TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court has issued a rare order directing the Brown County District to sentence a sex abuse offender for a third time, saying the man was a victim of “judicial vindictiveness.”
Brown -KBI offender registry
County District Judge John Weingart sentenced defendant Wyatt Brown to 30 years in prison for aggravated sodomy. Brown’s lawyers appealed the sentence, saying it was incorrectly articulated. The Supreme Court agreed and ordered a resentencing.
Weingart responded by adding one year to Brown’s sentence after the victim’s family said they were traumatized by an appellate process forcing them to relive the crime.
Smith’s attorneys appealed again. The Supreme Court ruled Friday that Weingart effectively punished Brown for exercising his right to appeal, and ordered him to be sentenced for a third time.
TOPEKA —First woman elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas was ordained Saturday.
The Rev. Cathleen Chittenden Bascom, D.Min., from the Diocese of Iowa, was elected as the 10th bishop to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas in October.
According to a media release from the diocese, on October 19, the Rev. Cathleen Chittenden Bascom, D.Min., from the Diocese of Iowa, was elected as the 10th bishop to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas. She was elected on the second ballot during an election that took place in the worship space of Grace Cathedral in Topeka, receiving 64 out of 122 votes from lay delegates and 56 out of 84 votes from clergy.
Image courtesy Episcopal Diocese of Kansas
Bascom is the first woman to be elected bishop since the diocese was formed in 1859. This also marked the first time in the history of the Episcopal Church that a bishop heading a diocese was elected from a slate of candidates who all were women.
The Very Rev. Foster Mays, president of the governing body that has overseen the diocese in the interim period between bishops, said, “ It delights me that Cathleen Bascom will be our next bishop. While this election was historic, at its core lay delegates and clergy were selecting the person who will lead this diocese for the next decade or more. I believe Mother Bascom’s many gifts and years of experience will serve this diocese well.
“I know that clergy and lay leaders from all our congregations are looking forward to the opportunity to participate in ministry with her, to share together the good news of Jesus and to serve the world in the name of our Lord. I’m very excited for the future of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas under her leadership.”
Bascom has been serving since the fall of 2014 as Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. She previously had been dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Des Moines, Iowa, as well as rector of St. Stephen’s in Newton, Iowa.
She served for eight years in the Diocese of Kansas from 1993 to 2001, leading ministry efforts at Kansas State University in Manhattan.
She is the third priest to have served within the Diocese of Kansas to be elected its bishop. The first was Frank Millspaugh, who was dean of Grace Cathedral, Topeka, when he was elected bishop in 1895. The second was Richard Grein, who was rector of St. Michael and all Angels in Mission when he was elected in 1981.
She also is the second priest to become Kansas’ bishop while serving in the Diocese of Iowa. The first was Thomas Vail, the diocese’s first bishop, who was rector of Trinity Church in Muscatine, Iowa, when he was elected bishop in 1864.
Bascom and her husband Tim have two sons – Conrad, age 25, and Luke, age 21.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman is retiring and the school has chosen former Kansas State AD John Currie to replace him.
President Nathan Hatch announced the moves Sunday, saying Wellman will retire and Currie will start on May 1.
“John is the perfect fit to follow in the footsteps of his mentor,” Hatch said.
Wellman, the longest-tenured AD in Division I, has led Wake Forest’s athletic department since 1992. The school has won five team national championships and seven individual titles under his watch, including men’s tennis in 2018, while raising $400 million in donations during his tenure of nearly 27 years.
The 47-year-old Currie is a Wake Forest alumnus who was Kansas State’s AD from 2009-17. He spent much of 2017 at Tennessee before he was suspended in the midst of the search to replace football coach Butch Jones that turned into a fiasco. He received a $2.5 million settlement with the school in March 2018.
He is taking over a Wake Forest program that is mostly on solid footing, with Dave Clawson’s football program winning three bowl games in three years and a collection of new facilities popping up all over the campus — including an indoor practice facility for football that opened in 2016 and a sports performance center and basketball facility that is scheduled to open later this year.
The most pressing immediate question faced by the department centers on men’s basketball, though the season will end well before Currie’s official start date.
Coach Danny Manning is 65-90 overall and 24-64 in conference play with one NCAA Tournament appearance in five seasons. Barring a miracle run in the postseason, the Demon Deacons are headed for their seventh losing season since 2010 — also the last year they finished above .500 in ACC play.
Laura Kelly’s election as governor in November was a big win for Democrats. NOMIN UJIYEDIIN / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
Kansas Democrats scored critical wins in the last election. Now they’re struggling to transform those victories into Democratic-minded policies, and to hold on to the corners of power they’ve captured.
They meet in their annual convention this weekend to pick party leaders and search for consensus on strategies for governing and see if they can repeat last year’s election wins next year.
“It’s a time for Democrats to celebrate,” said Kansas House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer in an interview, “but we need to keep working and moving forward.”
In 2018, Democrat Laura Kelly won the governor’s race and Democrat Sharice Davids unseated a Republican incumbent to represent the Kansas City suburbs in Congress.
