Maughan & Maughan LC in the news.

Here is the text of an article which ran in the Wichita Eagle on Sunday January 4, 2008 reagrding a client of Maughan & Maughan LC who was convicted of murderin 1977 and will now return to court to try to clear his name after serving his entire sentence.

The article can be found at http://www.kansas.com/news/crime-courts/story/650966.html

The text is provided below:

Modern DNA test sought in 1977 case
A man who served 22 years in prison for murder has requested a hearing in an attempt to prove his innocence.

BY HURST LAVIANA
The Wichita Eagle
A 1977 murder case is going back to a Sedgwick County courtroom this month to see whether modern DNA testing can shed new light on the crime.
The Kansas Court of Appeals ordered the hearing at the request of Merrill Andrews, who was convicted of the murder by a Sedgwick County jury.
Andrews was paroled from a life prison sentence in 1999 after spending 22 years behind bars. He is now serving an unrelated, 10-year federal prison sentence for bank robbery.
The Court of Appeals ruling said a Sedgwick County judge was wrong in denying Andrews the hearing. The ruling also rejected the argument that Andrews was using a 2001 DNA law to go on a fishing exhibition.
"While some aspects of (the law) might allow a 'fishing expedition,' we must conclude such an expedition is one the legislature has concluded is worth conducting," the court said.
The DNA law says anyone convicted in Kansas of rape or murder can ask for a hearing to determine whether evidence includes any biological material that could be subjected to DNA testing.
The Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that tracks wrongful convictions, lists two Kansans among the 225 people nationwide who have been exonerated through DNA testing. Both involved rape convictions that were overturned before the DNA law took effect.
Wichita lawyer Carl Maughan, who was appointed to represent Andrews at the hearing, said his client has always professed his innocence.
"Yes, he's already done his time, but if you were accused of murder and you were the wrong guy, I would assume you'd want to clear your name," Maughan said. "He just maintains that he's innocent on this charge and wants to get it cleared up."
Andrews was convicted in the death of Nola Babb, a 91-year-old retired businesswoman who was beaten in her home in the 3300 block of East 14th Street on Oct. 12, 1977, and later died of her injuries. Police said robbery was the motive.
Prosecutors based their case largely on the testimony of an informant who accused Andrews of being one of three men who broke into Babb's home. Friends of the informant, who has since died of natural causes, later said he lied when implicating Andrews.
Andrews, who later adopted the name Kamanda Kamangeni, built a reputation after his release as a mentor for at-risk youth in Wichita.
When he pleaded guilty to robbing the Credit Union of America office at 212 S. Ridge Road in 2002, he told a judge he was having financial problems and was unable to find a full-time job.
Deputy District Attorney Ann Swegle said the DNA law is rarely used by Sedgwick County defendants.
"We deal with it from time to time, but not very frequently," she said.
Although police today keep evidence in murder cases indefinitely, Swegle said she wasn't sure what the policy was in 1977.
"My understanding is that they keep it forever now," she said. "I'm not sure that's always been the case."
Evidence at the trial included at least one fingerprint that police said Andrews left on a tire rim. The rim came from the trunk of a stolen car that looked like one a witness saw at the murder scene.
Although forensic scientists once needed blood or body fluids to conduct a DNA test, new techniques allow them to sometimes extract a DNA sample from a smudged fingerprint.
Maughan said he hadn't gone through all the police reports in Andrews' case, but he said it's possible that "touch DNA" may ultimately prove his client's innocence.
"It's a somewhat novel area, but there may be DNA residue there to test," Maughan said. "It would depend in large part on what surface it was left on."
One of the two Kansas cases listed by the Innocence Project involved Joe C. Jones, who spent 6 ½ years in prison after being convicted of rape, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault. The charges arose from an attack Aug. 24, 1985, outside a Topeka nightclub.
Jones, 25 at the time of the crime, was serving a life prison sentence when a 1991 forensics report concluded that semen found at the crime scene did not come from him.
He was released in July 1992 after a judge ordered a new trial and ruled that the new DNA evidence was admissible.
The second case involved Eddie Lowery, who served about 10 years in prison after a jury convicted him of rape, aggravated burglary and aggravated battery.
Those charges arose from the July 1981 rape of a 74-year-old Ogden woman.
Lowery was a 19-year-old Fort Riley soldier when, after a full day of questioning, he gave police a confession that he later recanted.
He was released on parole in 1991 and exonerated more than a decade later after a DNA test showed he did not commit the crime.
Reach Hurst Laviana at 316-268-6499 or hlaviana@wichitaeagle.com.