News/Blog

August 12, 2010

A Shawnee County District Court judge has notified attorneys she is considering placing a 25-year-old man on probation rather than sentencing him to more than four years in prison for attempted solicitation via computer of a 13-year-old girl for sex. In reality, the “girl” was a sheriff’s deputy. Patrick Even Johnson, a Topekan arrested during […]

August 1, 2008

The last of seven men charged in an online sex sting operation was placed on three years of intensive supervised probation Thursday rather than being sentenced to almost five years in prison. In sentencing Brandon Ryan Mason, 22, Shawnee County District Court Judge Jan Leuenberger departed downward, listing eight factors to justify the action. Mason […]

April 23, 2008

Many jagged edges can be mapped in the journey from a crime being committed to a felon being sent to prison for a long time, Deputy Salina Police Chief Carson Mansfield said Tuesday. The probe into the April 16 murder of Mark Simpson found its first dead end this past weekend when the focus on […]

March 11, 2008

The day federal investigators descended on Coen Potts’ Topeka apartment was his last as an area elementary school art teacher. Initially, officials in Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 fired Potts after drug paraphernalia was found in his gym bag. But what FBI agents would find acting on a tip as they searched his apartment was […]

January 21, 2008

On Friday, after a 3-day trial, a federal jury in Topeka acquitted Louis Chouloute of illegally possessing 2,800 pounds of marijuana. On September 14, 2007, a semi-truck was stopped in Shawnee County by a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper. A search revealed 2,800 pounds of marijuana in the trailer. Louis Chouloute, 34, from Brooklyn, New York, […]