The 2020 election will put all the state legislative seats on the table and a prize Democrats have dreamed of for decades: an open U.S. Senate seat they like to think they can win.
Next year’s races could launch Democrats on a new path to political relevance in Kansas. Or it could leave the party withering into the triviality of the recent past, when Republicans held all the statewide offices, congressional seats and huge majorities in the Statehouse.
At the state Republican Party convention last month, Republicans made clear they’re eager to oust Davids from the 3rd Congressional District in 2020 and set up Kelly for defeat in 2022.
Yet some Democrats think the 2018 elections showed that the party can gain even more ground.
“That’s given folks a renewed sense of opportunity and optimism,” said Kansas Democratic Party Executive Director Ethan Corson. “It is a state that Democrats can win in and can be successful in.”
Republicans aim to make that hard. Kelly’s major budget and education proposals have so far fallen on deaf ears with Republicans, who still hold large majorities in the Legislature and the leadership jobs that come with that.
The initial stumbles haven’t discouraged Democrats, Corson said. He points out that Kelly’s still been able to accomplish things, such as signing an executive order barring discrimination against LGBT state workers.
“I don’t think anybody by any stretch ever thought it was going to be easy for the governor,” Corson said. “I’m still optimistic that she’s going to get those priorities accomplished.”
There’s a way to grease the skids for the governor’s agenda in the future: win more seats in the Legislature. Sawyer, the party’s top leader in the Kansas House, said that needs to be a major focus for Democrats.
“The next chair (of the party) needs to focus a lot on the Legislature,” Sawyer said, “to gain a few more Democrats so we can help the governor out.”
To do that, Sawyer said the party needs to build up its infrastructure into areas of the state where it’s all but disappeared, to raise money and to recruit candidates into more races.
Departing Democratic Party Chairman John Gibson, who decided not to run for another term, started that work. He boosted outreach and said now more than 75 of the state’s 105 counties have an organized Democratic Party.
Democratic state Rep. Barbara Ballard, from Lawrence, said that push needs to expand for the party to gain influence and win elections.
“If you make sure that rural areas are being included in this process, and not just all urban, then it says we are all in this together,” Ballard said.
To make inroads, Democrats will need a message they can sell. Gov. Kelly pitched herself as a consensus builder. She pushed priorities such as Medicaid expansion and education funding while working attract to moderate Republican voters.
According to Ballard, Kelly’s victory last year shows it’s a winning political position that Democrats should continue to use.
“You moved where you needed to move in order to get the job done,” she said. “Why would you want to change it?”
Democrats have had mixed fortunes in recent years. In 2016, they picked up around a dozen seats in the Legislature. They formed a coalition with moderate Republicans that helped roll back tax cuts and increase spending on schools.
In 2018, while Democrats won the governor’s office and the seat in Congress, the party failed to pick up any other statewide offices or House seats. After the election, three Republicans switched parties, leaving the GOP with an 84-41 majority in the House and 28-11 edge in the Senate. The Senate also has one independent member.
Republicans still dominate statewide offices, the Kansas congressional delegation and the Legislature.
At least three people have announced runs for chair of the Democratic Party.
Current party Vice Chair Vicki Hiatt said she’s already had a hand in expanding the party’s infrastructure and recruiting candidates. As chair, she would continue expansion into more areas of Kansas and focus on the fundraising needed to build the party.
She’d concentrate on protecting Davids’ congressional seat and shoot to win next year’s U.S. Senate race.
“We will be working really hard for the U.S. Senate candidate,” she said. “That will be a target.”
George Hanna, from Tecumseh, was a candidate for the House in the last election and said he’d focus on gains in rural areas.
“We all have a job to do — fundraise, develop an inclusive caucus process and find our new representatives,” he said in a Facebook post announcing he would run.
A third candidate, Chris Roesel from Johnson County, touts his experience running for local elected offices.
But the field of candidates is not limited. The Democratic convention will bring together hundreds of party loyalists from across the state. The leadership elections are open to all nominations and more than 200 party members will vote to pick the winner.
“Anybody can run,” Sawyer said. “Quite often it is pretty wide open.”
Stephen Koranda is the Statehouse reporter the Kansas News Service Kansas. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Saturday he would soon sign an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal resources.
Trump is highlighting concerns from some conservatives that their voices were being censored, whether on social media or at the nation’s universities. He did not go into more detail about what the order would say, but his comments immediately drew scrutiny from those who noted that public research universities already have a constitutional obligation to protect free speech.
“An executive order is unnecessary as public research universities are already bound by the First Amendment, which they deeply respect and honor,” said Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. “It is core to their academic mission.”
Trump invited Hayden Williams to join him Saturday while he addressed activists attending the Conservative Political Action Conference. Williams was punched Feb. 19 while on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. He was recruiting for the conservative group Talking Points USA.
Two men approached and one punched him during a confrontation captured on student cellphones. University of California, Berkeley police arrested a suspect, Zachary Greenberg, on Friday.
Williams, who had a black eye, told Fox News that the men objected to a sign that said “Hate Crime Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims.”
