In his 18 months in office, Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree Sr. said he has heard from about hundreds of people in prison or from their families who claim wrongful convictions.
Now, his office will have the funding and staff to look into some of those claims.
A spokesman for the Unified Government Commission said the district attorney’s office will receive two payments of about $167,000 each in the fourth quarter of 2018 and fourth quarter of 2019 for a new conviction integrity unit.
Dupree said at a press conference Friday that his office expects to hire three people for the unit: a full-time senior attorney, a part-time investigator and a part-time assistant. Dupree has previously cited the case of Lamonte McIntyre as a reason to create the unit. McIntyre’s convictions for a 1994 double murder were thrown out last October after a judge ruled he had been the victim of manifest injustice.
The Wyandotte County unit’s staff will work with law school students from the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri-Kansas City to help identify cases to examine.
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