Scoff Law
Sgt. Eric Greenwell, sitting in a coffeehouse on Main Street, keeps glancing over a reporter’s shoulder to scan every face that enters the place, like he’s looking for someone. But it’s a person he recently caught whom he’s here to talk about.
For two months last fall, the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department’s Career Criminal Squad, which Greenwell oversees, had searched for a notorious house burglar named Kevin Givens. Two of Greenwell’s detectives, James Herrington and Richard Marquez, had been following Givens’ trail for weeks, surveilling neighborhoods south of the Plaza and west of Rockhill, driving with their headlights dimmed on the lookout for the career burglar. They suspected Givens in several break-ins in the area but were waiting for more evidence to tie him to a crime.
It was a patrol officer who finally nabbed their quarry. On November 16, a patrolman spotted Givens carrying a television out of a house on 74th Street. Givens dropped the TV and sprinted, but the 41-year-old suspect was nabbed a few blocks away. His 1992 Ford F-150 pickup truck, meanwhile, turned out to have several stolen firearms piled in its bed.
Relaxing his broad shoulders and leaning back in his chair, Greenwell says confidently, “I will be retired the next time Kevin Givens commits another crime.”
Since the mid-1980s, Givens has tallied at least a dozen felonies in Missouri and Kansas — stealing cars, burglarizing homes, forging signatures on stolen checks. Yet despite his lengthy record, he was never sentenced to longer than seven years in prison and usually served far less.
Out of the lockup most recently since last March, Givens had continued his habit of entering other people’s homes. But this time, caught with a truck bed stacked with shotguns and other weapons, Givens is in a world of hurt. It’s a federal crime for a felon to possess a gun, and Givens faces much stiffer penalties in a district where U.S. Attorney Todd Graves has put special emphasis on putting away felons caught with firearms.
Givens may finally go away for a very long time.
Of course, if he’d been breaking into houses in California with the same kind of arrest record, he’d long ago have risked being put away as a lifer. Under the state’s “Three Strikes” law, a repeat offender like Givens faces a sentence of 25 years to life after his third felony.
Since passage of California’s notorious law in 1994, its guidelines have been relaxed in some ways, but it’s still so harsh that many of the state’s citizens have spoken out against it. In November, more than 5 million Californians voted to weaken the statute but failed to gain a majority.
That kind of opposition has been mobilized by stories such as that of Leandro Andrade, a California man who is serving two sentences of 25 years to life for stealing nine videotapes in 1995. He smuggled copies of Snow White and Cinderella out of two Kmart stores for his nieces as Christmas presents. But with two prior convictions for home burglaries committed more than 20 years earlier, his petty theft of the tapes was treated like a felony and became his third and fourth strikes. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sentence. Andrade won’t be eligible for parole until he’s 87.
Now that’s harsh punishment.
Missouri and Kansas don’t need new sentencing laws that could put away a person for life for stealing a few videotapes. But does the long career of a serial criminal like Givens suggest that local sentencing practices are too lenient?
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A three-strikes rule that puts a nonviolent offender away for life may be beyond the pale.
But what about a ten-strikes rule? Is that so unreasonable?
Strike 1. A man returning from work in December 1984 arrives at his house on East 54th Street to find it ransacked. Two televisions, stereo equipment, a microwave oven and other items are missing. Police lift fingerprints and find a match that points to Kevin Givens, who had been fingerprinted earlier for juvenile offenses, including possessing alcohol as a minor. It’s his first adult crime, and after he’s taken into custody, he writes a three-page statement admitting his role in the burglary. But he also implicates a friend, Eric Walker, and Givens is spared prison time, sentenced by Judge Rosa Tillman to 24 months’ probation on a reduced charge of trespassing. He is ordered to pay the homeowner restitution for the stolen items. (There’s no record of whether he did so.) He is 21 years old.
Missouri Supreme Court Judge Mike Wolff says Kevin Givens is an anomaly. Wolff, chairman of the state Sentencing Advisory Commission studying trends in Missouri sentencing, says the majority of people sent to prison don’t go back after they’re released.
“One of the things you try to do in any type of sentencing scheme is to save your prison space for people who are violent or harmful,” Wolff says. Those who are sent away should be rehabilitated, not thrown away, he adds. According to the Missouri Department of Corrections, 72 percent of released convicts never return to prison.
Most felons make the best of their second chances, Wolff says. “You have the unusual case like him [Givens]. But you don’t make your whole set of rules geared around your worst people. You gear them toward the norm.”
Missouri sentencing is tough on criminals, he insists. With repeat offenders, the sentencing guidelines change. County judges can nearly double sentences under laws designed to punish persistent felons. And the time a convicted criminal must serve before becoming eligible for parole increases with each conviction. The system is designed to make recidivists do hard time.