Neither Williams nor Greenberg are affiliated with UC Berkeley.
Trump told the audience Saturday that Williams “took a hard punch in the face for all of us.” Meanwhile, Williams said many conservative students face “discrimination, harassment or worse if they dare speak up on campus.”
Trump offered no details about what the executive order might say about what has become a thorny issue on college campuses.
DALLAS COUNTY — One person died in an accident just after 1:30p.m. Saturday in Dallas County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2009 Acura driven by Henry J. Hekemeyer, 75, Jefferson City, was southbound on Highway 73 just south of Rainbow Road. The vehicle traveled off the road, struck an embankment and overturned.
EMS transported the driver to Mercy Hospital in Springfield.
Lifeflight transported a passenger Phyllis A. Heckemeyer, 71, Jefferson, to Mercy Hospital in Springfield where she died. Both were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — More than 400 pre-applications from potential marijuana growers and sellers have already been filed with the state of Missouri, months before licenses will be awarded.
St. Louis Public Radio reports that potential businesses have already paid more than $3 million in application fees, even though the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services won’t begin accepting formal applications for dispensaries, cultivation facilities and manufacturing plants until August.
Missouri voters approved a ballot measure in November allowing for marijuana to treat a wide variety of ailments. The state is still drafting rules and regulations for how the program will be operated.
“That is just astounding to me, the level of interest and excitement and willingness to make that level of investment at this early of a stage. But it does make me a bit nervous!” said Derek Mays, founder and CEO of REAL Cannabis Co. His group wants to open a combined cultivation, manufacturing and dispensing facility.
The state will distribute a minimum of 24 dispensary licenses to each of the eight congressional districts. In some districts, potential applicants already far exceed that number.
In Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, which comprises much of St. Louis and north St. Louis County, 36 hopeful dispensary owners have submitted fees. In the 5th Congressional District, which includes Kansas City, 58 businesses or individuals have submitted pre-application fees.
It costs $6,000 to apply for dispensing licenses or manufacturing licenses, and $10,000 to apply to run cultivation facilities. The applications are non-refundable and do not confer preferential treatment.
Turning in an application fee early won’t affect whether the state ultimately approves a license, health officials say. But Mays and others were eager to get the pre-applications in.
“I think that most people who are interested in getting into the industry somewhat felt, whether it’s psychological or not, we didn’t want to be one of the organizations that didn’t show the motivation, or, you know, support, for the process,” Mays said.
FAIRWAY, Kan. (AP) — Police have identified a man shot and injured in a gun battle with police across the street from an elementary school in suburban Kansas City.
Ruffin -photo Johnson Co.Law enforcement on the scene across from Highlands Elementary School image courtesy KCTV
Fairway police say 26-year-old Dylan Ruffin was injured Friday afternoon when he exchanged gunfire with officers who had been called to the home he was in directly across the street from Highlands Elementary School in the Shawnee Mission School District. Video shows a man believed to be Ruffin exiting the home and pointing a gun at officers, who fired, hitting Ruffin. No one else was injured.
Police say Ruffin was treated at a hospital and released. He is charged with three counts of aggravated assault on an officer and weapons counts. He is being held in the Johnson County Adult Detention Center on $500,000 bond.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a 33-year-old woman injured in an Olathe apartment fire has died.
Crews on the scene of Thursday’s apartment fire-photo Olathe Fire Department
Alexandria Armstrong died Friday at a hospital where she had been taken in critical condition Thursday night after being pulled from the burning building.
Firefighters say the fire started in Armstrong’s apartment and appears to have been accidental. Investigators believe a damaged electrical cord ignited a couch and other nearby items.
ST. LOUIS — Charges have been filed against two Missouri day care center workers after surveillance video showing a 3-year-old girl being thrown against a cabinet went viral.
Wilma Brown -photo North Co. Police Cooperative
The woman accused of throwing the girl, 27-year-old Wilma Brown, was charged with felony child abuse on Thursday in St. Louis County. Relatives said the girl sustained a head gash that required seven stiches during the incident on Feb. 1 at Brighter Day Care and Preschool.
The girl’s family said they were initially told the girl fell, but five days later watched surveillance video with the center’s director that showed a worker throwing the child into a cabinet.
Detectives with the North County Police Cooperative arrested Wilma Brown at 1:48pm Friday in the 200 block of McAlpine. Brown was located inside the residence of an associate, hiding in a basement closet.
Prosecutors also charged 22-year-old Ariana Silver for a separate incident on Feb. 27 that was also allegedly captured by surveillance video. Charging documents allege Silver squeezed a 4-year-old girl’s arm and punctured her skin, and then carried the girl by her foot.
Silver photo North County Police Cooperative
Silver is jailed on $50,000 bond. Jail records don’t show whether she has an attorney, and she doesn’t have a publicly listed home phone number.
Both women have been fired, according to Timothy Smith, an attorney for the day care center.
Smith said the center is cooperating with investigators and “has provided exemplary, high quality educational and child care services to thousands of children and their families for more than a decade.” The attorney said teachers and staff are properly trained, and the center works to provide a safe environment.
