Prosecutor in challenged Kansas City murder case was fired for withholding evidence

A prosecutor in a Kansas City murder case now being scrutinized for alleged failure to turn over evidence was fired two years later in part for the same reason, according to court records.

Bryan Krantz, one of the assistant prosecuting attorneys responsible for the 2009 murder conviction of Sylvester R. Sisco II, was fired from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office in 2011.

The reasons for the firing, according to documents in an employment discrimination lawsuit Krantz filed three years later, included his failure to turn over evidence to defense attorneys.

That’s the same thing Sisco says happened in his case: He alleges that prosecutors withheld evidence from his attorney, including the key to video evidence that could have shown he killed the man in self-defense.

It’s the latest in a series of claims over the past decade accusing Jackson County prosecutors of failing to turn over information that could be useful to the defense, as prosecutors are legally obligated to do.

Sisco’s case continues today in Jackson County Circuit Court, where he is asking a judge to vacate his murder conviction. He is serving a life sentence.

Michael Mansur, a spokesman for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, defended Krantz's work in the Sisco case.

“All of his cases were reviewed and no credible discovery violation was determined in the Sisco case,” Mansur wrote in an email. “If such a violation had been discovered, we would have confessed that error.”

The prosecutor's office found some "delayed disclosures" in the Sisco case but none involving the video, Mansur wrote.

Krantz, now a part-time prosecutor for the city attorney’s office in Lee’s Summit, was a Jackson County prosecutor for about 25 years. First hired in 1984, he worked there until taking about three years off in 1987 and then continued until Jean Peters Baker fired him in 2011.

"Our office has disciplined attorneys, including termination, when they have not adhered to their discovery obligations," Mansur wrote in an email to The Star.

Krantz unsuccessfully sued Jackson County, saying he had been discriminated against because of his age. He was 64 in 2012.

According to filings in that lawsuit, an arbitrator found that Krantz was fired because he “violated his prosecutorial obligation by failing to reply to a court-ordered discovery letter and/or provide the defense with requested documents and/or data.”

In Krantz’s filings, he said he was accused of not handing over a transcript to the defense, which he wrote that he did not have.

Other reasons for firing Krantz included a report that he failed to prepare for a hearing in a murder case and failed to tell the court he was unprepared.

Krantz’s supervisor at the time, Tammy Dickinson, told Peters Baker that Krantz lied to the judge during the hearing, according to the lawsuit. Dickinson later became the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri until she was replaced last year.

Seeking a new trial for his employment discrimination lawsuit, Krantz wrote that other Jackson County prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense in other cases, including during the prosecution of Richard Buchli II, a Kansas City attorney who was accused of killing his law partner.

Buchli's murder conviction was thrown out by an appeals court because prosecutors failed to disclose a building surveillance videotape that might have exonerated him. He was released from prison in 2008 and regained his law license in 2013.

Krantz wrote that he should have been able to introduce evidence “to show that other lawyers in the office were recently found to have acted in bad faith in failing to provide discovery in the case of State v. Buchli, causing the defendant in a murder case to be released.”

That they were not disciplined, Krantz wrote, showed that he was being singled out.

During the years the Buchli case played out, judges on several occasions ruled that Jackson County prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that defense attorneys were entitled to.

The Buchli case occurred prior to Peters Baker taking leadership of the prosecutor's office, Mansur noted.

"In part due to the Buchli case, Jean has taken on discovery obligations, making it an office priority," Mansur wrote in an email. "We work every day to ensure we adhere to all discovery obligations."

Her office has fired attorneys when they have not adhered to their discovery obligations, Mansur wrote in an email to The Star.

The Sisco murder case is scheduled for another hearing today in Jackson County Circuit Court, where Judge Joel Fahnestock is expected to hear more evidence in the case.

In a hearing last week, Sisco's defense lawyer at the 2009 trial, Dan Ross, testified that prosecutors provided him with a copy of surveillance video of the shooting but not the software necessary to play it. He also said prosecutors did not provide him with documents that could have been important evidence.

The video showed the Oct. 16, 2006, shooting that killed Jacob Higgs and severely injured Reno Dillard.

Sisco was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

His brother Anthony Sisco was found not guilty of murder after his defense lawyer independently tracked down the video software that Ross said he failed to obtain from prosecutors. He used the video evidence to argue Anthony Sisco acted in self-defense.

Ross testified that prosecutors allowed him to view the video in their office. But without the ability to control the brightness of the video or take it back to his office to work on it, he wasn't able to see Higgs and Dillard allegedly brandishing an AR-15 rifle just before they were shot.

Mansur, the spokesman for the prosecutor's office, wrote in an email Tuesday that Krantz was not the attorney who showed Ross the video. No allegations have been made against the attorney who did show the video.

Mansur also noted that at trial, Sisco had denied being present for the shooting, which would contradict the self-defense claim.

This story was originally published April 11, 2018 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Prosecutor in challenged Kansas City murder case was fired for withholding evidence."