Former Kansas City Police detective Eric DeValkenaere will remain in prison while he appeals his manslaughter conviction for the killing of 26-year-old Cameron Lamb in 2019.
Attorneys for DeValkenaere requested he be released on bond while he appealed his case to the Missouri Supreme Court. In a one-page ruling Thursday, the Missouri Court of Appeals denied his request to continue his bond.
"In all cases where the conviction of a defendant is affirmed on appeal...the defendant is to be imprisoned in any jail or by the department of corrections," the Court wrote, citing Missouri law.
DeValkenaere, 44, is now in the Western Reception & Diagnostic Corrections Center in St. Joseph, according to online Missouri Department of Corrections records. He was previously being held in the Platte County jail, where he turned himself in last Tuesday after a Missouri appellate court's three-judge panel affirmed his 2021 second-degree manslaughter conviction.
He was found guilty of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action by a Jackson County judge in November 2021 for killing Lamb, a Black man who was sitting in his truck in the driveway of his home. In March 2022, DeValkenaere was sentenced to six years in prison.
DeValkenaere's family has already asked Gov. Mike Parson to grant the former officer clemency.
Jonathan Shiflett, Parson’s communications director, said he had received in informal clemency request from the family, “along with hundreds of additional calls and requests from private citizens on his behalf.”
An official request has not yet been filed through the Missouri Parole Board, Shiflett said, nor had Parson made a decision about the pardon.
