Topeka ? A Kansas appeals court panel said Wednesday that Shanna Friday may challenge her incarceration for a 2008 murder conviction on the basis that her trial attorney may have been ineffective, and it remanded her case back to Douglas County District Court for further proceedings.

Friday was convicted in 2008 for the brutal beating death of Jerry Lee Deshazer at his southeast Lawrence mobile home and was sentenced to 14.5 years in prison.

Deshazer, who was 62, had been beaten in the head with a bottle during an altercation on Feb. 1, 2008. A coroner’s official testified at trial that he died from a massive loss of blood from blunt force trauma to his head that peeled back his scalp.

Shanna Friday

According to court records, Lawrence police detective Lance Flachsbarth tracked down Friday at her Topeka home and brought her back to Lawrence for questioning, and after a late-night interrogation that lasted more than three hours, she eventually confessed to killing Deshazer.

The Kansas Supreme Court upheld her conviction in 2013. But she later filed a second appeal under the state’s “habeas corpus” law claiming the trial court never should have admitted that taped confession into evidence and that her first court-appointed attorney failed to adequately challenge it.

She also argued that her third attorney, who tried the case, was ineffective because he did not call an expert medical witness that the court had previously approved to challenge testimony of a coroner who testified for the prosecution.

The habeas corpus statute allows a prisoner to claim the right to be released or to challenge a sentence if the sentence was imposed “in violation of the constitution or laws of the United States, or the constitution or laws of the state of Kansas …”

In an unpublished opinion released Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals rejected her argument that the medical witness should have been called, saying that she “has not provided any evidence to suggest the victim died from anything other than blunt force trauma and the additional factors the coroner presented.”

But the panel said the trial court did not properly consider her motion to suppress the taped confession, which occurred during the three-hour interrogation that took place between 12:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. during a period when Friday was pregnant.

In the opinion, the judges said that when the trial court held a hearing on a motion to suppress the tape, the court did not review the tape itself. The appellate panel also said the court did not fully consider the question of whether the confession was voluntary, and her attorney did not even challenge the fact that even if it was voluntary, the tape may have included comments from the interrogating detectives that should not have been shown to a jury.

The appeals court noted that “the interrogating detective repeatedly swore and shouted at Friday, called her names, and questioned her truthfulness. None of these issues were raised by trial counsel at the suppression hearing.”

“In light of this failure, we find Friday has presented a substantial issue warranting an evidentiary hearing and the district court erred in denying this part of Friday’s (habeas corpus) motion,” the panel wrote.

The decision was written by Judges Michael Buser, G. Gordon Atcheson and Anthony Powell.

Unless the state appeals the decision further, Friday’s case will now go back to Douglas County District Court for further proceedings.