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Terri Brooks is expected to take the stand today as the first witness against the man accused of killing her pregnant 14-year-old daughter nearly two years ago.

Ted Burnett, 51, says he's not guilty of killing Chelsea Brooks.

But prosecutors say Burnett acted as the hit man hired by Elgin Robinson, the 20-year-old father of the eighth-grade girl's unborn child.

A third man, Everett Gentry, is the key witness who told police of the plan. He pleaded guilty to murder a month after the killing. He said he drove the car to Butler County, while Burnett strangled the girl.

Gentry, 17 at the time, wasn't eligible for the death penalty as a juvenile.

ANNULMENTS GRANTED

Newman, Jonathan and Vanessa.

Porter, John A., and Wosylus, Danielle.

Powell, Sarah and Jarrod.

DIVORCES GRANTED

A man was arrested and booked on three counts of aggravated assault with a gun after a 3 a.m. Sunday incident in the 3600 block of West Kellogg.

According to police, the man got into a fight with an acquaintance, then brandished a shotgun. Two other men trying to calm the situation were also threatened.

The man was eventually arrested by police. There were no injuries.

--Dan Voorhis

A man was arrested and booked on one count of aggravated battery Saturday morning.

A man got into a fight at a bar in the 2200 block of South Broadway. Another man intervened in the fight, then left on foot down Broadway. About 1 a.m., a vehicle pulled up beside the second man, a man in the car punched him, knocking him unconscious.

--Dan Voorhis

Wichita police have booked two men each on three counts of burglary for break-ins that took place in the 100 and 200 block of South Kansas Saturday afternoon.

Police were called at 5:45 p.m. when the burglaries were discovered. One of the men was arrested after a foot chase. The suspect led police to another location where police arrested a second man and found all of the items taken, according to police.

--Dan Voorhis

A federal jury has decided not to impose the death sentence on the second of two men convicted of the racially motivated murder of a pedestrian.

The Kansas City Star reported Saturday that Steven Sandstrom, 22, will spend life in prison with no chance of parole. Federal jurors declined to sentence him to death, just as they had done in the case of co-defendant Gary Eye, 21, earlier in the week.

Eye also will spend life in prison for the March 2005 death of William McCay, who was black. Both Eye and Sandstrom are white.

"We are relieved there was no death verdict," said Charles Rogers, a lawyer who led the effort to avoid a death sentence.

U.S. Attorney John F. Wood said justice had been served even without the death penalty.

A man who was convicted of killing a rural Goddard couple and faced execution is getting another chance to convince jurors that he shouldn't be sentenced to die.

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday overturned the death sentence of Gavin D. Scott, based on arguments raised by his attorneys. The justices returned the case to Sedgwick County District Court for a new sentencing hearing.

But in its unanimous ruling, the court upheld his capital murder conviction, concluding that the evidence against him was of "a direct and overwhelming nature." The justices also rejected the challenges of Scott's attorneys to the state's 1994 capital punishment law.

Scott was sentenced to die by injection for the shootings of Doug and Beth Brittain in their rural Goddard farmhouse in September 1996. Prosecutors said he and an accomplice ransacked the home after the killings, and the accomplice was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

The court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Scott primarily over two issues.

A 14-year-old boy admitted to police Thursday that he wrote two letters threatening to shoot police officers because he thought it would be funny and he was angry with his parents, police said Friday.

The letters were found in an apartment building at Windsor Park at Cedarbrooke, 8406 E. Harry, Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said. The first was found May 8, the second Thursday morning.

While the first letter claimed responsibility for shooting an off-duty police officer in downtown Wichita on March 25, Stolz said police do not believe the teen did it.

"We believe we still have a suspect at large regarding that crime," Stolz said of the shooting in an alley next to the downtown campus of the Wichita Area Technical College, 324 N. Emporia.

A resident found the second threatening letter early Thursday in an envelope on steps leading to upper-level apartments at the complex, Stolz said. The resident gave it to a manager at the complex, who contacted police.

