Topekaha, Kan. – A man convicted of killing a soldier of the Kansas road patrol in 1978 has been granted probation after previous requests were rejected, inspiring criticism and inciting the governor on Friday to ask to reconsider the decision.
Jimmie K. Nelms and another man, both of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were sentenced to fulfill two perpetual chains for aggravated kidnapping and the murder of Soldier Conroy O’Brien After a traffic stop on the Kansas trend highway to about 55 miles (89 kilometers) northeast of Wichita. The Nelms coding, Walter Myrick, died in prison in 2009.
In Kansas, killing an agent of the law can now be punished for death, with the only other possible sentence in a capital of life imprisonment without probation. But in 1978, Kansas had no death penalty, and Nelms was eligible for probation after 30 years in 2008. He sought probation in 2011 and 2021.
A date for the launch of NELMS has not been established. Its release was approved by the Prison Review Board, composed of three veteran employees of the State Corrections Department designated by its main administrator. Department spokesman David Thompson said the decision occurred several weeks after a hearing on March 6.
“The Kansas Prison Review Board believes that Mr. Nelms is capable and is willing to comply with the obligations of a citizen respectful of the law and is of the opinion that there is a reasonable probability that Mr. Nelms can be released without harming the community or himself,” Thompson said in a statement.
The decision was not made public until the Kansas state’s association condemned it as “shameful and unpleasant” in a statement on Thursday. According to Kansas’s law, critics seem unlikely to prevent the release of Nelms.
“Those who murder the agents of the law must expect to receive the death penalty, not to walk freely through the streets of Ks,” said state attorney general Kris Kobach A publication On the social platform X.
The main leaders of the Kansas Legislature, the president of the Senate, Ty Masterson, and the president of the House of Representatives, Dan Hawkins, described the probation decision as “excessive” on Friday.
They and Kobach are Republicans; The corrections department is under Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat. But Kelly wants the Board to consider reversing the decision “if it is legally possible,” said spokeswoman Grace Hoge.
“The facts of this case demonstrate a brutal and intentional murder of an agent of the law,” Hoge said in an email. “There is no justification for this decision.”
According to judicial records and news reports, O’Brien stopped the Nelms car for speeding about 2 miles south of a service area of the toll road. Myrick drove.
While O’Brien wrote a ticket in his patrol, Nelms approached next to the driver with a gun, according to the authorities. Nelms forced O’Brien to leave the car and told him to go to bed in a ditch. The authorities said Nelms took O’Brien’s weapon, hit the soldier and, when O’Brien fell to the ground, he shot him twice on his head.
O’Brien was 26 years old with a pregnant wife. Nelms was 31 years old and Myrick, 25. A 21 -year -old man was also in the car with Nelms and Myrick, but declared himself guilty of minor charges and provided crucial testimonies against Nelms.
The men fled in the Nelms car, left the toll highway and finally drove to the north, where another patrol soldier saw the car at about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest where O’Brien died. The Nelms car and the soldier collided in a grass, and there was a shooting.
Nelms denied that it was the shooter, but the jurors condemned him and Myrick for murder, aggravated kidnapping and other charges during a joint trial.
Nelms served most of his sentence in maximum security prisons, but was transferred to a security center in 2023. The records of the online corrections department show four disciplinary reports against him from 1996 to 2017, the last one for disobedment orders. Thompson said Nelms works on prison clothes.
When Nelms sought probation in 2011, the decisions were made by a probation board of three members designated by the governor, subject to the confirmation of the state Senate. That same year, Republican governor Sam Brownback issued an executive order that abolished the probation board in favor of an employee panel of the corrections department.
Brownback said the measure would save the State $ 500,000 a year and the sentence laws after 1993 Limited Ladip. Critics worried that the Department Board would release inmates only to avoid the overcrowding of the prison, and Kelly, then state senator, described the change “a very bad idea.”
Masterson, the current president of the Senate, supported the change in 2011, but said on Friday that “it has not worked as planned” and that it would work for changes to see that members of the Review Board “respond correctly to the people of Kansas.”
Democratic state representative Tom Sawyer, who reviewed the case of Nelms as a member of the Board of Probation from 2009 to June 2011, said the Board sometimes rejected probation when correction officials recommended. Now, he said, the process is “all internal.”
As for Nelms, Sawyer said: “I think it is very unlikely that the probation board has let it go, according to my experience.”
