Missouri Court of Appeals reinstates prison sentence of Matthew Hendrix, convicted in the 2010 slaying of businessman Michael Tutera

Matthew Hendrix spent much of his young life in and out of mental institutions before he was convicted for his role in the 2010 shooting death of Kansas City businessman Michael Tutera.

Hendrix was 17 on the evening of May 27, 2010, when he and others entered Tutera’s Sunset Place home just south of the Plaza to carry out a robbery. That robbery turned deadly when Tutera encountered the robbers, who then shot the business executive dead. Tutera and his family were involved in several local real-estate and banking enterprises.

Hendrix would plead guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree burglary and armed criminal action, all of which would put him behind bars for 25 years.

But Hendrix would later ask a Jackson County judge to throw out his guilty plea on the account that his attorney hadn’t fully investigated the possibility of a mental-defect defense.

Hendrix would produce evidence that he had been institutionalized for a menu of mental illnesses over the years, including a stint as recent as five months before Tutera’s death. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, major depression syndrome, schizophrenia, oppositional and defiance disorder, and anxiety disorder, for which he was treated with psychotropic drugs.

It’s rare that a judge accepts an ineffective-counsel claim made by a defendant who has pleaded guilty to a crime. Judges pepper defendants with several questions during guilty-plea hearings to make sure defendants understand what their guilty plea means.

But Jackson County Judge Sandra Midkiff ruled that Hendrix’s attorney hadn’t given true consideration to mounting a mental-defect defense for his client, and that Hendrix pleaded guilty without a clear understanding of his options. Her January 31, 2014, ruling vacated Hendrix’s guilty plea and 25-year prison sentence.

The State of Missouri appealed Midkiff’s decision. The Missouri Court of Appeals on Tuesday decided to reinstate Hendrix’s prison sentence, saying that there was no evidence that a more thorough examination of a mental-defect defense would lead to a reasonable probability that Hendrix would choose not to plead guilty.