A revived court case casts new light on a dark period in Wyandotte County law enforcement

On June 11, 2009, Max Seifert was summoned by Wyandotte County Undersheriff Larry Roland. Roland told Seifert that he was off detective duty with the Sheriff’s Office.

Roland, according to Seifert’s account of the conversation, said the Sheriff’s Office had determined that Seifert’s credibility was in doubt. Seifert could be a liability for the department if he continued to work on investigations.

Seifert had retired from the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department in 2005 after a decades-long career there. In 2006, he began helping the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office with investigations. Until that 2009 meeting with Roland, he hadn’t had any problems.

Roland, according to Seifert, had been told by federal prosecutor Terra Morehead that Seifert had bungled a 1998 case that Seifert had handled for the KCKPD.

Integrity problems spell trouble for prosecutors. By law, prosecutors are required to tell defense lawyers if a police officer testifying in a criminal case has ever been questioned about his credibility.

Seifert puzzled about why a 1998 case had suddenly created a problem for his work with the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office.

Just six days prior to the meeting with Roland, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, had settled a lawsuit filed against it by a man named Barron Bowling.

Bowling in 2003 had been the victim of a severe beating by a Timothy McCue, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, following a car accident involving the two men.

When Seifert investigated the accident, he reported that McCue was responsible for the collision and that the DEA man had then used unjustified and excessive force against Bowling.

Seifert believed that the KCKPD wanted to cover up McCue’s actions at Bowling’s expense.

The Bowling case marked a dark period for KCK law enforcement. Subsequent investigations and litigation showed signs that some members of the KCKPD feared that the department’s relationship with the DEA would be harmed if McCue came off looking bad for beating Bowling. (A federal judge was sharply critical of the police department’s actions, while also praising Seifert for crossing the “thin blue line” and testifying against his law-enforcement colleagues.)

Bowling was charged criminally for the altercation with McCue but was acquitted by a jury. That acquittal was due in large part to Seifert’s testimony.

Seifert felt like a pariah in the KCKPD after the Bowling acquittal and ultimately resigned just before Christmas in 2005. He started to suspect that the 1998 case, in which a federal judge criticized his handling of a search warrant in a drug case, was a pretext for his demotion, and that hard feelings about him were following him into the Sheriff’s Office.

Morehead, who wouldn’t comment for this story, testified in a deposition that on June 29, 2009, she e-mailed Roland the judge’s criticisms of Seifert from the 1998 case. She couldn’t recall when she and Roland first discussed the matter.

Rick Whitby, a deputy with the Sheriff’s Office, testified that he had a conversation with Morehead in early 2009 about Seifert. (Morehead couldn’t recall that conversation in her deposition.)

Later that year, Morehead warned officers in training sessions about the pitfalls of having credibility issues, holding out Seifert as an example. (Seifert hired a lawyer, who demanded that Morehead knock it off.)

By 2010, Seifert lost his reserve commission with the Sheriff’s Office, shortly after Bowling’s trial against the federal government ended.

Seifert sued the Unified Government and the Sheriff’s Office in 2011, claiming that he was being retaliated against for his testimony. A federal district court dismissed his lawsuit in 2013, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month reinstated his lawsuit.

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That decision may prompt a re-examination of a case with ties to the Bowling case from 12 years ago. It may also involve Morehead and Roland, people with credibility issues of their own.

Terry Lee Hooker was convicted in 1998 on charges of burglary, criminal possession of a firearm, and the 1997 first-degree murder of Daron “Bootsie” Lane in Wyandotte County. His trial was unremarkable, except for one fact: The prosecutor and the judge handling the case once shared a romantic relationship.

A filing in Hooker’s 2004 appeal describes how Morehead, who prosecuted Hooker when she was a Wyandotte County assistant district attorney, had once dated J. Dexter Burdette, a judge in Wyandotte County since 1988. Burdette presided over Hooker’s trial.

