Teflon man three times charged with murder, three times freed
Three times since 2004, Jackson County prosecutors have charged Marlyn Standifer with murder.
Marlyn Standifer
And three times he has gone free.
In the one murder case in
which a jury found him guilty, the 25-year-old Kansas City man won a
new trial after accomplice Marlawn Chaney, who had testified against
Standifer, recanted. Chaney said he was the one who shot James Atkinson
Sr. to death in January 2007.
In a letter to Standifer’s attorney, Chaney wrote that he needed to “get myself right with God.”
It turned out to be a timely move.
Before
Standifer’s second trial in Atkinson’s killing, Chaney was found shot
to death on the front porch of a Kansas City house. Without his
testimony, a jury acquitted Standifer.
Now Standifer is back in
custody, charged in a southeast Kansas City home invasion and attempted
robbery that left a victim with multiple gunshot wounds.
That
crime earlier this month occurred 15 days after Standifer was released
after serving eight months of what was supposed to be a 24-month
sentence for probation violations in a federal gun case.
“I wanted to throw up,” Atkinson’s sister Tonia Reid said of hearing that Standifer had been arrested once again.
In
two of Standifer’s murder cases, and a handful of others involving
nonfatal shootings, court records are no longer available. Records of
criminal court cases that end with a dismissal or acquittal are closed
to the public.
But attorneys who handled those cases say they were
dismissed because witnesses and victims either did not cooperate or
could not be found to testify.
Standifer’s first murder charge
was filed when he was 16. In January 2005, he was certified to stand
trial as an adult in the June 21, 2004, killing of Ronald Taylor and
assault of two other people.
Taylor was shot to death during an
apparent attempted robbery near 29th Street and Flora Avenue, and
Standifer was charged with second-degree murder along with another man,
Gemayel Martin.
Martin, whose fingerprint was recovered from the
car Taylor was in when he was killed, later entered a plea to a lesser
charge of involuntary manslaughter.
But the case against Standifer
was dismissed because the only witness disappeared, according to Dan
Miller, an attorney in private practice who handled the case while he
was an assistant Jackson County prosecutor.
“When it was all said and done there were no witnesses,” Miller said.
In January 2007, Atkinson, the father of three young sons, was found shot to death at 30th Street and Lister Avenue.
Standifer,
Chaney and another man were implicated as suspects. The night before
Atkinson was found dead, surveillance video showed him and Standifer
entering a hospital together. According to court documents, Standifer
was wearing a sweatshirt with the words: “Felons with guns. One will get
you five. None will get you killed.”
He was wearing the same shirt when detectives questioned him a few days later.
Standifer
remained free while detectives built their case. Within months, he was
charged in federal court with being an illegal drug user in possession
of a firearm during a March 2007 shooting and with participating in an
April 2007 kidnapping scheme that ended with one of his accomplices shot
dead by the would-be victim.
Standifer and three others were
charged with murder for the death of their companion, Keith Wooden,
because it occurred during the commission of a dangerous crime.
By
then, prosecutors also had charged him with first-degree murder in the
death of Atkinson after Chaney gave a statement to police. Chaney said
Standifer shot Atkinson because he didn’t pay for drugs.
In June
2007, Standifer pleaded guilty to the federal gun charge, and in March
2008, he was sentenced to the five years in prison presaged by his
“felons with guns” sweatshirt.
For the two murder cases pending in
Jackson County, Chase Higinbotham, an attorney in private practice, was
appointed as a special prosecutor. Higinbotham also was assigned to
handle two assault-robbery cases involving Chaney.
In October
2009, a jury found Standifer guilty of first-degree murder in Atkinson’s
death. In December of that year, he was sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
Efforts to prosecute Standifer for the
assault-robbery cases and the kidnapping-murder case, however, were
thwarted by witness and victim noncooperation, Higinbotham said.
“Not one person came forward to testify,” he said, so those cases had to be dismissed.
Standifer
remained in custody for the Atkinson murder conviction, which he
appealed to the Missouri Court of Appeals. The appeal was pending when
Chaney sent his confession letter to Standifer’s attorney in July 2010.
“I was high that night, but I can’t let my friend go down for something I did,” Chaney wrote.
Based
on that letter, the appeals court sent Standifer’s case back to Jackson
County for a hearing to determine whether he should get a new trial.
Chaney, who was in custody on an unrelated robbery, testified at that
hearing and a judge granted Standifer’s request for a new trial.
Shortly
after that, Chaney was released from custody. In September 2011, he was
found shot to death on the front porch of a vacant house in the 1800
block of Newton Avenue.
“He was shot execution-style,” Higinbotham recalled.
That killing remains unsolved.
Because
Chaney was no longer available to testify, the judge ruled that none of
his statements could be used at the second trial. Without that
testimony, Higinbotham said, no evidence supported the premeditated
murder charge.
Higinbotham amended the charge to second-degree murder, but in August 2012, jurors found Standifer not guilty.
He
was released from state custody and taken into federal custody to serve
the sentence in the gun case. However, Higinbotham said, federal prison
authorities gave Standifer credit for some of the time he had already
served and he was almost immediately released.
In November 2012,
he was cited for violating conditions of his release, and in January a
federal judge sentenced him to an additional 24 months.
But once
again, federal prison officials calculated that he should receive credit
for some of the time he had previously served, and Standifer was
released on Sept. 5.
On the morning of Sept. 20, Standifer
allegedly accosted a man taking out trash in the 7100 block of East
111th Terrace and ordered him at gunpoint to knock on the door of a
neighbor’s house, according to court documents.
He knocked, and
when the neighbor looked out and saw what was going on, he ran to a
bedroom and grabbed a gun of his own. According to court documents,
Standifer allegedly forced the man he had originally accosted inside,
and yelled at the homeowner, “You got 10 seconds before this turns into a
murder scene.”
The homeowner said that when he came out of the
bedroom, Standifer fired at him and the homeowner fired back, according
to court documents. The man who had been accosted outside was struck by
several shots but survived.
Standifer and several co-defendants
fled in a vehicle but were arrested after a chase, according to court
documents. He is charged with attempted robbery, kidnapping, burglary
and armed criminal action and is being held on a $250,000 cash bond.
Court
records do not list a current attorney for Standifer, and police and
prosecutors declined to discuss his criminal history because of the
pending case.
But members of Atkinson’s family said they are still
angry about what happened in their case, and hope Standifer will be
convicted of the charges he faces.
“He needs to be off the streets and off the streets for a long time,” said Atkinson’s father, Harold Atkinson
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