Many Kansas residents will admit they look the other way when certain laws are ignored. Few people dial 911 when they spot a jaywalker, for instance.

However when the Kansas Legislature, state and local prosecutors and the Kansas courts make significant decisions that some find a contradiction to basic laws, residents start to react.

In examples ranging from seat-belts to late-term abortions, the apparent inability to enforce laws is growing.

In many cases, the reasons are political. In some instances, the reasons are personal. In a few situations, the reason is purely technical. And sometimes, it's a combination of one or more reasons.

Seat belts

For example, a little over a year ago, on July 1, 2007, the city of Topeka enacted a law that allows police officers to pull over drivers 17-years-old and younger if they notice the teens are not wearing a seat belt.

But, according to an AP report, the law has been overlooked because the police department's legal adviser failed to add the statute in the new laws report that all officers are given. So city police don't enforce it.

Meanwhile, the Kansas Highway Patrol has been trying to enforce it for the city. According to Trooper Hillary Alters the law is difficult to enforce. "You can look at a kid and go, 'They look 17,'" Alters told the AP. "Then you pull them over and they're 20.'"

Murder

Occasionally, enforcement is a matter of prosecutorial discretion.

For example, a Leavenworth county judge ruled Wednesday there was enough evidence to try Lansing resident, Sedale Fox, with murdering his girlfriend and their unborn child, who was due in March. Fox allegedly shot and killed Olivia Jackson, 20, last January inside Fox's mobile home.

However Leavenworth county attorney, Frank Kohl, a Democrat, only charged Fox with the murder of Jackson, despite the 2007 passing of a law that gives prosecutors the ability to tack on an additional charge for the murder of unborn children.  The decision drew strong criticism.

Todd Thompson, the former Leavenworth county assistant prosecutor, said that considering the facts, Kohl should have charged Fox with the additional count.

"You can always dismiss and amend charges all the way through preliminary trials." Thompson told KansasLiberty.com. "Maybe he was trying to do something safer until then but I think he had the grounds and he could have charged [Fox with the additional count]."

Kohl, who fired Thompson last month after Thompson announced he was running for the Leavenworth county attorney position, could not be reached for comment. A source close to the case suggested Kohl felt he could not charge two capitol crimes at once and so chose one capitol murder charge as more punitive than two separate first-degree murder charges. The Kansas Supreme Court recently overturned a sentence in a similar case.

Nevertheless, Kohl's decision left some critics wondering if the reasons were political. Rep. Steve Brunk, R-Bel Aire, sponsored legislation in 2007 that allows a second murder charge to be brought for the murder of an unborn child.

The legislation is often referred to as Alexa's Law and is named after Alexa, the unborn daughter of Wichita murder victim, Chelsea Ann Brooks. Brooks was murdered while pregnant in 2006 when she was 14-years-old.

Groups supporting abortion had opposed the law, but Brunk said the legislation had been intended for situations such as the murder of Jackson and her unborn child.

"The primary purpose of Alexa's Law is to give prosecutors opportunities to put forth justice and I would think Alexa's Law would very much apply to that case," he said. "By only getting one conviction you are missing out on an opportunity for justice. Our hope is that this is a decision made from a legal standpoint rather than a political standpoint."

Illegal immigration

In some instances, one law can work against enforcement of others.

Lenient illegal immigration legislation, for example, is another state issue that has been making headlines recently. Earlier this month the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold the Kansas law that allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state rather than out-of-state tuition.

Opponents of the law question its credibility since it gives a financial break to illegal immigrants that is not available to legal citizens, thus making breaking the law a requirement for receiving the benefit.

During last year's legislative session Senate Bill 458 was introduced in an attempt to repeal this law.  Ralph Snyder, Legislative Chairman for the Kansas American Legion, provided testimony in support of the  bill, arguing the out-of-state tuition law was wrong for a multitude of reasons.

"To protect our borders is a federal matter. But just because the federal government is failing its citizens by not protecting our borders [it] doesn't mean states like Kansas should violate federal law by granting in-state tuition rates for illegal aliens," Snyder said in a written statement. "How in good conscience can the state of Kansas charge a U.S. citizen from another state higher out-of-state tuition rates while granting in-state rates to someone who is here illegally? How can Kansas deny the child of a career soldier, whose home of record has always remained in Kansas, in-state tuition?

Senate Bill 458 also provided for the use of E-Verify, a service that allows employers to better assess whether or not they are hiring legal employees and not illegal immigrants by providing employers with access to a federal database.

Employers verify whether or not they can legally hire the individual by sending personal information obtained through forms filled out by the prospective employee to the online government database. The database works to match the personal information to government records within seconds.

The system is used by the federal government.

Companies who knowingly hire illegal workers are subject to penalties.

But Amy Blankenbiller, president and CEO of the Kansas Chamber, said the Chamber opposed the E-Verify measure because she felt it would place an unfair burden on business owners.

"We want business owners to follow the rules and make sure they are hiring folks that are here legally but its hard for them to be the police when they don't know which of the documents are fake," Blankenbiller said.  

Several other business-affiliated groups also opposed the measure, including the Kansas Farm Bureau, the Kansas Livestock Association and the Kansas Agribusiness Retailers Association.

Ed Hayes, the Kansas director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corp, said he felt Kansas was encouraging illegal activity with its recent illegal immigration decisions. Hayes, a retired police captain, and said the manner in which Kansas rewards illegal immigration legislation and laws does not make sense. 

"I upheld the law for many years," he said, "and now they are just picking and choosing the ones they want to enforce."

Hayes said if Kansas continues to be easy on illegal immigrants they can expect to see an increase in problems of public safety and welfare.

"People are afraid of being called a racist but they have to get over it because its not about skin color," he said. "It's about public safety."

Abortion laws

On the always sensitive late-term abortion front, the Kansas courts have made enforcement of state laws nearly impossible. Cases against both Wichita late-term abortion provider George Tiller and Kansas City-area abortion provider Planned Parenthood have been delayed repeatedly by judges granting extensions to the attorney's for the defendants.

Cases that can't be delayed by judges are often ambushed in grand jury proceedings by prosecutors before an indictment is issued.

In one such instance. a grand jury decided not to indict Tiller for allegations of providing illegal late-term abortions.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Tedesco Foulston claimed the grand jury had said that there was not sufficient evidence to indict Tiller. 

But that wasn't quite the whole story. The jury also said it appeared state laws had been violated but that an indictment would not be possible until the legislature clarified the language of the law. The grand jury said "interpretations" of the law on late-term abortions had been so confusing that it was impossible to determine how the law should be applied.

The only interpretations of the law made so far have been those by prosecutors, like Foulston and former Attorney General Paul Morrison, who personally disagreed with the law to begin with. Critics also pointed out that Morrison and others also had benefited from the support given them by PACs associated with abortion providers.

Foulston refused to comment on the charges.

Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy advisor for Operation Rescue, a pro-life activist organization, said the Kansas legal system has made it unreasonably difficult to have the state's laws enforced against Tiller.

"It is in my opinion that the grand jury was misdirected by the district attorney into thinking they could not indict," she said.

The grand jury's statement seems to support Sullenger's claim.

As for enforcement, Sullenger thinks it should be much more straight forward: "What he is doing is clearly illegal."

Holly Smith

for KansasLiberty.com

The Week in Review