Police released the names of three persons who died in a traffic crash at 10:25 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7, near 14th and Metropolitan Avenue.
The three are Steven Gelhart, 45; Joe Bosquez, 29; and Destiny Gregory, 31, according to police.
According to a preliminary investigation, a silver van went off the road and came to rest upside down on railroad tracks to the north of Metropolitan.
The van was traveling northbound on 14th Street when it ran off the road and landed upside down on the tracks, police stated. Four persons were in the van. One male survived the crash.
The crash is under investigation by the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department’s Traffic Support Unit-Critical Collision Response Team.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review Scott Cheever’s case, leaving the capital murder conviction and death sentence to stand, according to Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
Cheever was convicted of shooting and killing Greenwood County Sheriff Matthew Samuels in 2005 in Hilltop, Kan. Cheever’s conviction and sentence was previously affirmed by the Kansas Supreme Court.
According to the attorney general’s office, the case now goes to the Kansas courts for more proceedings under the Kansas death penalty statute. Cheever has options to seek further judicial review through collateral proceedings although he was exhausted direct appeals.
The Kansas Supreme Court overturned Cheever’s conviction in 2012, citing a constitutional violation and ordered a new trial. Schmidt appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2013 unanimously overturned the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision and sent it back for further proceedings. In 2016, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld Cheever’s conviction in a 6-1 ruling. Cheever has been incarcerated at Lansing Correctional Facility.
Cheever is the fourth death penalty case to exhaust direct appeals since the Kansas Legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1994, according to Schmidt. The other cases involved Sidney Gleason, Gary Kleypas and John Robinson.
Ten persons are under a death sentence in Kansas currently. Other cases that are in stages of direct appeals include Jonathan Carr, Reginald Carr, Justin Thurber, Craig Kahler, Frazier Glenn Miller and Kyle Flack. In an eleventh case, the defendant died in prison.
