On heels of Kezer exoneration, another Hulshof murder prosecution challenged

In this May 29, 2008 file photo, Kenny Hulshof, then Republican gubernatorial candidate in Missouri, speaks during a news conference in Kansas City, Mo. (Associated Press/Ed Zurga) [Click to enlarge]

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The courtroom conduct of former representative Kenny Hulshof, a 2008 Republican nominee for governor, is again under scrutiny in a new appeal of a murder conviction obtained by the one-time special state prosecutor.

Dale Helmig, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1996 for the Osage County murder of his mother three years earlier, filed a petition with the Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking a new trial. Norma Helmig's body was found tied to a concrete block near her home in the central Missouri town of Linn during the 1993 Midwest floods.

The petition seeks a court order allowing the defense to test hair and blood found on the mother's sheet and hairs found in the trunk of her car for DNA traces. Such tests were not available at the time of Dale Helmig's trial.

The 106-page appeal also takes aim at Hulshof, accusing the six-term congressman from Columbia and former finalist for the University of Missouri system presidency of withholding evidence from Helmig's defense attorneys and knowingly presenting false testimony and evidence.

The petition said a Cole County judge in February ruled that Joshua Kezer, convicted 15 years ago of murdering a Southeast Missouri college student, was wrongly found guilty, in part because Hulshof withheld key evidence from defense attorneys and embellished details in his closing arguments.

Kezer was released the next day after a local prosecutor said he would not retry the case.

In the Helmig case, Hulshof is accused of distorting accounts of a fight between Norma Helmig and her estranged husband. Witnesses said that Ted Helmig, who had been under a court order to stay away from his wife, threw a cup of coffee in her face three days before her disappearance July 29, 1993.

"I'm going to put an end to this," Ted Helmig reportedly told his wife at the Jefferson City restaurant.

Hulshof instead attempted to elicit testimony from Osage County Sheriff Carl Fowler, a Jefferson City police officer and a Country Kitchen waitress that the fight was between Dale Helmig and his mother, not a couple in the midst of a contentious divorce.

The appeal also claims Hulshof manipulated the testimony of a state trooper who interrogated Dale Helmig. Hulshof elicited testimony from the trooper that Helmig never denied killing his mother, even though the officer's own written report of the interview contradicted that account by noting that Helmig denied involvement.

"Hulshof is a repeat offender when it comes to prosecutorial misconduct," said Helmig's defense attorney, Sean O'Brien, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor.

Hulshof went into private practice after losing the 2008 governor's race to Democrat Jay Nixon, his former boss at the state attorney general's office. A spokeswoman for the Kansas City law firm of Polsinelli Shughart said he was not available for comment.

A 2008 Associated Press investigation found that in addition to the Kezer case, prosecutorial errors by Hulshof led to four death sentence reversals, although in those cases subsequent trials led to new convictions of the defendants.

Another accused murderer won acquittal by a new jury at a second trial after his Hulshof-prosecuted conviction was rejected on appeal. A Chillicothe man convicted of killing his neighbor's wife also won a new trial after an appeals court identified previous prosecution errors.

Robert Schollmeyer, who assisted Hulshof in the Helmig case as Osage County prosecutor, said the pair's courtroom conduct was proper.

"It was a solid prosecution, fair and reasonable," said Schollmeyer, now an associate circuit court judge. "I have no qualms about it whatsoever."

The new petition also questions the competency of Chris Jordan, Helmig's trial lawyer. Jordan was later prosecuted for stealing Valium, oxycodone and other prescription narcotics from University Hospital in Columbia while working as a nurse.

Boone County court records show that Jordan, initially charged with felony theft, pleaded guilty to a charge of receiving stolen medicine and was given probation.

Jordan's law license remains in good standing, but the appeal says he dissolved his law firm after the Helmig trial.

The appeal also suggests that Jordan, who offered a theory that Norma Helmig died of an accidental drug overdose even though no drugs were found in her system, was himself under the influence of drugs while defending Helmig. Jordan did not return a message left at his home number.

Schollmeyer called the allegation of drug use by Helmig's defense attorney a "personal attack" that suggests his new defense attorney is "grasping at straws."

"I had no reason to believe he was not acting at the top of his abilities," Schollmeyer said.