Criminal charges were dropped Friday against a Wichita man who was jailed when he walked into City Hall after forgetting he had a kitchen knife in his briefcase.

John Forrest, who spent six hours in the Sedgwick County Jail after his arrest Jan. 18, was scheduled to stand trial May 30 on a misdemeanor count of possession of a concealed weapon.

His lawyer, Carl Maughan, said someone in the city prosecutor's office called him Thursday to say the charge was being dismissed.

"I think it's just that somebody upstairs decided this was the right thing to do," Maughan said.

Forrest, a 64-year-old retired business executive who is visiting relatives in Michigan, said Maughan called him Friday.

In a speech mixing politics, wry wit and sentiment for the World War II generation, former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole told a Republican group Friday that tax hikes are on the way if businesses and taxpayers don't come to the aid of their party.

"Let's be very realistic, this could be a tough year for Republicans... if the business community and others who work for a living don't come to the party pretty soon," Dole told a packed-house meeting of the Wichita Pachyderm Club.

Dole, the longest-serving Senate majority leader in U.S. history, retired from national politics after losing the 1996 presidential race to Bill Clinton.

Now 84, Dole appeared physically fragile, but his intellect and trademark dry humor seemed sharp.

While Dole did not mention presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain by name, he took a few shots at the Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York.

An a 18-year-old woman was killed in Hutchinson Saturday afternoon apparently by a gunshot.

Hutchinson police officers were called to 1300 E. 33rd Street, Apt. 801 about 2 p.m.

They found Melissa J. Wilson with a gunshot wound in her abdomen, according to a police press release.

She died at Hutchinson Hospital around 6 p.m. Saturday, according to the release.

The case remains under investigation by the Hutchinson Police Department.

The weekend slaying of an 85-year-old woman in Buhler and recent attacks on other senior citizens prompted Reno County authorities on Tuesday to issue a warning and establish a task force to investigate the crimes.

The attacks have occurred in retirement homes and private homes around the county since early April, Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder said.

"At this point, we're unsure of the time frame and the exact number of cases," Schroeder said. "We're still trying to find out what's tied together."

Pearl Arthaud was found dead Sunday morning in her residence at the Buhler Sunshine Meadows Retirement Community, an assisted-living complex. An autopsy on Monday confirmed she had been slain, Schroeder said.

The task force, which numbers about 20 law enforcement officials, includes representatives of the Buhler, South Hutchinson and Hutchinson police departments, Reno County Sheriff's Office, Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Reno County District Attorney's Office.

Three inmates at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility were charged Monday with capital murder in the death of another inmate last October.

Jason Strand, Kendrick Shears and Charvell Robinson, all 22, were charged in Reno County District Court in the death of 28-year-old David Warren Jr. last October.

"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that capital murder charges have been filed against an inmate for a homicide that was committed inside the correctional facility," said Bill Miskell, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Warren was vomiting and unresponsive when he was found in a shower area at the prison at about 1 p.m. on Oct. 27, Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder said in a prepared statement.

He had blood on his face that appeared to be coming from a small cut on the inside corner of his eye. He was taken to Hutchinson Hospital and then transferred to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, where he was placed on life support. He died the next day.

Everett Gentry drove his new car to a Butler County field on June 9, 2006, and dug a grave. Gentry, now 19, told a jury Monday how he helped kill 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks. His story has changed since Gentry first told it nearly two years ago.

Prosecutors say Gentry now takes more responsibility for helping kill his best friend's pregnant girlfriend.

Lawyers defending Ted Burnett against capital murder say Gentry can't keep his story straight because it's not true.

One part of Gentry's story hasn't changed: that he planned the killing with his friend Elgin Ray Robinson Jr., and the two of them hired Burnett to finish the job.

As Gentry testified Monday:

Barack Obama stepped to the brink of victory in the Democratic presidential race Tuesday night, defeating Hillary Clinton in the Oregon primary and moving within 100 delegates of the total he needs to claim the prize at the party convention this summer.

