Ex-prosecutor Jacqueline Spradling dispossessed for misconduct

A former GOP prosecutor was stripped of her license to practice law by the Kansas Supreme Court on Friday for engaging in “a serious pattern of grossly unethical misconduct” during a 2012 murder trial and a 2017 rape trial.

Former Deputy District Attorney for Shawnee County Jacqueline “Jacquie” Spradling was disfellowshipped after a majority of judges at the Sunflower State’s highest court found that her conduct during Dana Chandlerviolated a number of professional codes and court orders in the murder trial and subsequent investigations and proceedings.

“Defendant has failed in her obligation to act as Attorney General in her indictment of Dana Chandler,” the majority said in its 98-page statement. “She ignored an order from a district court, repeatedly presented arguments to the jury without any supporting evidence, knowingly lied to that court in her pleadings and at hearings, and made false statements during the disciplinary investigation.”

“After careful consideration of the findings, conclusions, recommendations and ABA standards for the imposition of attorney sanctions, we conclude that the defendant’s intolerable acts of fraud warrant the severe sanction of disqualification,” the court concluded.

Last year, a disciplinary committee unanimously recommended Spradling’s ban from practice because of the Chandler trial. She most recently served as the district attorney for Bourbon County before resigning in June of last year. She was elected to office as a Republican in November 2020.

“It’s a big decision,” said Attorney Bold Umbehrwho filed one of the complaints against Spradling, said yes in comments The Kansas City Star on Friday. “Firing a prosecutor is so rare.”

Dana Chandler appears in a mug shot from prison.

Spradling won convictions against Chandler for the 2002 murder of the defendant’s ex-husband Mike Sisco and his fiancee Karen Harness. She later won convictions against Jacob Ewing in 2017 for two counts of rape, four counts of criminal sodomy, two counts of assault, one count of possession of drug paraphernalia, one count of harboring a minor who uses alcohol, and one count of supplying malt beverages to a minor.

Eventually all of those convictions were overturned.

Chandler is still on trial for the murders but has consistently maintained her innocence. In November 2020, she lost a motion to bar her retrial under the US Constitution’s double jeopardy clause.

In 2021, Ewing closed a plea deal to 10 years in prison. He had previously been sentenced to 27 years in prison after Spradling’s ultimately failed and reversed prosecution efforts. She had been hired as a special prosecutor in Jackson County in this case.

Jacob Coleman Ewing appears in a mug shot.

The Supreme Court said the former prosecutor’s behavior during the Chandler trial was more serious than her behavior during the Ewing trial, but in the end the court found that Spradling committed multiple counts of professional misconduct during both indictments.

In addition, Spradling made several false statements during the long-running investigation into her conduct.

From the statement, in detail:

During the disciplinary hearing, the defendant admitted that her affidavit contained false information. The Hearing Panel welcomes the Defendants’ admission under cross-examination that their affidavit contains false information. Defendants’ testimony that during the affidavit she “spoke incorrectly,” that she “was wrong,” and that her “mistake was in not asking to see the file” sounds hollow considering that the Testimony was given under oath during a disciplinary investigation and just two months after the Supreme Court vacated Chandler’s two counted murder convictions based on the defendant’s misconduct.

The full statement – plus a brief dissent recommending a lesser penalty – is below.

[image via Bourbon County Attorney’s Office]

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