But those sentencing penalties seem to have less effect on burglars in particular. John Fougere, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, points out that burglars return to prison at nearly double the rate of other criminals. The recidivism rate for burglars is 49 percent in the first two years after release, 56 percent after three years, and 62 percent after five years.
How does a person continue to earn parole after committing a dozen felonies?
“That may reflect nothing more than this guy comes into the prison system and impresses people, is not a big danger, and they parole him,” Wolff says.
Strike 2. A few months after his trespass conviction, Givens is charged with stealing a woman’s 1976 Buick LeSabre from her workplace parking lot. Three days after the car is reported stolen, police spot Givens driving it at the corner of Blue Ridge Parkway and Eastwood Trafficway. Givens runs from the car when the police try to stop him, and the police release their dog, which takes Givens down.
Givens is sentenced to 60 days on a conviction of tampering.
Strike 3. In July 1986, a man reports the attempted theft of his new company-issued two-door Chevrolet Camaro. He says that the evening before, he parked the car in front of his home in the 6600 block of Edgevale and locked the car. The next morning, the window is partly down and there’s damage to the steering column. Investigators lift fingerprints from the top of the window and make a match with Givens. Givens is charged a few days later but denies the attempted theft. Judge Tillman sentences him to three years in prison for tampering.
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Sen. Harold Caskey, a Democrat from Butler, is leaving the state Legislature because of term limits, but he’ll remain on the state’s sentencing committee with Wolff. He points out that the average prisoner in Missouri serves 50 percent of his sentence. “That’s higher than the national average,” he says.
Caskey says Missouri already has its own version of a three-strikes law, known as Truth in Sentencing. Missouri criminals serve 15 percent to 40 percent of the sentence for a first conviction, 50 percent of the sentence for a second conviction, and 60 percent to 70 percent of the sentence for the third. For dangerous felonies, criminals must serve 85 percent of their time.
“Our system works,” Caskey says. More laws on the books only fill up prisons, he adds. “Save the beds for violent criminals.”
After hearing about Givens’ record in Missouri, Caskey says Givens could be punished under the most severe sentencing guidelines in county court. “If the courts wanted to, they could probably put the guy in prison and throw away the key with enhanced punishment and prior and persistent offenses,” Caskey says.
Strike 4. On June 21, 1987, a man inside his home on East Gregory notices two men walking around his house. A four-door Oldsmobile is backed into his driveway.
The man goes outside and sees Givens sitting in the driver’s seat of the running car. The man tries to reach into the car to take the keys out of the ignition but then notices that there are no keys and the steering column is damaged. Givens punches the accelerator. The man’s arm catches on the steering wheel, and he’s dragged about 150 feet. He hangs on as the car travels through his yard, over an embankment and onto the street. The man yells to stop so he can let go, but Givens accelerates. The man eventually pushes away and falls into a grassy ditch, suffering injuries to his arm and the bottom of one foot.
Police determine that the car had been stolen days earlier.
Strike 5. Eleven days later, on July 2, officers are called to a home on Manchester to investigate a report of prowlers. They find a window-unit air conditioner pushed inside the home. Inside, they discover Terrance L. Rollins hiding behind a television in the living room. Three pieces of jewelry valued at $3,300 are missing. Rollins is charged with burglary. He tells officers that he is working with Givens.
Strike 6. In October 1987, a man reports that someone has stolen his 1980 Honda Accord. A week later, the car is spotted by an officer, who tries to stop the driver but fails. A police helicopter gives chase. Two people bail out of the Honda, but the helicopter stays with the driver, who turns out to be Givens.
He tells police that he found the vehicle with its door open and keys in the ignition at a gas station at 47th Street and the Paseo. “Well, I was at Amoco filling station, and I seen the car, got in the car, and took off in it,” Givens tells the court before he is sentenced. “I drove around in it until it got later on that night, drove to over here on 43rd, and these cops, well, they was getting ready to stop me. I took off in the car, and they chased me.”
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Before he is sentenced for all three of his crimes in the summer and fall of 1987, Givens tells the judge he was high on cocaine when he dragged the man with the Oldsmobile and during the burglary with Rollins. But he admits that his mind was clear enough to know what he was doing.
Givens is sentenced to seven years for assault, seven years for burglary and three years for tampering. The sentences are ordered to run concurrently, not consecutively. Although Missouri documents state that Givens is released in July 1992, police reports indicate that he is picking up new charges a year earlier.