"You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination," he told cheering supporters in Iowa, the overwhelmingly white state that launched him, a black, first-term senator from Illinois, on his improbable path to victory last January.

Obama lavished praise on Clinton, his rival in a race unlike any other, and accused Republican John McCain of a campaign run by lobbyists.

"You are Democrats who are tired of being divided, Republicans who no longer recognize the party that runs Washington, independents who are hungry for change," he said, speaking to a crowd on the grounds of the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines as well as to the millions around the country who will elect the nation's 44th president in November.

Clinton countered with a lopsided win in Kentucky, a victory with scant political value in a race moving inexorably in Obama's direction.

It appears you'll only need to bring yourself to the polls to vote in Kansas elections.

On Monday, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed House Bill 2019, which would have required photo identification to cast a ballot.

The bill was one of the more hotly contested measures in the recent legislative session.

Its supporters, mostly Republicans, had claimed an ID requirement is needed to keep ineligible voters, primarily illegal immigrants, from voting.

Opponents, mostly Democrats, argued there is no evidence of voting fraud and called the bill a thinly veiled attempt to suppress turnout among minorities and the elderly, groups that traditionally skew Democratic.

Police are looking for three men suspected of bursting into a southwest Wichita house Tuesday morning and ransacking it while holding the occupants at gunpoint.

Shortly before noon, police said, an 18-year-old man answered a knock on the door in the 3100 block of West 27th Street South, thinking he recognized one of the visitors. But they were three strangers bearing weapons, and one of them clubbed him with a gun.

The four people inside the house were taken to the basement and forced to lie down while the burglars hunted for valuables. The burglars took cash, cell phones, a projection television and a Nintendo Wii along with other items before fleeing east in a blue Prius, police said.

The victims were an 18-year-old woman and three men ages 18, 19 and 20.

Sedgwick County detention Deputy Cleve Werner's $32,355 salary was supplemented last year by overtime that pushed his take-home pay to $76,939.

He earned those paychecks, in part, by working 83 consecutive days from mid-January through early April. Payroll records show that 50 of those shifts were double shifts.

Officer Brad Stone saw his $38,031 base pay pushed to $75,986 by overtime. Unlike Werner, Stone stuck with five-day work weeks. But from June through September, he worked 66 consecutive double shifts, which at the jail means 16 ½ hour days.

Overtime pay has become an integral part of the Sedgwick County Jail budget, and some deputies have been out-earning captains four steps ahead of them in rank as they keep the 1,032-bed facility running.

The jail paid more than $1.4 million in overtime last year to officers who worked 86,023 overtime hours -- an increase of 25 percent from the year before.

A man suspected of robbing an 81-year-old woman while she visited a Wichita cemetery Thursday remained at large Friday.

Wichita police say the woman, from California, was visiting the grave of a family member at Old Mission Mortuary and Cemetery near 21st and Hillside at about 1 p.m. when a man approached and asked for money to catch the bus to work.

As the woman opened her purse, the man snatched it, ran, then took out cash and threw the purse down, police said.

Wichita police robbery Detective Phil Jacob said that such crimes can occur anywhere -- even at places where people go to mourn and pay their respects.

"Highway robberies occur wherever and whenever," he said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday reinstated a lawsuit contending that Wesley Medical Center and other hospitals owned by its parent company deliberately understaffed registered nurses to increase profits.

A three-member panel of the 10th Circuit Court in Denver returned the class-action lawsuit to federal district court in Wichita for further proceedings against the Hospital Corporation of America.

"I don't file cases that are meritless," said Kansas City lawyer Lawrence Williamson, who filed the case in 2006.

After U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten dismissed the lawsuit two years ago, HCA asked for sanctions against Williamson, including that he pay $400,000 to the 11 lawyers it hired to defend the suit. Marten denied the sanctions.

