October 2023

TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion Friday declaring a Sumner County man could seek wrongful-conviction compensation despite a district court ruling he wasn’t eligible because the period of incarceration was in a county jail rather than a state prison.The Kansas Court of Appeals had reversed the conviction of Dameon Baumgarner in 2021 after he completed his sentence in Sumner County Jail for felony possession of a firearm.

Stocking the state’s waters with protected mussel species is a new conservation strategy from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.This fall, the state released thousands of mussels grown in fish hatcheries into two southeast Kansas rivers that are struggling to maintain healthy shellfish populations.“The goal is to slowly work across both watersheds to get those populations reestablished and delisted from the state and federal endangered species act,” said Trevor Starks, a species recovery coordinator with Wildlife and Parks.The state stocked the Marmaton River with 7,175 Fatmucket mussels – a species that’s considered in need of conservation in Kansas.