photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lt. Myrone Grady, right, appears with his defense attorney, Shaye Downing, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Shawnee County District Court.

The Kansas Court of Appeals has thrown out an appeal filed by the attorney for a former Lawrence police officer accused of misdemeanor battery in Shawnee County, noting that the appeal was prematurely filed and hence invalid.

The attorney, Shaye Downing, filed the appeal after Magistrate Judge Christopher Turner ruled in August that Myrone Grady, then a lieutenant with the Lawrence Police Department, was not entitled to immunity from prosecution based on self-defense. Grady is accused of hitting a man at a high school gymnasium following a basketball game last year, as the Journal-World reported.

In response to Downing’s appeal, the state argued that the appeal was filed late and also improperly. While the appellate court allowed Downing’s appeal to be filed late, it ultimately dismissed the appeal itself. Its reasoning was that it did not have jurisdiction to review Turner’s refusal to dismiss the criminal charge against Grady. The court cited a Kansas statute that only allows appeals from a judgment. A judgment requires both a conviction and a sentence, which have not happened in Grady’s case.

Grady, who appeared for a brief scheduling hearing Wednesday morning in Shawnee County District Court, recently asked Downing to withdraw as his attorney, and he has since retained new counsel, Dustin Curry, of Joseph, Hollander and Craft LLC, of Lawrence. His next court date is Feb. 11.

Grady, a longtime, award-winning officer, retired from the police force in September of last year. He has maintained that during the incident at the Topeka gym he acted in self-defense after being angrily confronted by the father of a former family friend. Grady was off-duty at the time.