UPDATE: Felony charges against Planned Parenthood dismissed

November 15, 2011

UPDATE: On Wednesday, November 9, Judge Stephen R. Tatum dismissed the 49 felony charges brought against Kansas Planned Parenthood. Judge Tatum dismissed the charges after Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe asked the judge to do so because the evidence central to the case was destroyed. The charges dropped were 23 counts of falsifying records and 26 charges that the clinic did not maintain its own copies of the records.

Under the order of Attorney General Derek Schmidt, Shawnee County Sheriff Richard Barta is investigating the shredding of the documents to determine if any laws were actually broken. As of now 58 misdemeanor charges still stand against the clinic.

Case against Kansas Planned Parenthood delayed

October 31, 2011

Olathe, Kansas: On Monday, October 24, District Judge Stephen R. Tatum of the 10th Judicial District, gave state prosecutors a two-week delay on a preliminary hearing in their case, filed in 2007, against Kansas Planned Parenthood. The delay was requested after it was revealed that evidence necessary to the prosecution's case was destroyed during a routine document shredding by the state health department in 2005. The Kansas Planned Parenthood is being charged with 107 charges, including 23 felony counts alleging that it falsified documents. The documents under question are Planned Parenthood's copies of individual abortion reports from 2003, reports which were filed by law with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Both Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, an anti-abortion Republican, and various abortion opponents, such as executive director of the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life Mary Kay Culp, are suspicious of the shredding. They allege wrongdoing on the part of the health department in order to cover up the falsified documents, even though a regulation issued by a state board in 1997 requiring the health department to destroy paper copies of abortion reports one year after the end of the year in which they were produced. This would mean that reports created in 2003 would be routinely shredded in 2005.

Planned Parenthood attorney Pedro Irigonegaray responded to the request for the delay by saying that, the health department had no legal responsibility to educate the prosecution or others on its record-shredding policies and that, therefore, the felony charges should be dismissed for lack of evidence and a preliminary hearing should be held on the remaining misdemeanor charges.

Judge Tatum decided to award the prosecution the delay to look for additional evidence to make its case, thought he did say that he no reason to believe that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment knew in 2005 that a criminal lawsuit requiring the documents as evidence would be filed in 2007.