Shawn Harris would have been in prison Saturday, unable to shoot and kill a Wyandotte County deputy as he’s charged, if a prosecutor elsewhere in Kansas had followed through on a case last year, The Heartlander has learned.

The former county attorney in Anderson County southwest of Kansas City had charged Harris, 38, in two separate cases last year: one involving physical abuse of a child, and another alleging he failed to report a change in his status under the Kansas Offender Registration Act, which covers repeat violent offenders.

He was allowed to plead no contest Dec. 17 to two misdemeanor battery counts in the child abuse case and was put on probation – when he could have been put in prison for over 11 years for the original charges.

“He pled in that case – a case that he was facing 136 months of prison time over,” says puzzled longtime KC-area bondsman Brian Underwood. “He was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor, was granted probation and then released from custody in Anderson County that same day.”

Moreover, while it sounds mundane, the charge involving a Kansas Offender Registration Act violation could’ve also imprisoned Harris for a long period: he could’ve received 46 months in prison in that case as well.

But for some reason – perhaps as part of a plea deal in the child abuse case – court records indicate then-County Attorney Elizabeth Oliver simply dismissed the registration act case Dec. 17, the same day Harris pled to lesser charges in the abuse case and was granted probation.

Harris was thus released in both cases – ultimately free to allegedly shoot the deputy on Saturday – even though he already had a “Category A” criminal history, the worst possible under Kansas law.

In fact, Harris had long ago earned his Category A criminal history – even before his 2013 sentence of nearly 11 years in a 2012 armed robbery. He was released from state prison sometime before February 2024.

The Heartlander reached out to Oliver to ask why the two cases she filed turned out the way they did. She replied via email that she is working on memory alone, now that she’s out of office and no longer has access to Harris’ files.

On the abuse case, Oliver writes that a judge threw out the abuse charge after a Sept. 17 preliminary hearing, leaving only two counts of battery.

“Despite the minor child … reenacting how Mr. Harris hit her, and identifying Mr. Harris, Judge Kara Reynolds did not bind Mr. Harris over on the felony count of child abuse,” Oliver writes, adding that Harris was sentenced to 208 days time served.

“It is highly unusual to put minor children that are under 12 on the stand at a preliminary hearing,” she writes. “In this case, I put the two minor children on and [one] testified and reenacted the event out, and Judge Reynolds found the state had not met the burden of probable cause for the felony count of child abuse. …

“I simply cannot [comment] on Judge Reynolds’ ruling.”

On the registration act case, Oliver writes that a deal on it was actually reached before the abuse case.

“Mr. Harris was to get compliant on his registration offense and the case would be dismissed, but the state reserved the right to refile the case,” she writes. “My recollection in this case is that Mr. Harris made a good impression on the officer and the officer approved of the offer. It would have been unusual for me to dismiss this type of case without an officer’s approval.

“Judge Kara Reynolds had not bound over a previous case with the exact same charge at a preliminary hearing and that ruling dismissed that case at that stage. … 

“Her ruling in the other case was a significant consideration for me in making the decision in this case. It is difficult to say what would have happened had this case progressed. Sentencing is ultimately the Judge’s decision, and defense may make arguments for a departure to probation. I cannot commit to what could have been.”

“Don’t give him the plea deal!”

With that criminal history, it’s likely Harris would have been sentenced in the case to 46 months in prison – making it impossible for him to kill Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Deputy Elijah Ming, for which he’s been charged with capital murder.

“He faced up to 46 months in prison” on the registration act violation alone, notes James Spies, a defense attorney and former prosecutor in Kansas City. “He would have been what’s called ‘presumptive imprisonment’ on that, meaning the law says he’s supposed to go to prison.”

Spies is baffled as to why a prosecutor would let a Category-A criminal skate on a registration act violation.

After Harris pled to two misdemeanor batteries in the child abuse case, he says, “why do you then also dismiss the offender registration? Generally, those are slam dunk cases. So, if you were so inclined to give a misdemeanor on the child abuse case, why not also hammer him for the offender registration?”

What if not dismissing the registration act charge would’ve blown up the plea deal in the child abuse case?

“Well, then don’t give him the plea deal!” says Spies.

“Not a case of herding cats”

It’s not as if Harris deserved a break.

“I’ve done the math,” Underwood says, “and it looks to me like this guy has spent just over two-thirds of his adult life incarcerated.”

Nonetheless, Harris is now accused of shooting at Ming and a Kansas City, Kansas, police officer from inside a house Saturday, killing Ming, who leaves a wife and son. News reports say a woman there had requested police protection after she said a man had threatened her with a gun while friends were helping her move out.

