Olin (Pete) Coones will soon be a free man.
Today, a judge found manifest injustice in Coones’ earlier conviction and ordered a new trial. Then, Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree told the court he would dismiss the case and not seek a new trial.
“This case was indeed a failure of our system, of which the Conviction Integrity Unit was designed to uncover and correct,” Dupree said at a news conference. It is the first exoneration to come out of the CIU; the earlier Lamonte McIntyre case was prior to the creation of the CIU.
Convicted in 2008 of the double murder of Carl and Kathleen Schroll, Coones received a life sentence.
Coones, who now is 63, maintained his innocence, told others he had an alibi and told others about a theory that Kathleen Schroll killed her husband and then herself, while trying to place the blame on Coones.
Coones went through two trials; the second one was ordered after prosecutors didn’t turn over computer records to the defense within a specified time. The state said there was a dispute between Coones and the Schrolls over an inheritance from Coones’ father, according to court documents.
Coones had previously appealed this case in the court system. In 2014, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld his conviction but remanded the case for resentencing because laws had changed concerning the hard-50 sentence, court documents stated.
Dupree said today that evidence in this case was reviewed by the CIU, which found evidence of a fourth bullet that had not come to light previously.
He said a medical examiner changed his opinion from 12 years ago to agree that it was a murder-suicide case, not a double homicide.
The CIU also looked into evidence of financial embezzlement and felony writing of fraudulent checks on the part of Kathleen Schroll, according to Dupree. This evidence was known to the state, he said, but the prosecution did not disclose it to the defendant or his attorney at the time of the trial.
There also was a failure to test swabs that showed gunshot residue on the hand of Kathleen Schroll, he said. The state had the evidence but did not have it tested 12 years ago, he said. That evidence then was tested recently by the CIU, and gunshot residue on Kathleen Schrolls’ hand was found to be present. There was no gunshot residue on the defendant in this case, he said.
Dupree also said there was testimony from a jailhouse informant who was given a deal after testifying, and whose testimony should not have been used.
Dupree apologized to Coones and his family, and also to the family of the victim.
He said the CIU has looked at multiple cases in the two years it has been operating. He said it is their hope that through the CIU, no innocent person and no wrongfully convicted person is sitting in custody because of wrongs that prosecutors have done or errors they have made.
He said the Conviction Integrity Unit began looking into the case after Coones wrote to them, saying he was innocent.
Dupree said they found many things in the case file in the prosecutors’ office, showing some evidence was hidden from the defendant and his attorney.
Dupree said that Coones would have to file suit in Kansas if he wanted to pursue an effort for compensation. Coones would have to prove his innocence under Kansas laws. The court action today has said there was manifest injustice, but there are more steps necessary through the state’s attorney general’s office if people are to be compensated.
“We’re hopeful that we will continue to right wrongs rather than try to hide them,” Dupree said about the Conviction Integrity Unit.