Samuel Walker, 83, tells the Pitch he was under the impression that his grandson Kevin Givens had left his life of crime. Givens had recently remarried and was working a steady job at Penner’s Discount Warehouse. “When he got married, I said, ‘Kevin, you’re married, and that is the thing to do. Be with your wife and your family, and whatever else, be a good person.'”
Walker says Givens seemed “well-adjusted” after his most recent release from prison, in March 2004. But now that Givens is back in custody, Walker isn’t sure if he’ll accept his calls from jail.
“Maybe down the line I might, but right now it’s a disappointment to me,” Walker says. “I am absolutely surprised that Kevin went this far this time. I don’t know where he went wrong any of the times, other than, you know, he just went wrong.”
Despite Kevin’s record, Walker thinks Kevin could still make good with his life. He says he has never seen any sign of violence in him. Even so, Walker admits there are many things he doesn’t know about his grandson.
“I think they’re wrong that he’s not fit for society,” Walker says to anyone who thinks his grandson should be locked up forever. “I’ve never known him to hurt anybody. But I guess he did things that I wouldn’t know about. He certainly wouldn’t tell me.”
Strike 7. In July 1991, Givens is charged with aggravated false impersonation in Johnson County for pretending to be a man named Morris Givens. He is sentenced to two years, to run consecutively with the Missouri convictions.
Strike 8. In December 1991, Givens batters two police officers and assaults another. He is sentenced to one year for each count, to run concurrently. (Strikes 7 and 8 occurred in Kansas, where law-enforcement agencies refused to divulge more details to the Pitch about these convictions.)
Strike 9. In October 1992, a homeowner on West 90th Street discovers his rear basement window pried open. Two televisions, two VCRs, a cordless telephone, several duffel bags and 63 CDs — items valued at $5,500 — are missing from the house. Meanwhile, police learn that the manager of the 7th Heaven record store on Troost has called to report that Givens, a regular customer, has brought in 64 CDs “of an unusual musical variety” to trade at the store. They match the stolen CDs. Givens is charged with receiving stolen property. On October 23, while being questioned by detectives, Givens tells police he had “just gotten out of the pen” and was not about to say anything about any cases. He is sentenced to three years by Circuit Judge Vernon Scoville.
“There are people who have been convicted in the criminal justice system a lot more times,” says Retired Johnson County District Judge Gerald Hougland. “A ten-strike rule would not be at all unreasonable.”
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Hougland says he was known as a “hanging judge” during his days on the bench. He says it makes sense that a man who has been convicted of ten separate felonies should spend the remainder of his life in prison.
Too many cases, he says, are settled by plea agreements based on reduced charges. “It’s an out-and-out charade,” Hougland explains. “I would like to see sentences mean what they say and be what they actually are. I am much more inclined toward the protection of the public than concerned about the criminal.”
Last year, the Missouri Department of Corrections’ budget was $576 million, up from $220 million in 1994. During that decade, the prison population increased from 17,334 in December 1994 to a current population of 30,696.
If the public wants to ensure that career criminals stay in prison, taxpayers must foot the bill for more prisons, Hougland says. “It’s a failure in the system that the state will not provide the beds to be able to house these people.” The judge blames legislators, who he says are often two-faced on the issue. “They’re going to tell you that they personally are in favor of tougher sentencing on criminal convictions, but they’re going to say in the next breath, the people who send them to Jeff City do not want to pick up the financial tab.”
Strike 10. In January 1993, Givens forces entry into a Lenexa home while a woman is inside. That July, for his tenth felony conviction, Givens faces none other than “hanging judge” Hougland. Rather than throw the book at him, however, Hougland accepts the deal worked out between the prosecutor and Givens’ public defender, which has Givens plead guilty to aggravated burglary. He also agrees to pay the woman $100 to repair her door.
Hougland sentences Givens to a minimum of four years in prison, with an extension to 20 years if he doesn’t show signs of rehabilitation. Givens is released from prison four and a half years later, in January 1998. Hougland tells the Pitch he doesn’t remember the case.
Strikes 11 and 12. In March 2000, a man living in the 8300 block of Locust sees a silver four-door car stop across the street from his home. It’s between 8 and 9 p.m. on a Friday when he knows the people living there are not home. He sees at least three people get out of the car, and the driver and front passenger switch places. He takes down the license plate number and calls police as the car drives away. Police tell the man the car is being investigated in a string of burglaries.
A man named Brad Stonner, 31, later returns to the house across the street and finds that recording gear, video games, televisions and a VCR have been stolen. Even his new size 10-1/2 Skechers are gone.
“They stole my shoes,” Stonner tells the Pitch. “They stole everything.”
Stonner’s roommate, Terry, is also missing a checkbook. In the following weeks, Terry’s checks begin appearing around town in odd places, Stonner says. Go Chicken Go and Bob Evans restaurants are two that he remembers.
