SALINA, Kan. (AP) - A Kanopolis man will be retried in January in the 2003 stabbing death of a man whom he fought outside a Salina bar.
Douglas Aldrich’s new trial is scheduled for Jan. 12 in Saline County District Court. Aldrich, 52, is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 8, 2003, death of Jerald Bird outside the Red Kitten Bar in Salina. Aldrich says he acted in self-defense.
Aldrich was sentenced to 51½ years in October 2003. Aldrich’s conviction was set aside in 2012 due to complaints about the effectiveness of his attorney. The state unsuccessfully appealed and on Sept. 11 Aldrich was moved back to Saline County Jail.
District Judge Rene Young on Wednesday denied a motion to reduce Aldrich’s bond from $1 million to $100,000, The Salina Journal reported (https://bit.ly/1xW2OPZ ).
Court records indicate that Bird told Aldrich to leave the bar after he became combative. When Aldrich returned for a pair of glasses, Bird physically threw him out of the bar. Bird later returned to the bar and he had been stabbed in the heart. Aldrich fled the scene and was arrested that night at his Kanopolis home.
Attorney C. Richard Comfort argued Wednesday that Aldrich should be presumed innocent and that evidence at trial will show he was not the aggressor in the fight.
“It wasn’t my client’s decision to start this physical confrontation,” Comfort said. He said Bird threw Aldrich into a door jamb and onto the parking lot, and that he ran at Aldrich and impaled himself on Aldrich’s knife.
Aldrich was granted a retrial after a district judge ruled in 2012 that Aldrich’s attorney had not spent enough time with him to effectively represent him and that the outcome of the first trial might have been different if not for errors committed by the attorney, including not allowing Aldrich to testify about his self-defense claim.
___
Information from: The Salina (Kan.) Journal, https://www.salina.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.