courts

Two state supreme court justices and five appellate court judges are up for a vote in November’s election on whether they should keep their seats. Nearly all were appointed by a Democratic governor.

Shawn Harris initially pleaded not guilty in the 2025 killing of Ming during a shootout in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. As part of a new plea deal, prosecutors will seek life imprisonment charges.

A Jackson County jury found Fredrick Scott guilty of first-degree murder in four of six killings, capping a case that spanned nearly a decade. He was acquitted on two other counts. Scott faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

While the 8th Circuit Court judges appeared sympathetic to the Republican plaintiffs, redistricting proponents would also need to overcome barriers from the U.S. Supreme Court and warnings from elections officials that it’s now too late to change course for the November election.

Instead of defending the state high court’s ruling that a referendum on redistricting means using the congressional map from 2024, Catherine Hanaway’s office is asking for a reversal.

Last week, a Missouri judge declined to put two measures that received hundreds of thousands of petition signatures on the November ballot. Now the state Supreme Court will take a look. We'll take a closer look at the redistricting referendum and Respect Missouri Voters amendment.

Both of the cases are moving quickly because Missouri law sets a Sept. 8 deadline for court orders adding questions to the November ballot.

The Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct filed a 17-page formal complaint against Wyandotte County District Judge Tony Martinez, who is up for retention in the upcoming election. It alleged Martinez’s behavior appeared to breach two Kansas judicial canons while he served as a district judge. Martinez denies all allegations.

Two former residents say they were abused by staff, while a third was assaulted under the facility’s care by a nursing home resident, according to the lawsuit.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has long coached his daughters' and other girls' basketball teams at school, wrote the court's majority opinion. Missouri and Kansas both have laws restricting transgender students from playing on girls' and women's sports teams.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days after it.

In a recent St. Louis case, the Missouri State Highway Patrol told an appellate court that “hundreds of thousands” of marijuana offenses may still exist on criminal records that should have been cleared. And it's not clear what affected people are supposed to do about it.