photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Chadwick Potter is pictured Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Updated at 4:11 p.m. Thursday, April 25, 2024

A Douglas County jury on Thursday acquitted a transient man of murdering a blind Lawrence resident last summer in downtown Lawrence.

The defendant, Chadwick Potter, 35, had faced a second-degree murder charge in the bludgeoning death of David Blaine Sullivan, 62. Sullivan’s body was found on July 12, 2023, beneath a clump of trees by the Kansas River bridge near Sixth and Vermont streets.

photo by: Contributed

David Blaine Sullivan

The jury began deliberations late Wednesday afternoon. It deliberated about an hour on Wednesday and roughly six hours Thursday before returning the not guilty verdict.

The prosecution had argued that Potter beat Sullivan to death with a two-by-four. Surveillance video in the case showed the two men walking together near Seventh and Vermont streets late at night on July 11. In the footage, Potter was shown carrying a board. Later video in the area showed him walking alone without a board and looking “continuously” behind him, as a detective put it.

Sullivan’s badly beaten body was discovered nearby the next morning, a bloody two-by-four alongside him. A forensic pathologist testified at trial that Sullivan’s skull had been broken, along with seven ribs.

The defense had argued that police had conducted an inadequate investigation, including insufficient DNA testing, and had sought to hastily pin the crime on Potter. Defense attorney John Kerns argued that Sullivan was known in the homeless community and could have been victimized by other individuals in that community who had a “bone to pick” with him. He pointed to the large number of homeless camps in the area and noted that surveillance and traffic video didn’t cover all of them.

One of the questions the jury sent to the court Thursday while deliberating related to the location of video cameras in several areas discussed during the trial.

From the outset, the prosecution, represented by Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden, told the jury that the state’s case contained “no smoking gun” but instead rested on ample circumstantial evidence that pointed to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — a claim evidently rejected by the jury.

Judge Amy Hanley, who presided over the four-day trial, released Potter from custody and expressed a wish that the jail’s reentry program would assist him.

Potter, who had resided in different areas of the country, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Florida and Indiana, before coming to Lawrence, where he moved among the city’s homeless population, had been in custody on a $1 million bond since his arrest last July. During a police interrogation in the murder case, a video of which was played during the trial, Potter discussed the difficulty and stress of being homeless, saying that he didn’t have “any one location” and spent most of his time walking around and “surviving.” He told police in the interrogation video that he was doing just that with Sullivan on that summer night — hanging out, smoking marijuana and not quarreling.

After Thursday’s acquittal, Kerns, who had blasted the state’s “weak case,” telling the jurors during his closing argument that they “didn’t get jack” in the way of evidence, told the Journal-World that he was “thankful justice was done.”

The office of District Attorney Suzanne Valdez declined to comment on the verdict.

This is the second murder case in two months in Douglas County District Court to have ended in a defendant being acquitted. The first was in March, when a jury acquitted 18-year-old Derrick Del Reed in a teenage boy’s fatal shooting.

Potter told Lawrence police detectives who interrogated him that in the course of being homeless he had found himself in jail a lot for “stupid sh-t.”

As the Journal-World has reported, court records in Indiana and Florida indicate that Potter has had multiple run-ins with law enforcement dating back to 2006 for charges including theft, multiple DUIs and armed robbery.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Chadwick Potter is pictured with his attorney, John Kerns, at his murder trial on Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.