By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Sometimes the American court system takes a while to reach a conclusion. That was the case in a recent homicide conviction for Barton County Attorney Levi Morris. Freddie Alec Thomas shot and killed Jeremy Saldana on Sept. 11, 2015. It was not until June of this year that Thomas, now 55 years of age, was convicted of the crime.
"We're sitting there proceeding in a jury trial in June of 2022 for a September 2015 case," said Morris. "Even the jurors were asking why did it take this long? It wasn't until after it was done that we could tell them why."
On that Friday evening in 2015, after an altercation in the front yard of a Great Bend residence, Thomas shot the 39-year-old Saldana three times. Doug Matthews, the Barton County attorney at the time of the shooting, filed first-degree murder charges against Thomas five days after the incident. Thomas claimed self-defense. District Court Judge Ron Svaty, who has since retired, ruled in Thomas' favor. That's when the case went on pause locally.
"This defendent in this particular case said, 'Hey, you guys can't prosecute me. This was self-defense,'" Morris said. "A hearing was held in 2016 and a judge agreed. The state of Kansas didn't like that result so the county attorney at the time appealed it. It goes to the Kansas Court of Appeals, and they said it was an improper dismissal, this case should proceed to a jury trial. The Kansas Supreme Court was asked to review it and they made the same conclusion, that a jury should hear this case. Those things each take a couple of years."
The case was ultimately remanded back to Barton County District Court for a jury trial. Originally scheduled for 10 days, the trial lasted eight. At the end, jurors had one of several options: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, not guilty, or not guilty by self-defense.
The jury returned with a conviction of one count of voluntary manslaughter on June 23. Sentencing for the case has been scheduled for Aug. 22.
"You realize there are situations where it is unjust for someone to go to prison for the length of time as if they had committed a vicious homicide," Morris said. "But it's equally unjust for that person to go free when they took another person's life and it wasn't just. Voluntary manslaughter is that compromise. It is essentially what you can be convicted of when the jury feels you believed it was self-defense, you honestly thought so, but it wasn't."
After each trial, attorneys and judges speak and take questions from the jurors. "This is our best opportunity for a performance review," Morris said.