photo by: Sara Shepherd

Steven A. Drake III appears in Douglas County District Court during a hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019.

Lawrence murder suspect Steven A. Drake III, 22, has been sentenced to 570 days in a battery case — one of the three criminal cases against him in Douglas County District Court.

On Monday, Judge Kay Huff sentenced Drake to more than a year and a half in Department of Corrections custody for attempted aggravated battery. The time is considered already served because Drake has been in jail nearly two years already on an assortment of charges.

Drake previously pleaded no contest to the attempted aggravated battery charge, a lower-severity felony, in June. He was accused of beating a 16-year-old boy in a fight, causing a serious head injury, on July 8, 2017.

In her sentencing, Huff said Drake never apologized or showed remorse for his actions throughout the court proceedings. Drake chose not to speak during the sentencing.

As part of the sentencing, he will be under post-release supervision for two years when he is released. However, Drake has already been in jail since 2017 — since being arrested at the scene of the homicide he’s charged with. His bond remains at $750,000.

His sentencing in the battery case came three weeks before he’s scheduled to go on trial for first-degree murder, beginning Aug. 19.

Bryce S. Holladay, 26, of Lawrence, was shot and killed the night of Sept. 19, 2017, in the doorway of Drake’s home in the 2000 block of West 27th Terrace.

According to Drake and three other people at the house with him, Holladay was taking items from the home and refused to leave, even after the four of them tried to physically force him out the door.

Witnesses testified at a preliminary hearing that Holladay was trying to punch them and force his way inside the house when Drake retrieved a handgun from a bedroom and shot him in the face at close range.

Drake’s appointed attorney, Angela Keck, has said that she planned to argue that he’s not guilty of first-degree premeditated murder as charged because he acted in defense of himself or others. Drake previously tried to get the charges dismissed altogether, arguing that he acted lawfully under Kansas’ stand-your-ground law, but the judge denied that request.

Drake’s third case remains pending. In that case he’s charged with vehicular homicide, a misdemeanor.

That case stems from a November 2016 crash near Clinton Lake that killed Taylor B. Lister, 24, of Lecompton.

Though the fight and the crash occurred prior to the homicide at Drake’s home, he was not charged in those cases until months after he was arrested in the homicide case.

Drake previously rejected a plea offer that would have resolved all three cases together.

Asked how the new plea deal arose, Wright Kunard of the DA’s office said the office would not comment on plea negotiations.