. The company will partner with organic and conventional farmers, suppliers and farm advisors in key growing regions to drive the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.
President Donald Trump has asked China to immediately remove all tariffs on U.S. agricultural products because trade talks are going well between the two nations. Trump also delayed plans to impose more tariffs on China last week, scheduled as a motivator to conduct negotiations. The request to remove agriculture tariffs includes beef, pork, soybeans and others.
