‘Crime is not being prosecuted’: Wyandotte County DA Mark Dupree endangers public safety
Something is wrong, dangerously wrong, in Wyandotte County. And it’s spilling out into the entire Kansas City region.
Whether through incompetence or inexperience, the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office is inarguably playing Russian roulette with the public’s safety. And people may be dying as a result.
In an investigation by The Star, alarmed sources inside the criminal justice system have warned about District Attorney Mark Dupree’s presiding over shockingly lenient plea deals, missing and belated subpoenas, unlawful delays in producing evidence for defense attorneys and violent cases being dismissed and suspects let free.
After The Star’s review of nearly 50 criminal cases that local legal experts found poorly handled, and interviews with multiple prosecutors, victims and even defense attorneys, it’s inescapable that the bungled prosecutions of two high-profile alleged sex offenders — Dennis Clark, a nurse accused of sexually assaulting anesthetized patients at two Kansas City-area hospitals, and Michael E. Mastel, a former Wyandotte County deputy charged with child sex abuse — are just the tip of a jagged iceberg of fumbled cases under Dupree.
Mastel’s case was nearly dismissed last year due to prosecutorial negligence. Clark’s jury in November acquitted him on one count and hung on four others — nearly acquitting him on those, too — despite his being previously convicted in an identical case of sexual assault on anesthetized patients in Johnson County.
Multiple people have been murdered after their alleged killers slipped out of the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s grasp: Antoine Fielder, whom the office twice unsuccessfully prosecuted in 2017 for the murder of Kelsey Ewonus, is now charged with the June 2018 murders of two Wyandotte County sheriff’s deputies. And Jermelle Andre-Lamont Byers — accused of killing Dennis G. Edwards and Lachell Day at Edwards Original Corner Market in July 2019 — was allowed in 2017 to plead to mere attempted criminal possession of a firearm after initially being charged with aggravated assault for shooting at two women.
Had Fielder been successfully prosecuted, and had Byers been put in prison in 2017, those four people could be alive today.
In at least two separate murder cases, a Dupree prosecutor failed to even call detectives to testify at trial, and both suspects were subsequently acquitted.
In one of the two cases, Nicholas Magee was charged in the June 2018 double murder of Jocelyn Ybarra and her unborn child. In the other, Tremayne L. Quinn was charged with first-degree murder in a 2017 killing. In both trials, defense attorneys used the lack of police testimony to plant doubt in the jurors’ minds.
And in a dramatic and highly unusual moment that speaks volumes about the quality of justice in Wyandotte County, the Magee jury actually asked to address the judge about “the evidence that perhaps could have been collected and was not provided” — questions that might have been answered with a detective’s testimony.
Meanwhile, Quinn’s defense attorney, Gary Stone, told The Star that had he been the prosecutor, “I would’ve called the detectives.” When police are not called to testify, he said, “I think a prosecution loses credibility.”
Wyandotte County DA’s dubious data on crime
Dupree and his spokesperson did not respond to repeated inquiries from The Star. In an interview on Facebook July 7, Dupree claimed his conviction rate at trial is 80%, compared with 60% under his predecessor, Jerry Gorman.
“Of the cases we take to trial, we’re winning. We win at trial when we go,” Dupree said.
Former Wyandotte County assistant district attorney Jennifer Tatum takes issue with that claim, saying her calculations show that conviction rates under both Gorman and Dupree generally have been in the 60% range. But she says Gorman’s office went to trial more than twice as much, averaging 79 trials a year compared with Dupree’s 35.
And noting that Dupree’s budget is now $1.4 million larger than Gorman’s, Tatum said, “His administration is doing less work, with the same or worse results than Mr. Gorman’s office, for way more money.”
Dupree also claimed that crime is down 11% since he took office. But the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department reports that homicides are up 180%, aggravated assaults are up 70%, shootings into occupied vehicles are up 46%, burglary is up 26% and violent crime is up 12% in the past year.
Moreover, at least four additional killings have simply gone unprosecuted by Dupree’s office: In two separate cases, a homicide and a triple homicide/arson, suspects have gone free due to the failure of Dupree’s office to produce witnesses known to the prosecution.
These cases and many more are a topic of great concern among lawyers, prosecutors and law enforcement officers — and, astoundingly, even criminal defense attorneys. In fact, plea deals under Dupree have become so generous, says criminal defense attorney and vocal Dupree critic KiAnn Caprice, that she and other defense lawyers are shaking their heads in amazement.
