A former Douglas County prosecutor who was facing a disciplinary matter in Missouri will not have her law license suspended, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
Amy McGowan worked as a prosecutor in the Douglas County district attorney’s office for almost 15 years. Prior to that, she worked in Jackson County, Missouri.
A Missouri man, Ricky Kidd, spent 23 years in prison in a murder case before he was exonerated in 2019. McGowan retired a few months later.
She was accused of withholding evidence in Kidd’s case; however, after multiple hearings in 2020, a disciplinary panel recommended that the case against McGowan be dismissed.
The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel rejected that recommendation in April, and filed a brief this summer requesting that McGowan’s law license be suspended, the Kansas City Star reported.
“Having reviewed the record and briefs filed and having conducted oral argument in this disciplinary matter, this Court finds there is not sufficient evidence to establish any of the claims of professional misconduct alleged in the information against” McGowan, the brief order from Chief Justice Paul C. Wilson states. He dismissed the discipline case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
Throughout the case, McGowan’s attorney had argued that his client did not commit ethical misconduct.
McGowan has also been accused of redacting pertinent medical information in a Douglas County rape case that was overturned in 2021. The Kansas Supreme Court in 2013 also vacated a sentence in a child sex crime case because of comments McGowan had made during a sentencing hearing, and found in 2012 that she had committed misconduct during her closing arguments in a burglary and murder case.
McGowan’s law license is still active in Kansas, according to an online database through the courts.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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