Newton killings show cracks in criminal justice system

There are many troubling pieces surrounding the defendant in the killings of Alyssa Runyon and her 4-year-old daughter, Zaylynn Paz.

Runyon’s father, Edward, works in the criminal justice system as a bail bondsman and has perspective on how he thinks the criminal justice system failed and contributed to the deaths.

He points to weaknesses in a system that enables the public to be aware of who registered sex offenders are and where they’re living.

Keith Hawkins, 19, is charged with killing Alyssa Runyon, 24, and her daughter on Aug. 8 in Runyon’s duplex in Newton. Runyon appeared to be strangled, and Zaylynn was found with stab wounds in another bedroom.

Hawkins is a registered sex offender, found guilty as a 12-year-old of aggravated indecent liberties with a 5-year-old girl. He received a year of probation, but a McPherson County judge decided Hawkins would not be on the public portion of the sex-offender registry. The judge had the leeway to keep Hawkins’ name private because he was a juvenile.

Public or not, Hawkins was still required as an adult to register his address and workplace with Harvey County authorities. Reporting by The Eagle’s Tim Potter revealed he hadn’t complied since April, and county prosecutors charged him with a felony in June for failing to register.

Three weeks before the murders, Hawkins didn’t show up for a court hearing on the felony charge. The county attorney’s office, knowing Hawkins was a sex offender whose registration wasn’t updated, didn’t issue a warrant by the time of the killings, citing a backlog of cases and manpower issues.

Edward Runyon thinks the system wasn’t aggressive enough in trying to find Hawkins after he didn’t appear in court. Yet there was still a chance to arrest Hawkins on the failing-to-register charge.

In late June, he was arrested for failing to appear in Newton Municipal Court for a speeding ticket. He spent a few days in jail before being released June 29 on a $1,000 personal recognizance bond.

Municipal Court and District Court are different systems, and Hawkins’ District Court charge evidently wasn’t noticed by the municipal court. But shouldn’t it have been? Shouldn’t a municipal court check on an alleged offender in other court systems at least within the same county? Hawkins had already been charged with felony failure to register as a sex offender, though there was no warrant.

It would be bold to definitively say the murders could have been prevented, yet the timeline shows Hawkins slipped through procedural cracks before his arrest.

State Rep. John Whitmer, R-Wichita, is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and wants legislative action to take the decision of making a juvenile sex offender’s name public out of a judge’s hands. That’s a debate worth having at the state level. Though judges should be trusted to make judgment calls on sentencing, serious juvenile convictions in sex-offender cases should bring an automatic public registration.

Harvey County Attorney David Yoder said there wasn’t anything in the nature of Hawkins’ case that said the public was in immediate danger of a horrible crime. “You can’t go back and look at what ifs,” he said.

No, what ifs don’t bring a mother and daughter back. They do show the flaws that the system has in keeping sex offenders’ whereabouts public and up to date. As a result, Alyssa Runyon never had a chance to know whether Hawkins was a sex offender convicted of indecent liberties with a small girl.

This story was originally published August 22, 2017 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Newton killings show cracks in criminal justice system."