photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center

A Douglas County jury on Tuesday found a man not guilty of gun theft, the second acquittal in less than a week for the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office.

Kavaun Clark, after a two-day trial, was quickly acquitted after jurors found that the DA’s Office, represented by Assistant District Attorney Madeline Bjorklun, had failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Clark was charged with felony theft after he was accused of stealing a Bersa handgun from a home where he was an overnight guest in January 2021. According to the state, the homeowners had given Clark a tour of a “safe room” in their home, where they showed him and other guests multiple guns, including the newly acquired Bersa. By the next morning the small gun had turned up missing, and the homeowners questioned multiple houseguests about it. Clark, they said, would not allow them to search his backpack, so they called police, who ultimately located the gun in Clark’s bag.

Clark’s defense attorney, John DeMarco, argued that the scenario presented by the DA’s Office did not prove that Clark had put the gun in the backpack or that he intended to permanently deprive the owner of it. He said nine people had been in the house that night and that “no one saw him take it.” He additionally argued that the gun was not fingerprinted after it was found in Clark’s backpack and that Clark never left the owner’s home with it.

DeMarco compared the incident to loading groceries into a cart at a store and being accused of stealing them while still in the store. During his closing argument, to illustrate his point, he swiped a bottle of water off the table, put it in his bag and then returned it to the defense table as the prosecutor was wrapping up her argument.

Tuesday’s acquittal comes just five days after a different jury acquitted a driver of two road rage incidents in west Lawrence.