Bowers receives three 25-to-life sentences on child sex charges

A Soldier resident convicted in March of child sex crimes by a Jackson County District Court jury will likely spend the rest of his life in prison after receiving three consecutive 25-to-life sentences on the charges against during a Tuesday afternoon hearing.

District Court Judge Norbert Marek also denied a motion to grant Anthony Bowers, 50, a third trial based on an assertion that a prosecution witness should not have been allowed to testify as a “fact witness” and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

Bowers was convicted in March on charges of rape involving an adult and a child under the age of 14, aggravated indecent liberties with a child and aggravated criminal sodomy that reportedly stemmed from incidents that allegedly occurred in late 2012. At the time those alleged incidents occurred, the alleged victim in the case was only five years old, it was reported.

On Tuesday, Marek noted that since all three of the charges against Bowers were “Jessica’s Law” felony offenses, Bowers would serve a life sentence on each conviction with no possibility of parole until 25 years of each sentence was served. On Marek’s order that the sentences run consecutively, Bowers faces a minimum of 75 years imprisonment.

Defense attorney Sarah Swain of Lawrence had filed a motion for downward durational departure that would reduce Bowers’ sentence to 77.5 months on each charge, with all sentences to run concurrently. That motion was also denied by Marek on Tuesday.

The motion for a new trial was based on Swain’s argument that the court erred in allowing a prosecution witness, forensic interviewer Jill Shehi Chapman, “to testify as a layperson on subjects far outside her qualifications, knowledge and education.” Swain also contended that Jackson County Attorney Shawna Miller “committed prosecutorial misconduct by misleading the court and defense counsel about the nature” of Chapman’s testimony.

Swain argued on Tuesday that Chapman’s testimony in Bowers’ first trial — held in 2014 and ending with a hung jury — differed from her testimony in the second trial this past March. As a result, she said, “the bulk of Chapman’s testimony should not have been allowed” as evidence and contributed to a “trial by ambush” against the defense, which Miller denied.

Marek said that while Chapman could not qualify as an “expert witness” in the case, she was qualified to give opinions based on her training and experience as a forensic interviewer. He also stated that there was no prosecutorial misconduct involved on Miller’s behalf in the case.

Swain said she had sought records on former Jackson County Sheriff’s Office detective Al Dunn, who investigated the initial claims against Bowers. She argued that Dunn’s employment record there raised “credibility issues.”

Despite filing a Kansas Open Records Act request to obtain those records, Swain said she did not obtain them from state officials and got no response to “repeated inquiries” to the sheriff’s office. But prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Marek issued an order stating that he had reviewed Dunn’s records and found nothing that would have been “material” to the case.

Swain also targeted the court for permitting “the testimonial hearsay” of Bowers’ alleged victim to come in through Chapman and Jackson County Deputy Travis Spiker when the alleged victim “later proved unavailable for cross-examination.” She argued that Bowers was entitled to face the alleged victim in the trial, rather than hear secondhand testimony, due to state and national constitutional law.

Shortly before Marek pronounced sentence against Bowers — who chose not to address the court prior to receiving his sentence — the alleged victim’s mother, Amber Wade, told the judge that her daughter, who is almost 9 years of age, still struggles with “angry outbursts” and anxiety because of the alleged incidents between her and Bowers. Wade asked Marek to “show no leniency” toward Bowers when pronouncing sentence.

Bowers’ sister, Sonya Bowers, was also given a chance to address the court, saying that her brother “was accused with no evidence whatsoever” in the case. She added that “a man’s life is being taken without the proper evidence” and asked Marek to consider the durational departure motion.

Marek said Bowers will begin serving his prison sentence at the conclusion of another, six-month sentence stemming from a 2013 misdemeanor domestic violence case, adding that Bowers had already served “about two-thirds” of that sentence. The prison sentence includes six days of jail credit, he added.

Marek also gave Bowers 14 days to appeal his sentence, which Swain indicated she would do if the motion for a new trial was denied.