Subject: Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

• High Court Agrees: Parkus Is Too Dim to Die

  April 19, 2007

• A Real Heist

  July 12, 2007

• Careful With That Axe, Eugene: Lansing Inmates Get Guitars

  September 25, 2008

• Jury makes Super Pollo go cocaine free

  Cocaine is off the menu at Super Pollo. Today, a jury convicted the Independence Avenue restaurant's owners of conspiring to distribute $2.3 million of cocaine. The jury also nailed them for a money laundering conspiracy for trying to hide their profits in the restaurant's business and real estate transactions. View Larger Map

  February 9, 2009

• Why the Health Care Foundation is continuing its grant at the new jail

  Diana Turner runs the Bridges program at MCI At first, the plan to coop up Kansas City's low-level offenders with Jackson County's convicted felons in the same downtown detention facility struck many community groups as a very, very bad idea. Organizations that provided mental health services, addiction treatment and outreach programming for the inmates at the Municipal Correctional Institution worried that the new jail would hinder their ability to help the city's most-troubled population. Th

  June 5, 2009

• Letters from the week
  of June 4

  June 4, 2009

• The Municipal Correctional Institution is falling apart, but shutting it down might be destructive

  March 5, 2009

• Say Cheese

  July 3, 2008

• The Crowd Goes Wild!

  Why do seemingly adoring fans curse at musicians?

  June 21, 2007

• Life Sucks

  April 5, 2007

• David Allan Coe

  January 5, 2006

• Too Dim to Die?

  Nadia Pflaum

  November 10, 2005

• Blood Simple

  Killing a retarded inmate isn’t that hard — not if you have a cooperative psychiatrist.

  June 9, 2005

• Scoff Law

  A career criminal makes a joke out of the local courts. But this time, he’s gunning for real time.

  January 13, 2005

• Ticket to Ride

  At a routine traffic stop, lawmen hijack a Kansas rancher.

  May 6, 2004

• Hard Cell

  The feds want to bring down a deadly prison gang, and crimes in Leavenworth are exhibit A.

  April 29, 2004

• Jesus Is in the Big House

  Putting it's faith in a prison ministry, the Kansas Department of Corrections saves money if not souls.

  February 12, 2004

• A Boy's Life

  The Supreme Court effectively threw out the Kansas Sodomy Law, but Attorney General Phill Kline won't let Matthew Limon out of jail.

  January 22, 2004

• Love Never Dies

  Ed Hobson disappoints other Parents of Murdered Children.

  November 20, 2003

• Queer as Flick

  The Kansas City Gay and Lesbian Film Festival enters adolescence.

  June 20, 2002

• So Long, Joe

  While Joe Armine waits to die, Missouri courts won't admit they could have been wrong.

  July 4, 2002

• Fallen Angel

  Angela Coffel, the first woman in Missouri deemed a sexually violent predator, is locked up despite overwhelming evidence that she isn't one.

  January 24, 2002

• Time and Punishment

  Lifer Bill Herron Knew exactly how to get out of jail - until the Missouri Department of Corrections locked him in solitary and kept him there.

  January 10, 2002

• Sex Cells

  Wyandotte County's female inmates get the shaft.

  September 13, 2001

• No Escape

  Lucinda Devlin and Stephen Tourlentes rattle some cages.

  August 2, 2001

• Compelling Testimony

  Does Kansas’ peter meter rise to the level of thumbscrews?

  June 28, 2001

• Inmate Apparel

  March 15, 2001

• Chain Reactions

  Linda Rupard declared war on Johnson County law enforcers, and they fought back.

  January 11, 2001

• Prose and Cons

  Life inside Lansing Correctional Facility just got a little more dramatic.