"The 10th Circuit decision shows the defendants' attacks on me personally were unfounded and that my clients' claims are legally sound," Williamson said.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors are entitled to civil malpractice settlements in their criminal case against a Haysville physician whose clinic is linked to 56 overdose deaths.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot refused to quash government subpoenas issued to attorneys in the civil cases filed against Stephen Schneider, saying a defense claim that the settlements are not relevant "borders on the frivolous."

Belot ordered that the subpoenas be complied with immediately.

The government contended there have been at least five malpractice settlement agreements between Schneider and plaintiffs. Prosecutors sought them as impeachment evidence, arguing the settlements could be relevant to the credibility of witnesses who testify at the criminal trial.

A 34-count federal indictment accuses Schneider and his wife, Linda, of directly causing four deaths and contributing to at least 11 others. The couple have pleaded not guilty.

A pharmacist who worked for an Internet pharmacy once located in Wichita was sentenced Thursday 18 months in prison for unlawfully distributing prescription drugs. A computer technician who worked at the company received two years probation.

Pharmacist Jerry L. Lovern told U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown on Thursday that he had no intention of hurting anybody, and implored the judge to consider home imprisonment.

"I know I have been terribly, terribly naive and I am sorry for that," Lovern said before his sentencing.

Brown imposed the prison term for Lovern, 68, to be followed by a year of supervised release. He allowed Lovern to remain free while he appeals.

Brown said he considered that Lovern had four prior convictions for shoplifting for which he had been given probation, yet he had continued to commit those crimes.

As the clock neared 5 p.m. Thursday, jurors deliberating the case of capital murder against Ted Burnett sent a question to the judge.

"Is there a previous case," they asked, "where an accomplice, eyewitness testimony was the primary evidence to convict a suspect?"

The merits of testimony from that witness, Everett Gentry, had been argued all morning by lawyers from both sides before the jury began deliberating over Burnett's involvement in the death of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks.

Ben Burgess, Sedgwick County district judge, told jurors simply that it didn't matter.

"You must return a verdict based solely on the facts and the law in this case and cannot consider any other factors," the judge wrote.

Two armed men burst in and robbed a family in their south Wichita home early Thursday, police said.

A 48-year-old man answered a knock at his door in the 2600 block of South Holyoke at about 4:15 a.m. The intruders pushed their way in, pointing handguns at him and six other people in the house.

The men took money and a 42-inch plasma television and left in a teal green foreign-made SUV with tinted windows, police said.

Their descriptions were similar to those provided by victims of a residential robbery Tuesday morning in southwest Wichita, but police said the two are not connected.

The victims told police the first man was black, about 23 years old, 6-foot-1 and weighed about 160 pounds; the second was black, about 25 years old, 5-foot-7 and 145 pounds.

Ted Burnett's parents are expected to testify in his capital murder trial this morning, as the jury begins the process of weighing whether Burnett should be sentenced to life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection.

Burnett's lawyers were uncertain Tuesday morning whether his mother and stepfather would take the stand, but word came late in the day that they would testify.

The couple had attended the trial through Friday, when the jury convicted their 51-year-old son of killing 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks.

They didn't return to court Tuesday, and Burnett's lawyers told Sedgwick County Judge Ben Burgess that the family members had been out of contact since the verdict. Burgess said he'd give them until 9 a.m. today to appear.

Prosecutor Kevin O'Connor said the state had offered to help locate them.

A financial counselor will fill the remaining term of Rep. Ted Powers, who died earlier this month.

Republican party leaders nominated Pete DeGraaf on Tuesday night.

DeGraaf also plans to run for Powers' seat in the November general election.

Powers, 73 and a Republican, died May 13 of complications from a massive stroke.

His District 81 seat covers parts of Sumner and Sedgwick counties.

Walking across the grounds of Parklane Apartments, Wichita police Officer David Hinners stops to talk to two maintenance workers buzzing by on a golf-type cart.

A few bags of trash are tied up on the trailer behind them, and Hinners talks to the workers on a first-name basis.

