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SUNDAY • JANUARY 10 • 2016
Recording may have helped prevent wrongful conviction Attorneys make push to require police to capture interrogations on video By Karen Dillon Twitter: @karensdillon
If detectives had recorded their interrogations of brothers Floyd and Tom Bledsoe, it’s unlikely a jury would have wrongfully convicted Floyd of the 1999 murder of a 14-year-old girl, Floyd’s attorneys believe. The homicide case is convoluted: First Tom confessed to the murder to Jefferson County sheriff’s detectives, to his parents and to his minister, then recanted his story, saying instead that his brother Floyd did it. A jury convicted Floyd of the murder in 2000. He was sent to prison and was released 15 years later — on Dec. 8, 2015 — when a judge determined he had been wrongfully convicted.
Because detectives didn’t record the interrogations, the jury was forced to rely on the testimony of the detectives describing what each of the brothers said, according to court records and Tricia Bushnell, legal director for the Midwest Innocence Project. Attorneys with the innocence project and Project for Innocence and Post-Conviction Remedies at Kansas University represented Floyd in his long bid to prove his innocence. The detectives at Floyd’s trial in 2000 helped boost Tom’s credibility, testifying that “the only time Tom was ever telling the truth was when he recanted,” Bushnell said. On appeal, judges were critical of the detectives’ testimony.
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There needs to be safeguards that ensure (wrongful convictions) don’t happen or minimize the times it does happen.” — Floyd Bledsoe “They should not have been able to bolster Tom’s credibility through law enforcement testimony,” Bushnell said. “Wouldn’t you have wanted the jury to see Tom’s recantation Please see BLEDSOE, page 2A
Improvements to taste, odor of city water supply come with $4 million price tag
KU project will put WWI poetry by immigrants on the Web By Sara Shepherd Twitter: @saramarieshep
American immigrants wrote an “enormous body” of poetry in response to World War I, a Kansas University researcher says. But most isn’t readable without physically digging into a variety of repositories scattered across the country in various libraries and in various forms — from bound books to more fleeting forms of communication such as newsletters and papers. A digitization project is coming to the rescue. Lorie Vanchena, associate professor of German
and academic director for KU’s Eur o p e a n Studies Program, is teaming up with col- Vanchena leagues at Kansas State University on the project to create a digital archive of American poetry written in response to WWI. Specifically, Vanchena’s KU branch of the project is focusing on poems penned by American immigrants, many German but also some Mexican and Irish, Vanchena said. She expects hundreds
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By Nikki Wentling • Twitter: @nikkiwentling
of immigrant poems — plus hundreds more being collected by K-State — to be live on a newly created website by 2017, the 100th anniversary of the year the United States entered WWI. But that, she said, is the “tip of the iceberg.” “We, of course, hope to keep working on this project beyond the commemoration,” Vanchena said. “It has the potential to just grow and grow.” Enabled by a grant from the KU Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities and KU’s Max Kade Center for German-American Studies,
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n June 2012, Lawrence’s water supply took on what city leaders described as an “earthy and musty” taste and odor because of a byproduct of dead algae in the raw water taken from Clinton Lake. The taste, which was the subject of complaints from residents, lasted about 10 days. The levels of the byproduct, called geosmin, recorded in the city’s water supply were almost four times the amount than had ever been recorded previously. “It was a very, very unusual event,” said Dave Wagner, the city’s utilities director, to the City Commission in November. “It was a record-setting event for us. We’ve not seen one since, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see another one.” Nearly four years later, the city is set to make improvements to its water treatment process in an effort to ensure the taste isn’t affected as long — or as powerfully — again. Please see WATER, page 8A
Please see POETRY, page 2A
Readers signal county crisis intervention center as a priority A Thousand Voices
Nikki Wentling nwentling@ljworld.com
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ur newest LJWorld. com survey shows readers are middleof-the road when it comes to the importance of expanding the Douglas County Jail, but a high percentage think an accompanying plan — to establish a mental health crisis intervention center for inmates — should be a priority. The 186-bed county jail, opened in 1999, has been at capacity for 18 months, and Douglas County officials have
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adding more space, and beds, to the jail. Here’s a look at the results: When asked about the jail expansion, 35.4 percent of those surveyed responded with neutrality, answering it was “neither important nor unimportant.” Close to the same number — 34.4 percent — said it was “important.” The remaining results were: 12.3 percent for Please see COUNTY, page 2A
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been considering a potential expansion for more than a year. A proposed 120-bed extension is currently in its design phase. Also proposed is a crisis intervention center — separate from the jail — that would provide alternative treatment for those with mental illness. More of the LJWorld.com readers who were surveyed were on board with the crisis intervention center than
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NEUTRAL: 35.4% IMPORTANT: 34.4% VERY IMPORTANT: 12.3% UNIMPORTANT: 11.4%
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Margin of error: 1.4% to 3%
Renowned fantasticrealist artist and Lawrence resident Kris Kuksi will debut works in a Lawrence Arts Center exhibit this week. A&E, 1D
Vol.158/No.10 40 pages