  January 4, 2001

• Feast of the Assumption not as appetizing as it sounds

  A copy of Marc Levitz's Kansas City Film Festival selection, Feast of the Assumption: The Otero Family Murders, sat unwatched on my coffee table for weeks. Nothing appealed to me less than watching a documentary about Dennis Rader, the Wichita serial killer known as BTK. When I finally forced myself to feed the DVD into my machine, it was with all the joy of a dieter loading low-calorie lasagna into the microwave.My efforts were rewarded with an opening description of the scene at the home of th

  April 22, 2009

• Dennis Skillicorn could be Missouri's first execution since 2005

  Capital attorneys with the Public Interest Litigation Clinic say they expect the Missouri Supreme Court to announce an execution date for Dennis Skillicorn, a 49-year-old inmate at the Potosi Correctional Center, of May 20, 2009. Skillicorn's previous execution date, August 27, 2008, was stayed after Skillicorn asserted that Potosi's warden was interfering with his council's attempts to interview prison staff in order to present a thorough request for clemency to the governor.Skillicorn and Alle

  April 20, 2009

• Missouri is about to execute Dennis Skillicorn. The state’s death penalty may not outlive him very long.

  May 14, 2009

• Hard Line

  May 28, 2009

• Brownback likes prisons. Prisoners, not so much

  Space constraints did not allow me to share a bit of irony in this week's column, which explored one the weaker arguments against bringing detainees from Guantánamo Bay to Fort Leavenworth.The argument in question says moving the detainees to Kansas will lead Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other nations to pull military officers who attend the Command and General Staff College at Forth Leavenworth. The college's International Student Division receives officers from dozens of countries each year.In th

  June 19, 2009

• Dennis Skillicorn's widow reacts to the halting of Missouri executions

  Just a little over a month after the state ended the life of Dennis Skillicorn by lethal injection, executions are again on hold in Missouri. Incoming Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice William Ray Price Jr. told the The Associated Press yesterday that he didn't expect the Court to schedule any executions while the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals weighs an appeal on behalf of death row inmate Reginald Clemons that questions the constitutionality of Missouri's lethal injection protocol.The st

  June 25, 2009

• Calling all pro-death penalty folks

  Michael Anthony TaylorTonight, the AdHoc Group Against Crime hosts the fourth installment of its series on the Abolishment of the Death Penalty. The group invited representatives from Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, the mother of former death row inmate Michael Anthony Taylor, and a man falsely imprisoned on death row for 17 years.The AdHoc Group is officially anti-death penalty, but they're welcoming all points of view and are going as far as to encourage pro-capital punishment folks

  July 14, 2009

• Navy recruiter admits trying to pay $80 to have unprotected sex with an 11-year-old girl

  Shane Allan Childers pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to offering to pay $80 to have sex with an 11-year-old girl. Of course, this was part of a sting. But the way the 32-year-old Olathe man got busted was a thing of sheer stupidity. Childers was a naval recruiter at the time, and used a government computer at the Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Lenexa to respond to a Craigslist ad for sex with a child. He also used his Navy e-mail address and government issued cell phone. It apparen

  July 17, 2009

• A jazz pianist pleads guilty to child-porn charges – and tries to explain

  July 30, 2009

• Reporter's Notebook: Bill Laursen tells you why he downloaded child pornorgraphy

  This week's feature story, "Crash," tells the story of Scamps piano player Bill Laursen, who last month pleaded guilty to child porn charges. Before his incarceration, Laursen sent a letter to ​friends trying to explain what had driven him to download the images. He also discusses law enforcement, how he'll get through prison and just how fair he thinks his sentence is. Here is the unedited version, excerpts of which were included in the feature.  "Sorry, Sorry, Sorry.......this is

  July 30, 2009

• Inmates not as rich as we all thought

  www.consumerwarningnetwork.com ​AOL's Daily Finance has an interesting story about a crappy national trend. Supposedly it's now cheaper to stay in a motel than it is to kick back in jail. Now we know how soft prison life is, what with the solid gold toilet in the center of the cell you share with eight other dudes, and the free cabernet made in said toilet. But it turns out being an inmate is actually not the get-rich-quick scheme it's made out to be on television. It's even harder now

