In exchange for their taking an online course focusing on responsibility and appropriate thinking, the city of Topeka dropped criminal charges against three people charged with disobeying a lawful police order last June at a Black Lives Matter rally that turned violent in downtown Topeka.
Charges were dismissed last October against Andrew J. Dome, 28, Brian C. Rutschmann, 31, and Haley P. Elliott, 20, according to Topeka Municipal Court records.
The course cost $40 and took a couple of hours to complete, Dome told The Capital-Journal on Sunday, adding that he found it to be a fair option.
Court proceedings remain in progress against seven people facing criminal charges linked to the June 1 disturbance.
It apparently also helped make 2020 Shawnee County s lowest year for divorce filings in 36 years.
Shawnee County recorded 605 divorce filings last year, its lowest such total since 561 were recorded in 1984, said Lea Welch, administrator for Shawnee County District Court.
Conversely, Topeka marriage counselor Angela McClain said she and her colleagues over the past year have seen an exponential increase in the number of couples contacting them seeking counseling services.
An increasing number of men reached out to McClain to arrange conjoint therapy sessions, she added, in which the husband and wife take part together. To say the least, it s been an unusual year, McClain said.
Asking and answering questions of herself, Dana Chandler the Topeka woman facing retrial for a pair of 2002 killings testified Monday afternoon in Shawnee County District Court that prosecutors had committed unwarranted violations of her privacy as part of their investigations into the killings.
Chandler is facing retrial for the 2002 killings of Mike Sisco and Karen Harkness after the Kansas Supreme Court in 2017 overturned Chandler’s original 2012 convictions, alleging that then-Shawnee County prosecutor Jacqui Spradling had made serious mistakes and errors in the case against Chandler.
In her case against Chandler, Spradling had asserted, without necessarily backing up her theories with evidence brought up during the case, that Chandler had been motivated to kill her former husband Sisco and his fiancée Harkness after learning in a five-minute phone call of the couple’s impending marriage. Spradling also used Chandler’s bank records to create a theory of Chandler’s
The Kansas Highway Patrol hauled away 23 vocal and defiant protesters after they demanded Medicaid expansion, then allegedly tried to block legislators from entering the Kansas Senate last March during a protest at the Kansas Statehouse.
At a time when authorities are gearing up for the possibility of possible armed protests, Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay s office is pursuing criminal charges against at least nine people allegedly involved in last March s protest.
Here are the details of the case.
What happened?
The Poor People s Campaign organized the protest. Participants arrived at the Statehouse on March 10, two hours before the Senate was set to gavel in. They spent two hours at the third-floor railing in front of the Senate chambers chanting and expressing outrage over Kansas lawmakers refusal to expand Medicaid coverage. They sang, chanted, stomped their feet and banged inflated red tubes together.