photo by: Mugshot courtesy of the Kansas Offender Registry

Cetewayo Ragins is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A Lawrence man will serve no additional prison time after his felony assault and battery charges were reduced on Wednesday to a misdemeanor through a plea agreement with the state.

Cetewayo M. Ragins, 43, was sentenced to just shy of five years in prison earlier this month for biting a Douglas County corrections officer on the leg. He had two pending criminal cases after that sentencing, one for misdemeanor counts of battery and interference with law enforcement and another case for felony aggravated assault and felony battery on a law enforcement officer.

Those four counts were reduced to just one misdemeanor count of battery on a law enforcement officer on Wednesday. Ragins had been ordered to stand trial on the felony counts in March 2024 in connection with an incident on Feb. 25, 2024, when he was alleged to have threatened a woman with a knife in the 900 block of Massachusetts Street before battering an officer.

If he had gone to trial on the felony charges and was convicted, he could have been sentenced to up to another four years in prison, according to Kansas sentencing guidelines.

However, Assistant District Attorney Adam Carey said on Wednesday that the state was recommending just one year in jail and for that sentence to run concurrently with his 57-month sentence in the biting case. He said Ragins had already served at least 447 days in jail while awaiting the disposition of the case.

Judge Amy Hanley accepted Ragins’ no-contest plea and immediately sentenced him to time served.