The brick-faced duplexes are in the heart of the area of Wichita that has seen the biggest drop in crime recently, according to an analysis of statistics by The Eagle.

The area is bordered by Harry to the south, Lincoln to the north, Oliver to the west and Edgemoor to the east.

It's part of the community policing beat that Hinners coordinates.

Wichita police arrested 14 people during a prostitution sting Thursday and Friday.

Twelve of the arrests were made in a section of northeast Wichita _ from Second to 13th streets between Cleveland and Hillside _ that the city recently added as an "anti-prostitution emphasis area."

The city has two other emphasis areas, in which a violation can carry a penalty of a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Among the arrests was a man who was arrested on charges of pimping -- his sister -- and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer.

According to police, an officer working as a decoy was in a car making a deal with a woman when her brother jumped into the back seat and demanded money.

A retired Oklahoma doctor has appealed his prison sentence for illegally distributing prescription drugs through an Internet pharmacy, claiming federal prosecutors coerced his guilty plea by offering to dismiss charges against his cancer-stricken wife in exchange.

U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown on Friday granted a request by Wilbur D. Hilst, 76, to remain free pending his appeal. Earlier this month, Brown sentenced Hilst to 33 months in prison and ordered him to forfeit $20,129 from a bank account after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a scheme to unlawfully distribute controlled substances.

His attorneys argued in court documents filed Thursday that the government put Hilst in an "untenable position" by prosecuting his wife along with him in the government's case over the operation of Red Mesa Pharmacy in Wichita.

Margaret Hilst, 77, is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and suffers from osteoporosis, his attorneys said. She already had undergone one hip replacement surgery and will likely need a total replacement of her other hip.

The couple, who live in Wewoka, Okla., have been married for 52 years.

Two men apparently shot and killed each other Friday in what police called a "drug house-type robbery" in northeast Wichita.

Police identified the two as 35-year-old John C. Reed and 17-year-old Terrence E. Phillips.

According to police, Phillips went inside a home in the 2300 block of East Random, near Eighth and Grove, at about 12:45 a.m. and confronted Reed. Both men were armed.

"Both fired shots at each other. Both struck each other," said Wichita police Capt. Jeff Easter.

When police arrived, they found Reed in the street and Phillips inside.

Two of the most charismatic leaders in the anti-abortion movement are tied up in a legal battle over who owns the name Operation Rescue.

Randall Terry of Washington, D.C., has filed suit against Troy Newman of Wichita.

Newman registered the name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in December 2006. This week, Terry filed suit before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to cancel the registration.

For Terry, who became the face of the anti-abortion movement in the late 1980s, the fight is not just about a name, but also the potential for contributions to the anti-abortion cause.

"I believe this is all about money and honor," Terry said from Steubenville, Ohio, where he said he was preparing to deliver a speech at Franciscan University on Friday. "I want the honor, and Troy wants the money."

Federal prosecutors said Friday that authorities have broken up a drug ring that smuggled hundreds of pounds of drugs into Wichita from Mexico over the past 3 ½ years.

Local, state and federal agents this week arrested 18 of 25 suspects who were named in indictments that were unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Wichita.

U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren said the 32-count indictment accuses the suspects of taking part in a drug trafficking conspiracy that shipped the drugs to Wichita from January 2005 through July 2007.

During the investigation, agents seized more than 500 grams of methamphetamine, more than four kilograms of cocaine and nearly a ton of marijuana, prosecutors said.

The suspects, 23 of whom listed Wichita addresses, range in age from 20 to 64. The indictments do not specify how many were U.S. citizens.

A state senator is among the most recent candidates to file for Sedgwick County district judge in a field that includes two new seats.

Phil Journey, 52, filed to trade in his Senate seat for a judge's robe Thursday. He'll face two other Republicans, Jeff Dewey and Michael Foster, in the Aug. 5 primary for the seat recently vacated by Karl Friedel.