Both Underwood and Spies fault former prosecutor Oliver more for the failure to prosecute Harris on the registration act charge, owing to how difficult it is to win convictions in abuse cases – particularly if a victim or witness is uncooperative, frightened or recants.

“This case of violation of the Offender Registration Act is a drastically different case,” Underwood says. “Your witnesses are law enforcement officers that you can get into court with nothing more than a text message, telephone call or an e-mail.

“It’s not a case of herding cats to successfully prosecute a case like the violation of the Offender Registration Act.”

Why walk away from “a monster”?

Even if there was a prior agreement to dismiss the registration case, Underwood says, “The minute the file crossed her desk alleging child abuse, all bets were off,” and there should have been no deal.

Underwood also argues that Oliver’s attitude on the registration act charge – that this particular judge doesn’t tend to convict in such cases, so why pursue it – is a strikingly defeatist attitude for a prosecutor.

“Your job as a prosecutor is to vigorously prosecute the cases that you have,” he argues. “Vigorous prosecution [was] Ms. Oliver’s J-O-B. And she did not vigorously prosecute someone who is obviously a monster. She had him. She knew he was a monster, and she did not vigorously prosecute him.”

That prosecution in the pre-existing offender registration case should have been all the more vigorous, Underwood says, after the child abuse case popped up. And the case certainly shouldn’t have been dismissed for someone she believed was guilty of physically abusing a child, he says.

“The fact that she put kids on the stand at a preliminary hearing speaks to the degree to which she did, in fact, believe that child abuse had occurred.”

Criminal history A is currently the worst category in Kansas. But what if there was an even higher category of criminal?

“If only there was like an A+ or AA or AAA, then this guy Shawn Harris – he would have been at least an AA, or an A+, whatever you call it,” Spies says.

“If the Legislature were to create something higher than criminal history A,” Underwood says, “Shawn Harris – at the time that he was being prosecuted for this child abuse case – would have fit into that next higher category.”

Prosecutor courted controversy

Oliver writes on her LinkedIn page, “I am an experienced trial lawyer.” But she was a controversial figure during her time as Anderson County attorney from January 2021 to this past January.

KOFO radio reported in April 2024 that the county denied her a cost of living increase “because county commissioners take issue with how she runs her office” – specifically about it being “closed or unattended” during normal business hours.

According to the station, then-Sheriff Vern Valentine also complained in an email “about the office being vacant during regular work days. …

“Commissioners told the Anderson County Review they did take issue with Oliver’s office hours, and that withholding Oliver’s COLA was a move to exert that pressure.”

“It amounted to three days,” Oliver writes about the office being poorly manned. “One day was a part-day holiday and I allowed my employee to work remote from home. One day I was at the office alone and a sign was up advising people to knock on the door. And there was one day where the office was closed and no one was there. My recollection was the issue arose during the holidays in November/December.”

Oliver was nonetheless confident enough in herself that in 2022 she was one of four applicants for a judgeship in Lyon County – outside of Anderson County’s judicial district – just a year and a half into her tenure as county attorney.

“One of these applicants is from out-of-county. She’s widely traveled,” a member of the judicial nominating commission was quoted as saying of Oliver at the time. “I would question whether she’s going to use this as a steppingstone for something else, or whether or not she is a viable candidate for the judgeship.”

Indeed, about a week later Oliver was the lone applicant passed over by the commission.

Oliver left office in January after she was defeated for re-election in the Republican primary last August by a landslide vote of 783 to 33, KOFO reported.

“I filed more cases than my predecessor during my time as the Anderson County Attorney (my predecessor was there for 8 years; I was there for 4),” Oliver writes in her defense, “and I took more than double the amount of cases my predecessor did to jury trial. I was the first female Anderson County Attorney.”

Math says Harris should’ve been in prison

If Oliver had prosecuted Harris on the offender registration case rather than dismissing it last December, what’s the likelihood that he would’ve been in a state prison last Saturday and unable to shoot deputy Ming as charged?

“It’s not a theoretical debate,” says Underwood. “It’s addition and subtraction. If she would have hammered him on the [registration] case that was a slam dunk, it was an open-and-shut case. Again, it’s not a case of herding cats that’s going to be difficult to prove in front of a jury. 

“If she would have hammered him on the offender registration case, he would have absolutely, positively been sitting in the Kansas State Penitentiary on the day that he shot and killed deputy Ming in Wyandotte County. 

“It’s just a matter of math. And you don’t have to take my word on it. You just look at her complaint, the charging document from when she filed that in March of 2024. She alleges, right on the face of the document, right on the complaint, that the potential penalty range on the low end is from 17 months. On the high end, it’s 46 months.”