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Update: Ted White Awarded $16 Million by Jury After Spending More than Five Years in Prison

The following article was from The Lee's Summit Journal
By Mark Morris and Russ Pulley
Wednesday, Sep. 03, 2008

Jury awards aquitted man $16 million
City could be paying substantial sum from taxpayers' dollars

A former Lee’s Summit man celebrated Friday when a jury awarded him $16 million, ruling that his ex-wife and a police officer conspired to violate his fair-trial rights.

“I’d waited 10 years for that moment,” said Theodore W. White Jr. “You have no idea what it’s like to be vindicated for something you were accused of 10 years ago.”

White, who has moved to Aurora, Mo., spent more than five years in state prison on a child molestation conviction before a jury finally acquitted him in 2005. Those jurors learned that the investigating officer, Richard McKinley, and White’s wife, Tina, had become romantically involved.

Former prosecutors acknowledged recently that they knew that McKinley and White’s wife had seen each other socially before the first trial, but they did not disclose it to defense lawyers, because they were told it was a one-time meeting for drinks or dinner.

Lawyers for White also have argued that McKinley read, but intentionally neglected to seize, the alleged victim’s diary, which could have proved critical to White’s defense at his first trial. The diary later could not be located.

McKinley still works as a police officer in Lee’s Summit, which could be responsible for paying most of the judgment.

White hugged his lawyers and family members when federal jurors announced their initial verdict of $14 million in actual damages Friday morning.

“I’m most thankful,” he said. “I believe in the system. The only way you can get vindication is to go back through the system.”

This was White’s fourth experience with a jury. After the first jury convicted him in 1999, he fled to Costa Rica, but he was arrested there after “America’s Most Wanted” featured his story. He won an appeal, but a second jury hung up 11-1 for acquittal. The third jury freed him.

Testifying Friday about his finances before federal jurors began considering punitive damages, McKinley said he had no remorse because he had done nothing wrong.

“Everyone who knows this investigation knows it was right,” McKinley said sharply. “This is a sham.”

He then left the courtroom and was not present when jurors returned with a $2 million punitive judgment. Except for her own testimony, Tina McKinley did not attend the two-week trial. She had partly settled her part of the case earlier for $600,000 but remained as a defendant, lawyers said.

Brian McCallister, one of White’s lawyers, said police agencies should look closely at the verdicts. “It’s a resounding message to law enforcement that they need to clean up their act,” he said.

“We have some appeal issues,” Ensz said. “We’re disappointed … both on actual damages and punitive damages.”

The city of Lee’s Summit settled its part of the case in 2006 by agreeing to cover any judgments against McKinley after its insurance carriers had paid. Mayor Karen Messerli said the city could be paying a substantial sum from taxpayer’s dollars.

“It’s a devastating verdict. We’re going to have to assess all our options,” Messerli said, adding that the city would begin reassessing its programs, to prepare for possible obligations.

A pretrial agreement between Lee’s Summit and White holds the city responsible for actual damages, less any amount White collects from insurance companies.

Exactly how that will affect the city’s liability will be unclear until all appeals are concluded and all insurance claims have been paid, said city attorney Robert Handley.

“We are working with two insurance carriers to confirm the amount of insurance available,” he said in a written statement. “One carrier has acknowledged limited coverage. The other has denied coverage, and the city has retained outside counsel to help with the matter. At this time, the total amount is in dispute.”

Lawyers close to the case said that city insurance money available to cover the judgments could be as little as $360,000. The city of Lee’s Summit has a general fund budget of $55 million.

There were several efforts to settle the case. Just before trial, McCallister floated an offer of about $11 million, but was countered with a $1.3 million offer.

During the trial, an economist testifying for White said that he had suffered economic damages and incurred legal fees of more than $1.6 million since he began fighting the case in 1998.

Even as jury selection began, both sides considered settling the case for $4 million, but that deal also fell through.

“They keep telling you to have faith in the system,” White said. “Today the system worked.”

Robert Weeks speaks to the Lee's Summit City Coucil about the Ted White Trial as found on the City of Lee's Summit Web Site.

The following article was originally posted in the Lee's Summit Journal
It can now be found on the Truth In Justice web site at http://www.truthinjustice.org/ted-white.htm.
Court upholds White suit
$100 million case moves forward against LSPD officer
By Brett Dalton
The Journal Staff

After Wednesday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals, the city of Lee's Summit, Missouri could face paying a hefty sum of money to a man wrongfully convicted of child molestation nearly 10 years ago.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has sided with former Lee's Summit businessman Ted White Jr. in his civil rights case against a Lee's Summit police detective and his ex-wife, who is now married to the detective.

White, whose 1999 conviction of molesting his step-daughter was overturned in 2005, filed a federal lawsuit against Lee's Summit Detective Richard McKinley and his wife Tina McKinley after the third retrial resulted in White's acquittal. White and Tina McKinley were married when Tina became romantically involved with Richard McKinley while he was working White's case - a fact not presented during White's first trial.