A stipulation entered into that appeal confirmed what many lawyers in Wyandotte County had long suspected: that Burdette and Morehead began dating in 1990, and called off their relationship early the following year. Burdette got married in 1993. Morehead did the same in 1997.

Paul Dent, Hooker’s trial attorney, didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the relationship, according to court records.

Hooker’s appeal raised the issue of impropriety, stemming from Burdette and Morehead’s relationship, but the Kansas Court of Appeals didn’t find that issue alone persuasive enough to reverse Hooker’s convictions. Part of the reason: The relationship had ended well before the trial.

But a review of criminal cases in Wyandotte County shows that Morehead handled several criminal cases before Burdette throughout the 1990s, some of which occurred just on the heels of their breakup.

• In April 1991, James Massey was charged with kidnapping, attempted murder and child endangerment. Wyandotte County court records show that Morehead was the prosecutor on that case, and Burdette handled portions of the events leading up to trial.

• Morehead prosecuted the case of Lawrence Hill, accused on June 10, 1991, of sexual battery and indecent liberties with a child. Burdette presided.

• Morehead also prosecuted Kathryn Hartman, accused in October 1991 of sexual exploitation of a child. Burdette was the judge in that case.

• Morehead prosecuted the case of Willam Sells, accused of criminal sodomy in 1993, in a case handled by Burdette.

Subsequent media accounts place Morehead in Burdette’s court.

• Morehead prosecuted Sutton Lovingood’s 1995 trial on charges of sexual exploitation of a child. Burdette was the judge.

• Morehead prosecuted Charles Holmes, accused in 1995 of rape. Burdette was the judge in that case.

None of the cases between Morehead and Burdette found in The Pitch‘s examination of Wyandotte County court records was overturned on appeal or showed apparent signs of irregularities. But legal ethicists say relationships between judges and prosecutors in the same jurisdiction create a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict.

“Judges shouldn’t sleep with prosecutors. Prosecutors shouldn’t sleep with judges. It’s that simple,” says Shaun Martin, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. “It creates too many conflicts when a lawyer is appearing in front of someone with whom he was once intimate. If you’re charged with a crime and your continued liberty is on the line, you want your judge thinking solely about whether you’re guilty, not thinking about why the prosecutor ended the relationship or what he or she looks like naked.”

Neither Morehead nor Burdette responded to requests for comment.

Erik Oblasser, a criminal trial attorney who practices in Wyoming, says he would ordinarily ask that a judge recuse him or herself if he represented a defendant in front of a judge who at any time had had a relationship with the lawyer on the other side of the case.

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“It’s got fishy written all over it,” he tells The Pitch.

The Kansas Code of Judicial Conduct’s Rule 2.4(b) reads: “A judge shall not permit family, social, political, financial, or other interests or relationships to influence the judge’s judicial conduct or judgment.”

Oblasser believes that rule would apply regardless of when a judge and prosecutor’s relationship transpired.

“Even after the relationship ended, you can see how Rule 2.4 could give rise to conflicts and impropriety,” Oblasser says. “The two were together, and he knows her views, and she knows his. She will tailor her prosecution accordingly. The correct thing would be for him to recuse himself.”

Kansas judicial rules do not speak to any period of time that would pass after the relationship ended before a prosecutor could handle a case before a judge.

“[I]t’s my view that a judge should never preside over a case in which one of the lawyers was someone with whom he’d previously had sex,” Martin says. “Even if it was 50 years ago. There are lots of other lawyers and other judges. There’s no need for a judge to preside over a case in which her impartiality may reasonably be questioned.”

Other jurisdictions also take a dim view of such relationships.

The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline leveled misconduct charges in 2013 against a family court judge in Las Vegas for carrying on a relationship with a prosecutor there.

Morehead left the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office on September 12, 2002, after 14 years on the job. She ascended to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas. During her tenure in Wyandotte County, and as a federal prosecutor, Morehead has gained a reputation for aggressively prosecuting cases in Kansas City, Kansas.

