When Kris Wilcoxson heard recently that Judge Sally Pokorny would be retiring on April 10, he made a beeline over to the courthouse to thank her. Pokorny had just wrapped up one of her final sessions of Behavioral Health Court, which she presided over in a multi-zippered black leather jacket — prompting some to ask where her Harley was. As people milled about, Wilcoxson charged up the aisle and ...
Two Hispanic construction workers on Thursday told a Douglas County judge that they still have nightmares about an armed and angry man assaulting them one summer morning two years ago as they worked. They thought the man, Craig Endecott, of Baldwin City, was going to kill them with his rifle, they said in written statements read aloud in court by a Spanish-language interpreter. A third statement, written in ...
A 34-year-old man was convicted on Tuesday in Douglas County District Court of trying to kill his grandfather last summer by firing multiple bullets into his Lawrence residence. The defendant, Douglas Adam Speight, was originally charged with attempted first-degree murder in the June 3, 2025, incident, but pleaded no contest Tuesday to attempted voluntary manslaughter with a firearm — a plea agreement that ...
Numerous repairs were underway at a Lawrence appliance store Monday afternoon after it was struck by a car earlier in the day. Jack Flynn, the sales manager at Stoneback Appliance, 925 Iowa St., told the Journal-World that the incident at around 10 a.m. happened very quickly. He initially thought the incredibly loud noise he heard was a display of dishwashers falling over in the store, but he soon realized a ...
A property manager for a landlord accused of numerous child sex crimes testified on Monday that the landlord asked him to procure sworn affidavits from the alleged victims "recanting their story." According to the state, the 74-year-old landlord, Mark Duane Strand, dangled the promise of college scholarships as an inducement for two individuals to disavow their claims and to refuse to testify against him, ...
A Douglas County judge on Friday denied a murder defendant's claim that he should be immune from prosecution based on self-defense. The denial came in a nearly four-year-old case in which Rodney Marshall, 55, is accused of murdering two men in July 2022 and attempting to murder multiple police officers as he fled Lawrence on Kansas Highway 10. Self-defense is the most recent of several explanations he has ...