photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Chris McMullin, left, presents Eve Kemple, right, with an award for Associate Member Prosecutor of the Year on Oct. 26, 2023.

An award-winning prosecutor who spent more than a decade in Douglas County has returned to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office after a brief stint working for the state attorney general’s office.

Eve Kemple was sworn in as a senior assistant district attorney on Wednesday afternoon by Judge Sally Pokorny in Douglas County District Court. That’s a slight change from when Kemple left in 2021. She told the Journal-World that her title was chief assistant district attorney then, but that exact position doesn’t exist currently with the new DA, Dakota Loomis, who took office on Jan. 13.

Pokorny said she was honored to be the one who got to swear Kemple in in her return to the DA’s office, and Kemple said she was excited to be back working in Douglas County.

“I am glad to be back, and I am ready to get to work,” Kemple said.

And get to work Kemple has. On Wednesday, she was one of the attorneys representing the state at a hearing for Cameron Cooper, 18, of Lawrence, who is accused of shooting another man during a drug deal. Kemple argued for Cooper to remain in jail while his case was pending; Pokorny ultimately decided to grant Cooper house arrest at his father’s home in Olathe.

Previously, Kemple had spent 16 years with the DA’s office under Charles Branson, but she left after former DA Suzanne Valdez replaced Branson in 2021. At a state disciplinary hearing for Valdez in December 2023, in which Valdez had been accused of multiple incidents of misconduct, Kemple testified that she left Valdez’s office specifically because of Valdez’s conduct as DA.

As the Journal-World reported, a panel for the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys recommended to the Kansas Supreme Court that Valdez be censured for “undignified or discourteous conduct” toward Douglas County Chief Judge James McCabria in 2021, shortly after she took office. Valdez is still awaiting the final results of the disciplinary proceedings.

Kemple spent the last four years working in the Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division of the Kansas Attorney General’s Office. While there, she was named the Associate Member Prosecutor of the Year in 2023 by the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association, as the Journal-World reported.

photo by: Chris Conde/.Journal-World

Former Douglas County prosecutors David Melton and Eve Kemple pose together after winning awards from the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association on Oct. 27, 2023, at the KCDAA Fall Conference at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel. Melton won a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Kemple won Associate Member Prosecutor of the Year.