State rests in Flack trial
Closing statements coming Wednesday in murder case
On trial for his life, Kyle Flack accepted a single Life Saver candy from his defense attorney during a break Monday.
Moments later, the prosecution rested its 11-day case against Flack in Franklin County District Court.
When the court turned it over to the 30-year-old defendant’s attorneys, they didn’t call any witnesses, nor did he testify.
Flack has pleaded not guilty to the 2013 shotgun slayings of four people in rural Ottawa. He is charged with capital murder in the deaths of Kaylie Smith Bailey, 21, and her 18-month-old daughter, Lana Bailey. He also is charged with premeditated first-degree murder in the deaths of Andrew Stout, 30, and Steven White, 31, criminal possession of a firearm and misdemeanor sexual battery against Kaylie Bailey.
If jurors find him guilty on the murder charges after deliberations, they would then decide whether he should be sentenced to death for capital murder in addition to life in prison with no chance of parole for 50 years.
Prosecutors — Stephen Hunting, Franklin County attorney, and Victor Braden, deputy Kansas attorney general — introduced nearly 100 witnesses and presented more than 550 exhibits during the first two-weeks of the trial, aiming to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Flack murdered the four people at 3197 Georgia Road, west of Ottawa.
Testimony came from Flack’s parents, family members and friends of the victims, law enforcement agents, crime scene investigators, an entomologist expert who studied maggot activity, the coroner who performed the autopsies, forensic scientists, blood spatter experts and a geologist with the FBI.
Exhibits included photos of the bodies, Flack’s belongings recovered in Emporia, articles of clothing, ammunition components, receipts, phone records, surveillance videos and even interviews with Flack on the day he was detained.
Flack’s defense attorneys — Timothy Frieden and Maban Wright, both with Kansas’ Death Penalty Defense Unit — aimed to poke holes in the prosecution’s case during cross examination by questioning witnesses about reported drug activity at the Georgia Road residence where three of the bodies were found, as well as unidentified markers of DNA found on Kaylie Bailey and the shotgun said to have been used in the killings.
With the jury momentarily out of the courtroom Monday, Frieden requested the two premeditated first-degree murder charges be merged as “one, large pack” with the capital murder charge.
District Court Judge Eric W. Godderz denied the request, noting that there was a time period between the killings and specific reasons for the separate charges.
Godderz also denied the defense’s motion for judgement of acquittal, as well as renewed motions for change of venue, exclusion of Flack’s interview statements to law enforcement agents, exclusion of certain witness statements and exclusion of various evidence.
Closing statements are scheduled to begin 9 a.m. Wednesday, after Wright requested additional time to prepare statements.
http://cjonline.com/news/2016-03-21/...ts-flack-trial
Bookmarks