She was once a supporter of Dupree’s, but, “Then I started getting plea deals on cases that went from a happy surprise to making me feel like, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting these deals.’ I was talking to attorneys who were getting the same deals.”
Another defense attorney, James Spies, agreed, saying the lax plea deals may be great for clients but, “You come to a realization this is not good for the community as a whole. You start realizing something’s wrong.”
What’s going on?
“What’s going on is crime is not being prosecuted in this county,” Caprice says. “Victims are not being represented and supported by the district attorney’s office like they need to be.”
Local legal experts cite the wholesale firing and fleeing of experienced prosecutors from Dupree’s office and the office’s subsequent aversion or perhaps inability to take cases to trial.
“I’ve heard people within the office tell me that. They want to try a case and they’re told, ‘no, just plead it,’” Tatum, who once worked under Dupree, says about a reluctance by his office to take cases to trial. After Dupree fired a handful of experienced prosecutors following his election in 2016, Tatum said, there was no one to mentor young up-and-coming prosecutors: “There’s no leadership, there’s no experience.”
“Since taking office, he has lost even more seasoned prosecutors,” defense attorney Spies told The Star Editorial Board. “The fact is, I simply cannot think of anyone over there I would consider a seasoned trial lawyer. They don’t have any.”
Plea deals raise concern
The courts’ patience with Dupree’s office and its bizarre misadventures may be coming to an end, with a judge’s reluctant decision last September to actually sanction the district attorney’s office financially for such sloppy work in the Clark case that it nearly had to be dismissed.
Everyone in the legal community knows about the alarming problems at the Wyandotte County district attorney’s office, most prominently the permissive plea deals, says Kristiane Bryant, another former prosecutor there who is now running for Dupree’s seat in the Aug. 4 primary election. Since leaving the Wyandotte County office, Bryant has become the trial team leader in the Jackson County Prosecutor’s violent crimes unit.
“It’s been so egregious that people have been talking about it for a couple years,” Bryant said of the plea deals in Wyandotte County.
Former Wyandotte County assistant district attorney Mollie Hill examined 10 plea deals and stalled prosecutions under Dupree at the request of The Star Editorial Board. She found serious fault with nine of the cases and expressed no opinion on the other.
“Prosecutors make life-and-death decisions in people’s lives,” Hill said. “That’s why it’s such a huge responsibility to be a prosecutor. I’m very concerned. This is a public safety issue, and the public should know about it.”
Meanwhile, Dupree is the subject of multiple ethical complaints filed with the Kansas Office of the Disciplinary Administrator, several of which allege abusive treatment of a murder victim’s loved ones.
Lawyers alarmed at crime under district attorney
Sources in the legal, law enforcement and victim communities were eager to discuss the Wyandotte County DA’s office allowing overly indulgent plea deals, sloppy subpoenaing of witnesses, and continually letting violent offenders wriggle off the hook.
The result of all this and more is that the Wyandotte County district attorney’s office has perversely become a perceived public safety hazard.
“It’s getting scary around here,” Caprice said. “Scary.”
Tatum says one of the reasons she left Dupree’s office was the lack of experience and support around her.
“I wasn’t getting much support. I didn’t have anyone to ask questions. I had to ask questions of people who had already left,” Tatum said. “There was no one there that could help me because they just don’t know. There’s no leadership, there’s no experience. I felt alone. They have no one to train them. No one.”
Dupree claimed in the July 7 Facebook interview that turnover is not a problem in his office, especially since he convinced the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas to increase what he termed the worst-in-the-state pay for assistant prosecutors there.
Another former prosecutor under Dupree, though, agreed with those citing a lack of seasoned prosecutors in Dupree’s office.
“He unfortunately fired basically anyone who had experience. It’s kind of the blind leading the blind,” says Danielle Sediqzad. “I felt that, in order to keep my license in good standing, I needed to be someplace where I could be mentored by attorneys who knew what they were doing.”
Kristen Chowning-Martin, who was an assistant district attorney under two previous Wyandotte County DAs — and who helped oversee Dupree when he was an intern in the office — no longer lives in the area but frets for her mother and sister who do.
“I hope they’re not the victim of a crime while this guy’s the DA,” she said. “He just doesn’t seem that competent in making decisions and prosecuting criminals.”
As The Star’s investigation has found, such concerns certainly aren’t lost on families who have already been victimized by violent crime in Wyandotte County.