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CRIMINAL JUSTICE | SUMMER 2021
trial tactics
Published in Criminal Justice, Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2021. © 2021 by the American Bar
Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.This information or any portion thereof
may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database
orretrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
STEPHEN A. SALTZBURG is the Wallace
and Beverley Woodbury University Professor at The
George Washington University Law School and is a
An
Illustrative
Case
There are
automobile
chases, and
there are
exceptional
automobile
chases. Two
of these
chases that
began in the middle of the night in Topeka,
Kansas, are described in State v. Jenkins, 455
P.3d 779, 781–82 (Kan. 2020).
The first pursuit involved a minivan and
began shortly before 3 a.m. The van
drove eastbound on Interstate 70 from
Topeka and did not pull over, despite a
law enforcement officer’s use of lights
and sirens. After the van accelerated to
90 miles per hour, the pursuit was called
off. A different officer reinitiated pursuit
after he observed the van make a U-turn
at the I-70 toll plaza parking lot and return
westbound toward Topeka. During this
pursuit, the van’s driver ran a red light,
twice failed to signal before exiting, and
failed to stop at three stop signs. The
pursuit ended in North Topeka, where
the van went off-road and crashed. Law
enforcement did not find the van’s driver
at the scene of the crash but did find a
female passenger in the van.
The second chase was set in motion
a little after 4 a.m., when Craig Droge
realized that someone had stolen his
friend Donella Davidson’s pickup from
outside his home in North Topeka.
About an hour later, Officer Kurtis
VanDonge noticed a pickup driving
in North Topeka with nonoperational
taillights. He followed the pickup and
activated his lights, then his siren, and
eventually his public announcement
system. Despite this, the pickup’s driver
did not pull over. * * *
During this pursuit, the pickup’s driver
committed numerous moving violations.
He twice turned into an incorrect lane,
three times failed to maintain a single
lane, drove on the left side of a two-
way street, three times failed to come
to a complete stop at a stop sign, and
turned left through a red light. The driver
also maneuvered around at least one
set of stop sticks placed in the road by
law enforcement. The pursuit ended
when the pickup ran a red light at the
intersection of Sixth Street and Topeka
Boulevard and hit two cars. The crash
injured Danny Williams Jr. and Benjamin
Falley, the drivers of the two cars. It killed
Mia Holden, a passenger in Falley’s car.
Sherman Norman Jenkins was the driver of
the minivan in the first chase and of the pickup
in the second chase. It might not come as a
surprise that Jenkins’ driver’s license had been
revoked prior to the chases. Police removed
him from the pickup at the end of the second
chase, took him to the hospital, and then took
him to jail.
A jury convicted Jenkins of first-degree
felony murder, two counts of aggravated
battery, two counts of felony fleeing and
eluding police, one count of theft, one count
of driving without tail lamps, and one count of
driving while suspended. His sentence was life
without parole for at least 25 years for first-
degree murder, and the trial judge made the
sentences on the other offenses concurrent.
The Issue on Appeal
Jenkins complained on appeal about the
introduction of five out of six recorded
telephone calls allegedly made by him from
a jail the day after the chases. The person
did not identify himself on the calls, but a
detective listened to them and testified to
their contents. He said that the six phone
calls were made to a woman referred to
as “Connie” and that on the calls Jenkins
“accurately speaks about the facts of both
chases that occurred in the morning of
by STEPHEN A.
SALTZBURG
Silent Witness
Phone Call
Identication
