Records Destroyed in Kansas City Planned Parenthood Case

District Judge Steve Tatum today dismissed 23 felony charges and 26 related misdemeanor charges against Planned Parenthood because the original paperwork critical to proving the charges was destroyed by the Kansas Health department (KDHE) in 2005.

However 58 misdemeanor charges for illegal late-term abortions remain to be prosecuted, and the next hearing is scheduled for February 22.

Editor’s note. As this story was about to be posted, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported that:

“Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has asked the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office to conduct an investigation into the destruction of documents considered key evidence in a criminal case against a Kansas City-area Planned Parenthood clinic.

“Schmidt disclosed Wednesday he has asked the Shawnee County sheriff to investigate and the county’s district attorney has agreed to handle any resulting case.

“‘(Schmidt) wants a complete, separate investigation from an outside law enforcement agency,’ Sheriff Dick Barta said. ‘That’s why we were requested to do that.'”

The paperwork in question are the ‘Induced Termination of Pregnancy’ compliance forms (called ITOPs) submitted monthly to the state by abortionists, with a copy required by law to be kept in the patient medical file. ITOPs do not include the patient’s name or other personal identifiers, but they do include critical information about late-term viability and the medical reasons that banned abortions were performed.

Planned Parenthood allegedly failed to keep patient file copies of ITOPs and then allegedly committed the more serious felony-level crimes of recreating the forms when they were requested. Until he was gagged from testifying in the case, District Judge Richard Anderson had said in open court that a police forgery expert backed up those suspicions.

Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe explained that he did not believe the felony charges could be won since a previous attorney general destroyed ITOP evidence on April 7, 2009. Those ITOPs had been held in the attorney general’s office after Kline’s term was over. Howe said the destruction appeared to violate the attorney general’s policy on such matters.

The 107 total criminal charges against the Kansas City suburban Planned Parenthood had been originally filed in 2007 by then-Johnson County District Attorney, Phil Kline, using state records he obtained under court order in 2004 when he was Attorney General.

Two weeks ago, Howe dropped the bombshell that only recently had it been discovered that the evidence for this case (the original ITOPs from 2003) had been shredded in 2005 by the KDHE.

Noteworthy is that KDHE had never volunteered- in defense filings or personal court appearances- that the paperwork had been shredded as the case dragged on for years with interventions from past attorneys general and the state Supreme Court. There has been no comment yet from the KDHE defending the destruction of records which were known to be part of an ongoing investigation.

David Andrusko, National Right to Life