In 1997, she famously pursued felony charges against four men accused of burning a dog alive in Kansas City, Kansas, though Kansas didn’t classify animal cruelty as a felony at the time. (Seifert investigated that case as a KCK police officer.)

“She’s a controversial figure over there,” says former federal prosecutor and current private-practice lawyer John Osgood.

Osgood has his own history with Morehead. He defended Kenneth Lain, a Lee’s Summit man indicted in 2010 for driving a gun from Missouri into Kansas and giving it to an acquaintance, without a firearm dealer’s license.

Lain said he wanted to give a gun to Carroll Hill, his family minister, who lives in Shawnee.

The charge against Lain wasn’t strong to start with, and it got flimsier when Morehead added another count to the indictment against Lain. She charged that he had committed the gun crime while being under indictment in Missouri.

But a quick check of court records would have shown that the earlier charges had already been dropped. The day after Morehead amended her charge, she walked back that second count.

The case got worse when it went to trial.

Hill, Morehead’s star witness, filed an affidavit saying that in pretrial meetings, Morehead seemed interested in pressing the case against Lain because she was concerned about Lain’s erratic behavior.

The jury took less than 30 minutes to deliberate before acquitting Lain.

If Morehead had been concerned about Seifert scuttling a 1998 drug case, she should also have worried about Larry 0x000ARoland’s work on a 1996 drug case.

Roland was a Kansas Highway Patrol officer when he stopped a beige Chevy truck hauling a horse trailer on Interstate 35, near 175th Street. Roland later testified that he made the stop because he had seen the truck travel briefly on the shoulder of the road.

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Roland approached the driver, Raul Aguilar, to collect his license and insurance information. Aguilar was driving from Las Vegas to Iowa, with a stop on the way in Oklahoma, to drop off some horses. Roland ran Aguilar’s name through various crime databases, none of which indicated outstanding warrants.

During the stop, the dashboard camera in Roland’s patrol car turned off. (Roland later testified that the camera had run out of tape, an explanation that a federal judge found dubious.) No longer in view of his cruiser’s camera, Roland began inspecting Aguilar’s truck. He asked Aguilar to get out of the vehicle.

Roland believed that Aguilar might be transporting narcotics. He called on another trooper to summon drug dogs.

Roland told Aguilar to follow him to the Kansas Highway Patrol office in Olathe. Once there, Roland had Aguilar show off some rope tricks while a drug dog searched Aguilar’s truck. The dog detected a whiff of cocaine, and Aguilar was arrested.

A federal judge presiding over Aguilar’s case found that Roland had illegally detained Aguilar, and he ordered that the evidence recovered from the traffic stop be thrown out. Federal prosecutors quickly dropped their charges against Aguilar.

Many of the main players in the Bowling-Seifert affair have kept their jobs. Some have been promoted.

Ron Miller, the KCKPD chief during the Bowling case, was last month confirmed by Congress as the U.S. Marshal for the District of Kansas.

When asked if Barry Grissom, U.S. Attorney in Kansas, recommended Miller’s nomination, office spokesman Jim Cross responded in an e-mail: “U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom continues to think that Ron Miller is a perfect fit for the job, given his outstanding background in law enforcement.”

Grissom did not respond to a follow-up letter asking if he had personally recommended Miller for the job.

Miller testified that he had no firsthand knowledge of, or involvement in, the Bowling affair, but Seifert seemed to fall out of Miller’s good graces afterward. One day after Seifert retired from the KCKPD, Miller placed in Seifert’s personnel file a finding that Seifert had violated protocol by talking to Bowling’s defense attorneys without authorization. Because the wrap-up of the Internal Affairs investigation against Seifert coincided with his retirement, Seifert says he was unable to protest the finding.

Terry Zeigler, the captain over the KCKPD’s Internal Affairs Unit at the time, is now the chief of the entire department.

Timothy McCue, the DEA agent who beat up Bowling, still works for the DEA in its St. Louis office.