A crime-fighting package is on deck to become Missouri law next month. Senate Bill 754 is sponsored by Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, R-Parkville. It started off as legislation to honor a St. Joseph Police Department canine officer.

In 2021, a St. Joseph Police Department dog, named Max, put his life on the line to save his human partner. Officer Lucas Winder was Max’s partner. Max was killed in the line of duty while he and Winder were responding to a standoff. The suspect came out of the house and attempted to ambush the officers, but Max stepped in to stop them.

“I remember shortly after that happened, there was this huge outcry in the community in Saint Joe, of people who, you know, were upset, of course, about the killing of canine Max, but also the fact that the law really doesn’t adequately protect these police canines,” Luetkemeyer said. “They’re sent into dangerous situations to subdue and help apprehend a dangerous and armed individual, so their human partner doesn’t have to put their life on the line.”

Under current Missouri law, police dogs are considered property. Harming or killing a police dog in the line of duty is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 15 days in jail and a fine of $700.

“Max’s Law” will increase the charge to a felony punishable by up to seven years in federal prison and a fine of $10,000.

“Missouri has one of the most lax laws when it comes to killing a law enforcement canine is treated as mere property damage, and in fact, it’s a more serious crime to break the window of a police car than it is to kill a law enforcement canine,” said Luektemeyer.

Another piece of the bill, called “Blair’s Law,” will create a criminal offense for firing gunshots in the air to celebrate that injure or kill someone.

Thirteen years ago, Blair Shanahan Lane was killed in Kansas City after a bullet hit the 11-year-old.

“What we found is, is that there’s a gap in the law because you weren’t intending to kill anybody, you can’t be charged with a homicide offense,” Luetkemeyer said. “And so, this is designed to give prosecutors and law enforcement more tools to hold these individuals accountable who engage in this very dangerous behavior.”

Blair’s mother, Michele Shanahan DeMoss, has been advocating for the bill’s passage for thirteen years.

“I mean, I just woke up like a weight is lifted, is the way I would describe it. My entire drive to Jefferson City, I feel like I was taking weights off of me. And to describe the weight size, those would be cinder block size, is the weights that, just slowly laying them aside,” she told Missourinet after the bill signing. “A bullet travels a long way,” she said. “It traveled three football fields and hit her in the neck. And it hit her so hard that it moved her.”

The bill is also sponsored by Rep. Mark Sharpe, D-Kansas City.

“So, as I was driving into Jeff (City) this morning for the bill signing, all I could think of was hoping that the governor woke up in a good mood today because I sure wanted to make sure that we got this bill passed and signed by the governor today. Very thankful to him,” Sharpe told Missourinet after the bill signing.

Fleeing from police in a vehicle at a high speed will soon become a felony in Missouri. “Valentine’s Law” is the name of the bill, named after St. Louis County police officer Antonio Valentine, who was killed in 2021 during a high-speed chase.

Under Luetkemeyer’s legislation, a suspect could spend one year to life in prison, depending on whether the chase leads to injuries or even worse.

“These high-speed chases are, unfortunately, all too frequent, where people will flee from law enforcement, and they pose a huge risk, not only to the police officer who’s pursuing them, like police officer Valentine, who was killed in a high-speed chase, but also the public at large, other vehicles that are out on the road,” Luetkemeyer said.

The legislation will also create a conviction review unit, which will allow prosecutors to reopen a case that was prosecuted in their jurisdiction if they believe there’s evidence of innocence.

“This is going to be very impactful, I would think, in particularly smaller counties, where you have a prosecutor, where it may be that he or she is the only prosecutor in the office, and they’re being asked to reconsider a murder conviction from the 1960s where they believe that there’s a claim of actual innocence,” he said.

The conviction review unit can dig into old case files and determine whether to recommend to the local prosecutor if the case should be reopened.

In addition, Luetkemeyer’s bill will increase the minimum age from 12 to 14 years old for a minor to be charged as an adult for any felony.

For more information on Senate Bill 754, click here.

Copyright © 2024 · Missourinet

JACKSON, Mo. (KFVS) – In Jackson, more than 200 teachers and librarians participated in the 6th annual IgnitED Regional Educators Conference.

Held at the Jackson High School on Thursday, July 18, the event aims to teach the latest instructional strategies and technology integration in schools.

Jackson’s associate superintendent, Jessica Maxwell, calls the event an affordable way to improve teaching.

More than 30 schools participated in Thursday’s conference.

Copyright 2024 KFVS. All rights reserved.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for a Missouri woman whose murder conviction was overturned to be freed after 43 years in prison.

A circuit court judge ruled last month that Sandra Hemme’s attorneys showed evidence of her “actual innocence,” and an appeals court ruled she should be freed while her case is reviewed.

But Hemme’s immediate freedom has been complicated by lengthy sentences she received for crimes she committed while behind bars — a total of 12 years, which were piled on top of the life sentence she received for her murder conviction.

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey took his fight to keep her locked up to the state’s highest court, but her attorneys argued that keeping her incarcerated any longer would be a “draconian outcome.”

Her release appears imminent, however, now that the Missouri Supreme Court court has refused to undo the lower court rulings allowing her to be released on her own recognizance and placed in the custody of her sister and brother-in-law in the Missouri town of Higginsville.

No details have been released on when Hemme will be freed.

Hemme, now 64, had been serving a life sentence at a prison northeast of Kansas City after she was twice convicted of murder in the death of library worker Patricia Jeschke.

She’s been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project.

“This Court finds that the totality of the evidence supports a finding of actual innocence,” Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman concluded after an extensive review.

Horsman noted that Hemme was heavily sedated and in a “malleable mental state” when investigators repeatedly questioned her in a psychiatric hospital. Her attorneys described her ultimate confession as “often monosyllabic responses to leading questions.” Other than this confession, no evidence linked her to the crime, her trial prosecutor said.

The St. Joseph Police Department, meanwhile, ignored evidence pointing to Michael Holman — a fellow officer, who died in 2015 — and the prosecution wasn’t told about FBI results that could have cleared her, so it was never disclosed before her trials, the judge found.

“This Court finds that the evidence shows that Ms. Hemme’s statements to police are so unreliable and that the evidence pointing to Michael Holman as the perpetrator of the crime so objective and probative that no reasonable juror would find Ms. Hemme guilty,” Horsman concluded in his 118-page ruling. “She is the victim of a manifest injustice.”