Murder charges dropped for 2 after ex-Kentucky prosecutor accused of misleading grand jury

Former Christian County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Boling, who resigned in February rather than face impeachment, has come under fire again.

Boling has been accused of misleading a grand jury into charging two women with murder and robbery in a case that has gone unsolved for 16 years.

A Christian Circuit Court judge Tuesday dismissed the charges, after one of the women had spent nearly a year in jail and the other about the same amount of time on home incarceration.

According to court records, a sheriff’s detective presented to the grand jury by Boling testified that a hair found on a cane used to beat the victim “matched” the DNA of one of the women, Lashanda Person. In fact, the DNA report said only that Person and relatives on her mother’s side of the family could not be excluded as the source.

Seeking dismissal of the indictment, assistant public advocates Douglas Moore and Mary Rohrer said Boling knew Detective Malcolm Moore’s testimony was misleading yet failed to correct it.

Judge Andrew Self cited the DNA testimony in a ruling from the bench dropping charges against Person and co-defendant Annastaja Hathaway. Under the ruling, they could be reindicted.

The Kentucky Supreme Court last year suspended Boling’s law license for five years in part for misleading a trial jury in a case he prosecuted. Under Supreme Court rules, Boling could be sanctioned again for the grand jury matter. Self declined to say whether he would report it to the Kentucky Bar Association.

Person and Hathaway were indicted in July 2022, and both initially were held on $1 million bonds. Hathaway spent nearly a year in custody before she was released on her own recognizance, said Brandi Jones, Hathaway's lawyer. Person spent a year at home wearing an ankle monitor, said Moore, her attorney, adding she was ecstatic to learn about the dismissal.

In an email, Boling said: “I did nothing wrong.” He said the case should be presented to a grand jury again and that the defendants “will ultimately be convicted.”

Detective Malcolm Moore retired last year and did not respond to a message left for him at the Christian County Sheriff’s Office.

Self’s ruling leaves no one charged with the April 2006 murder of Roscoe Mayes, 84, who was found in his Hopkinsville home stabbed 11 times with a steak knife and beaten in the head with his own walking cane.

A neighbor who found his body told news outlets at the time that he was a “good old man” who relied on help from neighbors because he suffered total hearing loss when fighting in World War II.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Bolen, who was appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear to succeed Boling, said:  “Anytime there is an unsolved murder, it is an injustice for the victim. But we need to make sure we get the right defendants.”

Bolen said the case languished for many years in part because the detectives initially assigned to it left the department, then reopened it when they returned much later.

According to a television report, Hathaway was arrested in 2022 based on an anonymous tip to Crimestoppers. A third woman was charged as well, but later cleared.

Besides the DNA testimony, Hathaway’s attorney, Jones, said Boling misrepresented a witness who implicated her client by failing to note the witness was a constable who had inside information from law enforcement about the case.

The constable testified Hathaway confessed the crime to him, but in a motion to dismiss the indictment, Jones said the constable threatened her to get the statement and didn’t report the alleged confession for six or seven years.

Boling was suspended and faced impeachment in part because of his misconduct in an attempted murder and arson case in which he told a jury that the only evidence supporting the defendant’s intoxication defense was her own uncorroborated testimony. In fact, a detective told Boling over a lunch break that defendant Karen Brafman was high “out of her fricking mind” at the time of the crime.

Unbeknownst to Boling or the detective, the conversation was picked up by an open microphone in the courtroom. The Supreme Court later reversed her conviction.

The court also found Boling made false allegations of corruption against a judge when he secretly lobbied Gov. Matt Bevin to commute the sentence of Dayton Jones for a brutal sodomy that nearly killed an incapacitated teenager, as The Courier Journal first reported.

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Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 396-5853 or awolfson@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ex-Kentucky prosecutor Rick Boling accused of misleading grand jury