Wichita court error marked traffic violator as sex offender

A Wichita Municipal Court officer mistakenly recorded that a woman had been convicted of a sex crime – when all she had was a traffic ticket.

The erroneous sex crime conviction was then sent to the state’s criminal database, which is frequently used by employers conducting background checks.

The erroneous sex-offense listing prompted the woman to be fired from her home-health-care job, the woman contended in a lawsuit brought against the city in December 2014.

In a court document filed Tuesday, a Sedgwick County District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit saying it wasn’t brought within the proper time frame.

The error occurred when the court officer clicked a wrong box on an electronic form and sent it to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, according to court documents filed in the lawsuit.

The error was corrected after the woman learned of it. The Municipal Court officer was disciplined and re-trained, court documents say.

The woman sued the city for more than $75,000, claiming she had been defamed.

She wouldn’t discuss the case when contacted by The Eagle. It wasn’t clear if she will appeal the judge’s decision to dismiss her claims.

She claimed in her lawsuit that the city had no “rules to cross-check … or detect erroneous entry” in records. She also contended that the city failed to supervise or train its employees in how to prevent or detect errors.

Municipal Court Administrator Donte Martin said he could not talk about the lawsuit.

There is a voluminous District Court record in the woman’s lawsuit of how the mistake played out:

It began with a traffic ticket.

On Sept. 19, 2013, a Wichita police officer gave the woman a ticket for driving without proof of insurance. Less than a month later, Municipal Court found her guilty. After she gave her fingerprints, as required, the city court officer submitting the fingerprints had to use a “drop down box” with a list of crimes on a computer.

A box for “traffic violation” and “sex offense” were next to each other on the list.

The court officer “mistakenly clicked on ‘sex offense,” says a District Court document summarizing facts of the case.

The fingerprints and mistaken crime record went electronically to the KBI that same day. As required by law, it was provided to the KBI, which is a repository for criminal background records, the summary says.

The woman had begun working for a home health care business about four days before her conviction. But after getting the KBI background check, the employer fired the woman over the telephone and in writing for “falsifying information on her employment application form,” the court summary says.

On her job application, she had checked “No” to the question of whether she had any non-traffic criminal convictions, the summary says.

Besides the erroneous sex offense conviction, she had non-traffic theft convictions in 1985 and 1987, the court document said.

The erroneous record saying she had a sex offense was corrected to a traffic offense about three weeks after the court officer made the mistake.

When an executive from the business called the woman to fire her “for falsifying information on her application,” the summary says, the woman challenged the report. She asked what non-traffic convictions she had. The business executive “told her about the recent sex offense conviction,” the summary says.

The woman went to the Municipal Court clerk’s office “and confronted staff about this error.” The Municipal Court administrator began an investigation and contacted the KBI the next day. By Nov. 8, 2013, “the error had been rectified.”

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 2:07 PM with the headline "Wichita court error marked traffic violator as sex offender."