photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World Photo

John Price is pictured with his attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli, on March 10, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

A Douglas County jury on Monday found itself in the unusual position of convicting a man of committing a felony in the middle of a courtroom during his jury trial in a different case.

Monday’s jurors, after about half a day of hearing testimony, took less than 45 minutes to find John Price guilty of battery on a law enforcement officer in that earlier trial.

The state, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney Eve Kemple, put on five witnesses — including two of her fellow prosecutors from the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office and three sheriff’s deputies — who all testified that Price punched Deputy Carson Rhodes in the face multiple times at his Dec. 14, 2022, trial for criminal damage and battery on a law enforcement officer.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald testifies at John Price’s trial on March 10, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Assistant District Attorney Samantha Foster testifies at John Price’s trial on March 10, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

At that trial, Judge Stacey Donovan had ordered Rhodes to sit between Price and his attorney. The attorney had requested the order after Price had engaged in a series of disruptive outbursts. Rhodes and Price were both dressed in plain clothes to avoid jurors being prejudiced by seeing Rhodes armed and in uniform guarding Price in inmate clothes and shackles.

On Monday, as Price again sat in plain clothes with a deputy in plain clothes nearby, jurors, in a moment of unavoidable irony, listened to witnesses talk about how plain clothes were meant to keep jurors from perceiving the defendant as a criminal.

Witness after witness testified that Price punched Rhodes right after Price improperly stood to accuse a witness of lying. Price’s defense attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli, argued that Price, who was also on trial in yet another case that same week, was stressed out like a “pressure cooker” and was unhappy with his attorney. Tahirkheli said that Price’s intent was to reach toward his attorney to express his displeasure with her performance, not to “go after the deputy.”

Kemple, however, noted that the law did not require her to show what Price may or may not have intended or even that Rhodes was injured, which he was not — but only that physical contact was made with the deputy in a rude, angry or insulting manner.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Deputy Carson Rhodes testifies at John Price’s trial on March 10, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

After the punches were thrown, Rhodes and two other deputies took Price to the ground and he was removed from the courtroom in a restraint device, witnesses said.

Tahirkheli also suggested to jurors that the five law enforcement witnesses were less than truthful and had coordinated their stories to seem more credible — a suggestion evidently rejected by jurors.

At one point Monday, Price indicated that he was going to take the stand in his own defense, but he changed his mind a short time later.

As the Journal-World has reported, Price has an extensive criminal history and has engaged in numerous outbursts in court. Most recently, in November he was convicted of spitting in a corrections officer’s mouth at the jail. In May of 2023, he was sentenced to five years in prison for smashing drivers’ windshields and the windows of several businesses.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in the latest case on April 18.