Prosecutors are trying to decide how to proceed after an appellate agreed that self-incriminating statements made by a teen in a Lawrence rape investigation should be tossed, finding that the interrogation was “almost like a therapy session.”
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the Kansas Court of Appeals agreed this month with a Douglas County judge who found that the high school student’s 2017 statements to police were not made “of a free and independent will” and couldn’t be used against him. The appellate court noted that the teen was encouraged to let out everything he’d been “holding inside” and was not initially told he was suspected of rape.