  August 6, 2009

• Bronson

  October 8, 2009

• Sentencing scheduled for piano player busted for child porn

  ​Having pleaded guilty to multiple counts of possessing child pornography, jazz piano player Bill Laursen will be sentenced in a hearing scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on December 3 in federal court. Laursen was the subject of the July 30 feature story "Crash," which detailed the musician's history with legendary KC jazz band, the Scamps, as well as his attempts to explain, and in some ways justify, downloading thousands of photos of underage girls."First: Looking at pictures of naked people is n

  October 21, 2009

• Meth-moving biker gets prison time

  ​William "Muff" Eneff, 59, of Lee's Summit was sentenced yesterday to seven years without parole in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of meth between January 1, 2002, and May 31, 2007.According to a release from U.S. Attorney Matt J. Whitworth, Eneff was released from prison in 2005. He admitted to re-upping with the El Forastero and paying dues, which go toward purchasing a bag full o' drugs for "runs."Eneff is the sixth co-defendant to plead guilty an

  December 23, 2009

• Press conference on potential release of convicted cop-shooter

  Missouri Department of CorrectionsSaeed Aquil​ Jackson County Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar held a press conference today to protest the potential parole of Saeed Aquil. On New Year's Eve in 1994, Kansas City Police Department officers Patrick Brown and Larry Schoen spotted 25-year-old Aquil and 13-year-old Jason Rushing near 37th and Prospect and pulled over to conduct a pedestrian check. "We just wanted to ask some questions," Brown said at the press conference. "He would have been on his way in f

  December 30, 2009

• Prison term upheld for man who kept silent about HIV status

  Spicer​An appeals court has upheld a 15-year prison sentence given to a man who exposed several women to the virus that causes AIDS.Albert Spicer III was charged in Jackson County with 25 counts of recklessly exposing another person to HIV infection. Spicer was diagnosed with HIV in 1992. He had sex with as many as seven women between 2002 and 2004 without informing them of his status. One of the women later tested positive for the virus.Spicer, 43, pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts in 2006.

  January 4, 2010

• Cop-shooter Saeed Aquil's behavior in jail has been 'satisfactory'

  Missouri Department of CorrectionsSaeed Aquil​Saeed Aquil "has had satisfactory behavior" while at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, according to Jacqueline LaPine, the spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections.Aquil pleaded guilty to shooting Patrick Brown and Larry Schoen, two Kansas City, Missouri, police officers, on New Year's Eve in 1994. Fortunately, the officers survived the attack. Now, Aquil is scheduled for a parole hearing on Wednesday to determ

  January 5, 2010

• More guilty pleas in the Ocean's 11 of meth robberies

  ​Two more men pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday for their part in a criminal conspiracy to steal at least 1,000 pounds of pseudoephedrine from a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Kansas City and use the score to manufacture more than $40 million worth of meth. The heist was timed to coincide with Super Bowl XLI. Long story short: The crime involved hiding in the facility, handcuffing a security guard at gunpoint, stealing a lot of pseudoephedrine, and drug dealers growing

  January 22, 2010

• Parole denied for cop-shooter Saeed Aquil

  Missouri Department of CorrectionsSaeed Aquil​Saeed Aquil, a Missouri prison inmate who was the subject of a December 30 press conference by Jackson County Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar, will not be released on parole. This information comes via a letter sent by the Missouri Department of Corrections to former Kansas City Police Department officer Patrick Brown, dated January 25, 2010. In 1994, Aquil shot Brown and his partner Larry Schoen after the officers attempted to question him during their pa

  February 1, 2010

• When Nelson Hopkins lost his son to a killer's bullet, Kansas City found a furious new activist

  March 4, 2010

• Eric Zahnd, Platte County prosecutor, says the death penalty prevents crime. Not so fast

  Eric Zahnd claims the death penalty deters crime.​Earlier this week, Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd sent out a press release defending the death penalty as a crime deterrent. Zahnd tells The Pitch that the press release was the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys' response to anti-death-penalty activists who lobbied at the state capitol yesterday.  The group's press release cited the results of a 2002 Emory University study that claims to prove that every U.S. execution pre

  March 18, 2010