Kansas prosecutor faces 2nd ethics complaint, the latest from an overturned rape case
A former deputy district attorney for Shawnee County is facing a second disciplinary case, this one related to a double rape prosecution that divided a small Kansas town and was overturned on appeal.
The state agency that investigates and disciplines attorneys in Kansas said it found probable cause that Jacqie Spradling violated ethics rules for lawyers when she was acting as a special prosecutor in the case of a Holton, Kansas, man who went on trial for sex crimes in 2017.
Spradling also faces a disciplinary complaint for her prosecution of a Topeka double murder case, and left the Shawnee County prosecutor’s office in 2016. Before taking the post in Topeka, she had been a prosecutor in Johnson County. She is now listed as the Bourbon County attorney and an assistant county attorney in Allen County.
Last week, the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator for Kansas announced it will institute formal charges against Spradling for her conduct in the case of Jacob Ewing, 25, who was found guilty in June 2017 on two counts of rape, four counts of aggravated criminal sodomy and other offenses. The trial raised controversy in Holton, a town of about 3,300 people about 33 miles north of Topeka.
In March 2019, the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed Ewing’s conviction. The court said in its decision that Spradling made multiple prosecutorial errors and “inflamed the passions and prejudices of the jury.”
Ewing will go to trial again in Jackson County, Kansas.
Ewing’s mother, Wendy Ewing, made the ethics complaint against Spradling.
Spradling did not respond to a request for comment.
Previous complaint
In March, the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator will hold a hearing in Spradling’s other ethics complaint, concerning her prosecution of Dana Chandler, 60.
Chandler was sentenced in August 2012 to life in prison for the murder of her ex-husband and his fiance in Topeka.
In April 2018, the Kansas Supreme Court reversed her conviction. The court said Spradling had made misleading statements to the jury that amounted to prosecutorial misconduct.
“This prosecution unfortunately illustrates how a desire to win can eclipse the State’s responsibility to safeguard the fundamental constitutional right to a a fair trial,” the court wrote.
In July 2016, attorney Keen Umbehr sent a six-page complaint to the state’s disciplinary office alleging misconduct during the Chandler trial.
The disciplinary committee found probable cause in that complaint in November 2018.
Umbehr said the probable cause finding in the Ewing case demonstrates a pattern of behavior that fractures the public’s trust.
“If we lose confidence in the judicial system, we have anarchy,” Umbehr told The Star.
Chandler’s retrial in Shawnee County has been delayed several times and is tentatively scheduled for March 2021.
