Wichita lawyer Dan Monnat, whose firm represents a man who was forced by a court order to give a DNA sample in the BTK investigation, said he was leery of the process. “I think any time law enforcement officers show up at your doorstep and forcibly or unforcibly obtain bodily fluids from you, there’s some invasion of privacy,” he said.
Asked about the time it has taken to destroy the samples, Valadez’s lawyer, Dan Monnat, said: “That’s one of the problems with sensitive, personal information in the hands of the government. “There may be a court order to destroy it, but you discover a long time hence that the personal information is still in the hands of the government, undestroyed and with the government still having the opportunity to put it to use.”
That suggestion irked Dan Monnat, Valadez’s lawyer. “To Roger, saying ‘you don’t want to know the truth’ sounds an awful lot like ‘we don’t want you to know the truth,’ ” Monnat said afterward.
In a sometimes tense and impassioned hearing before District Judge Greg Waller, Valadez’s lawyer, Dan Monnat, contended that it is his client’s right to know why police — acting on a tip in the serial-murder case — suspected him and searched his home.
Rayburn’s lawyer, Dan Monnat, argued that because city lawyers had backed out of a plea deal, they’d violated his due process rights.
Last year, Rayburn was charged with battery after a scuffle with protesters outside Women’s Health Care Services, 5107 E. Kellogg Drive. The clinic has been the site of many protests over the past two decades — some of them violent.
According to court files, Monnat and the city’s law department had negotiated for Rayburn to plead no contest in a lesser charge of “interfering with a parade.” City lawyers acknowledged agreeing to the deal.
One Wichita defense lawyer with an interest in the topic is Dan Monnat, who represents a man who was forced through a court order to submit a DNA sample to police. The man, Roger Valadez, went to court last week in an effort to get the sample back.
Monnat said he doesn’t know where Valadez’s DNA or DNA information may be now. “We’ve been given no direct assurances about it,” he said. “There is no reason to have that information unnecessarily in the hands of the government.”
His lawyer filed a motion Tuesday in Sedgwick County District Court seeking the return of a DNA sample and personal items seized from Valadez’s home after his Dec. 1 arrest.
“Dr. Tiller has always consistently, carefully and appropriately followed the law in all respects,” read a statement released on Tiller’s behalf by Wichita lawyers Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat.
The lawyers pointed out that earlier this week Tiller complied with a Texas request for records, which they called “a legitimate inquiry…to more fully investigate a specific event.”
Dan Monnat said Tuesday “I don’t think you can lawfully kick down a citizen’s door to execute a warrant for a mouth swab for DNA the day you get the warrant,” Monnat said. “There’s no emergency. The DNA is not going to disappear.”
In a statement Friday night that Monnat said was approved by his client, Monnat said: “We don’t believe his name ever should have been connected to the BTK investigation….”
