photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Dominic Sanders at a hearing on Oct. 24, 2023, in Douglas County District Court.

Prosecutors dismissed charges this month against a man accused of shooting multiple houses and a car while firing a gun out of a car window near the funeral of a 14-year-old boy who was shot and killed in 2023.

The multiple felony gun charges against Dominic Sanders, 25, of Lawrence were dismissed with prejudice on Dec. 10, meaning they cannot be refiled, about a month after he was set to go to trial. However, the trial never took place because the state was sanctioned by Judge Amy Hanley for withholding key evidence in the case, which she said could not be used a trial. The state then filed an interlocutory appeal of Hanley’s ruling, delaying the trial pending an appellate ruling.

Sanders’ attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli had objected to continuing the trial because Sanders refused to waive his right to a speedy trial and the 180-day period had run its course just one day after the trial was set to begin, as the Journal-World reported.

Assistant District Attorney Brian Deiter appealed the ruling immediately after the canceled trial on Nov. 18. After several filings in connection with the appeal, Deiter ultimately filed to dismiss the case altogether due to “prosecutorial discretion.”

As the Journal-World previously reported, Sanders was accused of hanging out of his mother’s dark Nissan Versa and firing multiple rounds from a handgun near the funeral of 14-year-old Kamarjay Shaw on April 1, 2023. A Douglas County sheriff’s deputy testified during Sanders’ preliminary hearing that he saw Sanders with a gun earlier that day.

One vehicle and two residences were struck by the gunfire, according to witness testimony. Tahirkheli argued that his client was not responsible for the shooting and that it could have been any number of people who were wearing red shirts that day in memory of Shaw.

Bullet casings were found in two locations of the 1500 block of Wedgewood Drive, in the 1700 block of Harper Street, and on the roof of a Nissan Versa owned by Sanders’ mother. Preliminary lab testing on the casings found that they matched a gun that belonged to someone other than Sanders and that the gun was involved in other criminal cases.

The prosecution had the lab results from the shell casings early in the case but only turned the information over to the defense less than two weeks before the trial. Hanley ruled that the state had committed a Brady violation and that no evidence of shell casings could be presented at trial, which Deiter said was critical to the case.

Withholding potentially exculpatory evidence is what’s known as a Brady violation, named after a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case that generally held that the state suppressing evidence favorable to the defendant violated the defendant’s right to a fair trial.