Updated at 4:24 p.m. Thursday, July 10, 2025 A 37-year-old defendant sobbed as three successive “not guilty” verdicts were read Thursday in Douglas County District Court, acquitting him in a Lawrence teenager's 2021 fentanyl overdose death. Benjamin Mims wiped away tears and hugged his attorneys as the mother of the deceased teen, who had been sitting in the front row throughout the trial, quietly left the ...
Faced with the possibility of decades behind bars, a young drug dealer agreed to testify against an innocent man to save himself. That's what defense attorneys intend to tell jurors Thursday as they deliver closing arguments in the case of Benjamin Mims, who is accused in the fentanyl death of a Lawrence teenager. But the state will offer a far different version of events that led to the death of 18-year-old ...
A star prosecution witness in a fentanyl death case abruptly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not testify Tuesday in Douglas County District Court, resulting in jurors being sent home early and raising questions about how the case will move forward. Logan Hastie Morgan, a convicted drug dealer, took the stand for mere minutes in the case against one-time codefendant Benjamin Lerell Mims, who is facing ...
Updated at 1:48 p.m. Monday, July 7, 2025 A teen who was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of another Lawrence teen took a plea deal on Monday, the day his trial was set to begin. The defendant, Cir Allen Keith Glover, 19, entered a plea to 2nd-degree reckless murder in the death of Isaiah Neal, 17. Part of the plea included an agreement to serve 120 months, or 10 years, in prison, which ...
A jury was sworn in Monday in Douglas County District Court to decide the case of a man accused in the fentanyl overdose death of a Lawrence teenager four years ago. The defendant, Benjamin Lerell Mims, 37, is facing charges of distributing a controlled substance causing the death of 18-year-old Mohamadi Tompson Issa Jr.; conspiracy to unlawfully distribute the controlled substance fentanyl; and unlawful ...
A former Douglas County district attorney and her deputy are immune from a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a woman whose conviction for killing a baby was overturned, a judge ruled. Carrody Buchhorn, of Lawrence, claimed that the two attorneys — Suzanne Valdez and Joshua Seiden — fabricated a knowingly false cause of death for 9-month-old Oliver Ortiz, maliciously prosecuted her and withheld ...