Family of exonerated man seek jailhouse witness reform. The KS senate won’t vote on it

Olin “Pete” Coones spent 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit in Kansas City, Kansas.

His conviction was, in large part, the result of testimony from a jailhouse witness with a history of dishonesty who told prosecutors Coones confessed to the crime.

But that story was inconsistent with other evidence and in 2020 Coones was exonerated. He died 108 days after his release. But before his death Coones called on the Kansas Legislature to reform the law and create a system to track the use of jailhouse informants.

Three years later those efforts, taken up by Coones’ children on his behalf, have stalled.

Twice the Kansas House of Representatives has unanimously approved reforms in a bill named for Coones.

But leaders in the state Senate are refusing to bring the bill for a vote, citing opposition by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Kansas’ local prosecutors. An effort to force a vote despite their objections, narrowly failed Monday.

“I spoke with the Attorney General. The Attorney General does not support this bill and neither do the prosecutors,” Senate Majority Leader Larry Alley, a Winfield Republican, told his colleagues Monday.

Alley, who controls what bills are debated on the Senate floor, was urging his colleagues to oppose a bipartisan effort to force a vote on the bill despite his opposition.

‘This is being open’

Kansas criminal justice reform advocates alongside Coones’ family are urging the Senate to vote on the bill before the end of the legislative session next week.

“In our father’s last days alive he was writing for this reform. He did not live to see it and we cannot let another year pass without this change,” Coones’ children said in a statement read aloud at the Kansas Statehouse Monday by Bay Scoggin, state policy advocate for the Midwest Innocence Project.

Sen. Rob Olson, an Olathe Republican, tried to force a vote Monday with a procedural move.

“I think this is just being transparent. This is being open,” Olson said.

Although a majority of senators voted alongside Olson the motion still failed, falling four votes short of the two-thirds supermajority it needed.

Alley, alongside Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican and Sen. Kellie Warren, a Leawood Republican, had urged Republicans to reject the effort over concerns from Kobach and other prosecutors.

Kobach did not weigh in on the bill during hearings last year, and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. But Kansas’ County and District Attorneys Association had testified to lawmakers that the policy was unnecessary and would create confusion in courts.

The bill would require prosecutors to report to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation when they use jailhouse informants and when deals are struck with those informants. The KBI would then create a repository to track this information, helping prosecutors and defense attorneys know if a particular inmate offered testimony in several cases.

In written testimony Marc Bennett, the Sedgwick County District Attorney, said the repository would have a “tremendously stifling effect on any witness feeling safe to come forward.”

Despite Monday’s failed motion, advocates for the policy said they believed there was still a pathway for a vote before lawmakers leave Topeka.

“The only good news is we still have several days to this portion of (the) session,” Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, said. “We will continue to work. Because what we want to do is we want to be the state that is transparent about its process, and we don’t want to have any more wrongfully convicted individuals.”

If lawmakers do not approve the bill this year, advocates must start over with a new bill in 2025.

The denied vote represented continued denied justice to Coones and his family, argued Trisha Rojoh Busnell, executive and legal director for the Midwest Innocence Project.

“This is a bill that allows a process so we know the process is fair and we can trust the outcome. But what has happened is we aren’t getting a fair process here,” Bushnell said.