One of the four people involved in a 2019 carjacking at the Hopkinsville Wal-Mart that led to a police chase and the shooting of a Hopkinsville police officer has been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison.
Keith Kuzyk of Clarksville was given the sentence Friday by Senior District Court Judge Thomas B. Russell. There will be three years of supervised release following the sentence.
U.S. Attorney Russell Coleman said “this lawlessness will not be tolerated in the Western District of Kentucky.” He added that anyone who puts families and law enforcement at risk through armed carjacking and shooting at a police officer should be prepared to face decades in prison.
The Kentucky Supreme Court Thursday reversed a Cerulean woman’s conviction on arson and attempted murder charges from a 2019 case in Christian County.
A Christian County Circuit Court jury convicted Karen Brafman of first and second-degree arson and six counts of attempted murder in 2019. The Supreme Court reversed that decision Thursday on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct by Commonwealth Attorney Rick Boling, with the decision saying it was blatant enough to depict her trial as “fundamentally unfair.”
Brafman argued she was deprived of her right to present a full defense when the trial court declined to instruct the jury on her central defense of voluntary intoxication beyond her own testimony, which the jury found to be insufficient to support her defense.
click to download audioMartin was arrested in May 2019 after he was indicted by a Christian County grand jury on three counts of complicity to murder, arson, attempted arson, and other offenses. The charges are in connection to the shooting deaths of Calvin and Pam Phillips and Ed Dansereau in Pembroke in November 2015.
Martin is being held in the Christian County Jail under a $3 million bond.
Meanwhile, the Kentucky Supreme Court denied a request to review the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruling concerning Martin’s bond reduction request. Click here for full story.