Wyandotte County, Kansas’ new district court judge once signed off on releasing a suspect who later went on to kill a Kansas City, Kansas police officer, The Heartlander has learned.

Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly Wednesday appointed Damon Mitchell to fill the seat of retired Judge Constance M. Alvey.

But last July, as District Attorney Mark Dupree’s chief deputy, Mitchell signed off on a document declining to go retrieve fugitive Dennis Mitchell III, who was wanted in Wyandotte County.

Mitchell was sitting in an Iowa jail on a domestic battery charge there and was awaiting an expected transport back to Wyandotte County for having missed a court date on felony drug charges in a 2024 case.

Dupree’s office has a standing extradition policy sharply limiting which states he wants the sheriff’s department to bring fugitives back from. Notably, those four states are Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska – and Iowa.

But inexplicably, as the Heartlander reported in August, Wyandotte County told Iowa authorities last July they didn’t want to come get Dennis Mitchell – even though he’d agreed to waive extradition proceedings and come back with officers voluntarily.

Damon Mitchell

Thus, Dupree’s office arguably deviated from its own extradition policy in allowing Iowa to set Dennis Mitchell free.

“Wyandotte County prosecutors are facing questions after court documents revealed they declined to extradite Dennis Mitchell III from Iowa weeks before he was accused of killing Kansas City, Kansas, police officer Hunter Simoncic,” KMBC-TV wrote in a follow-up report to The Heartlander’s last year.

Nor is it as if Dennis Mitchell was a first-time offender, as KMBC reported at the time:

“Mitchell, 31, has been arrested at least 17 times in Kansas City, Kansas, since 2014, including drug cases, probation violations and failures to appear in court.”

Mitchell was in the Iowa jail on charges of domestic battery with bodily injury – and, as KMBC noted, “By contrast to Wyandotte County, the booking sheet at the Fremont County Jail said, ‘NO BOND!!!!’”

Officer Simoncic, 26, subsequently died Aug. 26 after a vehicle being pursued “drove toward” him as he was laying down stop sticks, according to the KBI.

Mitchell was charged with capital murder, fleeing police, two counts of theft, and possession of a firearm by a felon, KMBC reported.

The Heartlander last year had obtained the fax document from the DA’s office telling the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Department not to go get Dennis Mitchell from the Iowa jail.

That document has Damon Mitchell’s signature on it.

Now, Damon Mitchell is expected to be among two judges who modify bonds for criminal defendants – in essence, deciding who gets out of jail and who remains in custody – and Mitchell would likely decide around half of them.

“As a former defense attorney and current prosecutor,” the governor said in a press release announcing her appointment of him, “Damon Mitchell brings a unique and robust perspective to the bench. His empathy, commitment to justice, and deep roots in the community will benefit Wyandotte County.”

“We are incredibly proud of Damon,” Dupree said in the same statement. “From the moment he walked into the office restructuring his role and that of the assistant district attorneys in his charge, he has been nothing short of exemplary. He will bring the experience, work ethic and empathy required of his new position. Wyandotte County is well-served with Judge Damon Mitchell.”

The governor’s and DA’s mentions of Mitchell’s “empathy” don’t specify for whom – but in a 2020 editorial “‘Sorry for people in Wyandotte County’: Crime victims denied justice, empathy by DA,” The Kansas City Star indicated such empathy might not necessarily be for the victims of crime so much as the perpetrators.

Court records obtained by The Heartlander show that as deputy chief prosecutor Damon Mitchell also signed off on the 2019 dismissal of drug and weapons charges against Dontae Brooks — since arrested in the Feb. 15 shooting deaths of two women and shooting injuries of two others at a Kansas City nightclub. That dismissal, however, appears to have been to make way for federal charges in the case, for which Brooks was on release at the time of the shooting.