The Kansas Supreme Court has denied a Franklin County man’s request to withdraw his plea of “no contest” for various crimes. Robert Lowell Lawrence Ward filed the motion in 2022 on a plea he submitted a decade ago, in 2014, on one count of criminal threat and two counts of assault. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison on those counts. Ward asked the court to withdraw his plea of “no contest” in his criminal threat case because he was coerced into making the plea by his counsel’s advice that false testimony could support a guilty verdict at trial.
In October of 2012, the state charged Ward in Franklin County District Court with criminal threat, violation of a protection order, domestic battery and battery. The court said the requirement is to file such a motion within one year of a final order on direct appeal. The district court sentenced him in August 2013, and Kansas law prohibited him from filing a direct appeal because he plead “no contest”.
