Darien Harris spent 12 years in prison for murder but was freed in December 2023 after it was discovered an eyewitness against him was legally blind. Court records show the witness denied under oath that he had vision problems, but he had advanced glaucoma and had been declared legally blind nine years earlier. A second eyewitness denied Harris was the shooter.
Kansas state law requires counties to destroy their ballots after elections. But Johnson County held off when Sheriff Calvin Hayden claimed to have a warrant authorizing him to seize the ballots as part of a five-year investigation into election fraud. When the elections office never received that warrant, it destroyed the ballots, leading Hayden to accuse it of destroying evidence. Hayden later admitted that no judge had signed his warrant; when it was pointed out that a judge must sign a warrant for it to be valid, Hayden replied, "I didn't say it was valid." In July, Hayden announced that he had suspended his investigation.