Two checks totaling $1,302.52 are passed at an O’Reilly Auto Parts store on Troost. The store manager later identifies Kevin Givens from a photo lineup as the man who called himself Terry.
Givens is arrested a week later and charged with forgery. He is found with an ID card that has his photo but Terry’s name and address. Givens had written a total of 14 stolen checks for $3,168.67.
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“It should be noted that the defendant has been connected to at least seven burglaries, and the value of the property taken in the burglaries is over $45,000, which does not include the checks that have been cashed from these burglaries,” the police tell the court.
In June 2001, Givens pleads guilty to two counts of forgery and is sentenced to two years in prison by Associate Circuit Judge Richard Standridge.
Standridge tells the Pitch that he allowed the two two-year penalties for Givens’ forgery charges to run concurrently because that was the deal worked out between the county prosecutor and Givens’ public defender. “That was my duty over there, to agree to pleas,” he says.
Blake Reeves, Givens’ defender in the forgery conviction, doesn’t remember the case today. But he says it isn’t unusual for nonviolent habitual criminals to get light sentences to make room for more dangerous criminals.
“They don’t suffer ultimate penalties, because they’re not committing a serious enough crime,” Reeves says.
After his release from prison in March 2004, Givens married, which didn’t end his troubles.
On October 18, police responded to the Givens household on a report of gunshots fired.
Givens’ wife, Vicki, told officer Ian Bussell that Givens had grabbed her by the neck and pushed her to the ground during an argument. Givens threatened to smash her with a beer bottle. She told him to get out of the house. Givens left, but then returned minutes later, banging on the front door. He went inside and climbed stairs to the bedroom holding a beer bottle. His wife armed herself with a handgun that the couple kept in the bedroom, and when he approached her, she shot him twice.
She shot the gun three more times, missing Givens as he ran from the house. He drove to a hospital.
While recuperating there, he told police that he would not prosecute his wife. She was released from questioning without being charged.
Val Kearney, who supervised Givens at his Penner’s Discount Warehouse job, says she was concerned when she heard he’d been shot.
“Kevin was a good person,” Kearney tells the Pitch. “He came into work every day. He stayed over when we needed him. It was like he didn’t have worries and didn’t let anything bother him. He was a free-going person, always laughing.”
After his two-week hospital stay, Givens returned to work but wasn’t at full strength. Business, meanwhile, had slowed. “We put him on call,” Kearney says. “We laid him off.”
Meanwhile, Greenwell’s detectives at the Career Criminal Squad started checking into reports of a Ford pickup that was seen driving suspiciously in the neighborhoods south of the Plaza.
Besides his 12 felonies, Givens also absconded twice while on probation in Missouri, once removing an electronic bracelet he was required to wear that allowed court officials to monitor his whereabouts, and another time ditching a halfway house for parolees while he was supposed to be out looking for work.
After being released last March from prison on his 2001 forgery convictions, Givens requested that an unfinished probation sentence from a previous Kansas offense be transferred to Missouri. Fougere says Missouri officials agreed.
When Givens was arrested this past November, the state of Missouri had second thoughts and transferred the probation requirement back to Kansas.
“This guy, obviously he’s had some problems,” Fougere says. “We’re basically saying we’re not going to supervise him again.”
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On November 22, Givens stood before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Hays in a federal detention hearing, charged with being a felon in possession of guns stolen from a home on 74th Street. U.S. Attorney Daniel Nelson cited Givens’ extensive criminal history. “Detention would be appropriate,” he told the court.
Givens’ attorney, David Owen, countered that Givens’ mother had co-signed a bond and offered to let Givens live with her. Owens said that Givens was not a flight risk and cited his employment at Penner’s.
Hays denied the request. Givens will remain in custody while he awaits trial.
Givens faces a minimum of 15 years in federal prison if convicted of being in possession of a firearm while burglarizing a home. Taking into account his prior convictions, including three violent felonies, Givens could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
In federal court, judges have no discretion in sentencing, and there is no chance for parole.
Greenwell keeps checking out people coming into the coffeehouse. Even though it looks like Givens’ career is over, there are others whom Greenwell wants just as badly to find. In the months before Givens’ arrest, Greenwell’s detectives captured two men responsible for hundreds of break-ins.
Burglars are often the hardest criminals to catch, Greenwell says. In 2001, only about 8 out of every 100 property crimes in Kansas City were solved. The average clearance rate over the past 14 years is just over 11 percent.
Soon enough, he says, a new chronic thief will begin showing a pattern, and his officers will begin another hunt. But for today, at least, Greenwell is satisfied.