Journey joins a line of former lawmakers who have run for the Sedgwick County bench. Legislative experience helped Eric Yost, Anthony Powell and Jeff Goering win their judicial elections.

Loren Houk, 58, also filed Thursday to run against Judge Dan Brooks, a 15-year veteran of the bench in juvenile court. Houk is one of the few Democrats to file for judge.

Journey and Houk are among eight candidates who have filed this month. The filing deadline is noon June 10.

When day care provider Jessica Cummings put 13-month-old Kailee Hundley into a car seat March 25, she fastened the top harness but not the bottom one.

Then she left the girl unattended in a day care home bathroom and did not check on her for about 2 ½ hours, a Wichita police detective testified Thursday.

During that time, Kailee slid down in the seat and choked on the straps, said Detective Wendy Hummell, the only witness at Cummings' preliminary hearing.

After listening to Hummell, District Judge Joseph Bribiesca found sufficient evidence for Cummings to stand trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter, a felony.

Bribiesca called Kailee's death a "terrible tragedy" and said it will be up to a jury to decide whether Cummings is criminally liable. He scheduled her trial for Aug. 18.

Prosecutors on Wednesday defended the constitutionality of federal drug laws, spurning defense arguments seeking dismissal of an indictment charging a Haysville physician with illegally prescribing narcotic painkillers linked to 56 overdose deaths.

The court documents were filed by the government in the criminal case against Stephen Schneider and his wife, Linda.

Defense attorneys challenged the Controlled Substances Act as unconstitutionally vague because it fails to fully inform physicians of what specific conduct is illegal and therefore criminalizes their medical decisions.

But prosecutors cited a litany of previous court rulings supporting their contention that the act allows Congress to regulate medical practice by barring doctors from writing prescriptions as a way to engage in illicit drug dealing.

The government argued that the allegations against the Schneiders were matters of fact for a jury to determine, and the statute was not unconstitutionally vague.

Sedgwick County commissioners on Wednesday kicked off a new effort to reduce jail overcrowding and better handle repeat drug offenders.

The commission agreed to spend $96,282 to establish a Sedgwick County Drug Court Program, which has been in the works for more than a year.

The money will cover three staff positions -- to be filled no later than July -- and costs for computers, phones and training expenses.

Instead of jail time, the program would require participants to engage in an intensive treatment regimen that includes checking in with probation officers, attorneys and judges as often as once a week. The program, set to begin in October, would also include job preparation, career building and life skills development. It's modeled after a similar drug court in Emporia, which launched in 2003.

People whose probation has been revoked are the Sedgwick County program's initial targets.

On Wednesday afternoon, Terri Brooks walked up to the man whose son had been convicted of killing her daughter. "I don't know what to say," she remembered telling Will Burnett, the stepfather who raised Ted Burnett. "But my thoughts are with you."

"It was a horrible thing," she remembered Will Burnett saying.

They talked briefly as a jury deliberated whether Ted Burnett should spend his life in prison or die by lethal injection for strangling 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks.

Little more than two hours later, jurors announced they could not reach a unanimous verdict on the death penalty. That means Ted Burnett will instead spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"You know they're hurting, too, in a different way," Terri Brooks said of the Burnett family. "They have a tragedy, too."

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency Wednesday for a man sentenced to die for the firebomb killing of a Japanese student 13 years ago.

The five-member board voted unanimously to deny clemency for Terry Lyn Short, 47. Short is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 17 for the January 1995 killing of 22-year-old Ken Yamamoto, who died after Short threw a firebomb into the apartment of his ex-girlfriend, who lived below Yamamoto.

The board rejected Short's request for clemency after Short appeared via video connection from death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Short acknowledged that he threw the firebomb but claimed he did not intend to kill the victim, whom he did not know.

It was the first time Short had admitted publicly that he threw a gasoline-filled bottle into the apartment, where five people, including two children, were living.

"I take full responsibility," said Short, who was wearing a blue prison uniform and large glasses. "I feel bad about this whole situation, and not just for me.