After being acquitted, White filed a civil lawsuit against Richard and Tina McKinley, the city of Lee's Summit and then-police chief Ken Conlee. With the U.S. Court of Appeals decision to side with White, the case will probably head back to district court, said Brian McCallister, White's attorney.

If Richard McKinley is found guilty in district court of denying White the right to a fair trial by withholding evidence of his innocence - which includes the alleged molestation victim's diary - and of violating White's constitutional rights, the city of Lee's Summit would be forced to pay any compensatory damages awarded to White by the jury, McCallister said. McCallister said that stipulation went into place as terms of an agreement made with the city that dropped the city from the lawsuit.

If Richard and Tina McKinley are found guilty in the district court and punitive damages are awarded, McCallister said the McKinleys would be forced to pay that amount.

Initially, White was seeking $100 million in restitution for wrongful conviction and imprisonment, as White served five years of a 50-year conviction after his first trial. He was seeking $75 million in actual damages and $25 million in punitive damages, as well as court costs and attorney fees to the case. McCallister said on Thursday that the district court jury will ultimately decide how much White would receive if Richard and Tina McKinley are found guilty and damages are awarded.

According to a news release, the U.S. Court of Appeals sided with White because "McKinley failed to take custody of and preserve evidence in the investigation which was indicative of White's innocence and failed to disclose the intimacy of his relationship with White's ex-wife, resulting in deprivation of White's constitutional rights."

The case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals after a district court denied Richard McKinley's motion for a summary judgment - a judgment made without a full trial - after the civil lawsuit was filed. Richard McKinley appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, who ultimately sided with White.
Writing for the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, judge Lavenski R. Smith said the U.S. Court of Appeals with the district court that "the facts alleged here meet the bad faith standard."

"Treating the facts as alleged to be true, a reasonable juror could find Richard deprived White of a fair trial in bad faith by deliberately steering the investigation to benefit his love interest, Tina," Smith wrote. "Richard deliberately withheld from the prosecutors the full extent of his relationship with Tina and failed to preserve the alleged victim's diary which did not corroborate the molestation allegations."

Regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals' ruling, McCallister said he is happy for Ted White Jr. and his family.

"It has been nearly a decade that Ted has been waiting for his story to be heard," he said. "Now, the facts will be decided by a jury and the decision how lies in the hands of a jury in Kansas City, Mo., to decide whether Ted should be compensated for what has happened to him."

Bob Handley, Lee's Summit city attorney, did not return messages left to his office by the Journal as of press time. Ted White Jr., as well as Richard and Tina McKinley, also could not be reached by the Journal. McCallister declined to release contact information for his client, Ted White Jr.

The following article was posted on The Examiner Eastern Jackson County Missouri Online
Monday, April 11, 2005
Story last updated at 12:15 PM on Monday, April 11, 2005
Righting a wrong

"The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a forester."

Those words were written by Robert Bolt, the author "A "Man of All Seasons," a play about Sir Thomas More, the chancellor of England during the 16th century who refused to endorse or renounce King Henry VIII who wanted to divorce his wife and marry his second of six wives. Sir Thomas More was later beheaded because he refused to recognize the king's supremacy over the church.

I was reminded of Bolt's words recently while I listened to Sean O'Brien talk about his experiences representing Ted White in the second and third trials of Mr. White on criminal charges of molesting his adoptive daughter. I went to law school with Sean O'Brien, but did not know him well. I always thought that he marched to the beat of a different drummer. You can do that when you are the drummer.

Sean has chosen to devote his life to representing criminal defendants, many of whom have been charged with crimes in federal court in which they could receive the death penalty. Sean works for a not-for-profit organization that bases its legal fees on the defendant's ability to pay. Most people he represents are in jail and thus the ability to pay is probably not very good. His definition of success is different than most. Ted White would argue that he has been most successful.

A lot has been written about the Ted White story. It's the stuff you see on the Lifetime Network. A successful businessman is charged with molesting his daughter while divorce proceedings are pending. He is convicted, but escapes to Costa Rica where he is caught and extradited back to Missouri. He loses his right to appeal the conviction because he escaped, but wins on appeal under a rarely used exception to the "no appeal rule." The case is reversed on appeal, he is tried again only to have the jury unable to reach a result. He is tried a third time and finally is acquitted.

Investigation during preparation for the second trial leads to information that the detective who investigated the crime was involved in a romantic relationship with the alleged victim's mother at or near the time charges were filed against Mr. White. A diary written by the alleged victim during the time she was allegedly being molested (and which would have been critical evidence in the case) is reviewed by the detective and then given back to the author without disclosure to Mr. White and his attorneys.

The diary disappears. The investigator is asked during a deposition whether he has an interest in the outcome of the case and the prosecutor, fully aware of the romantic relationship, lets him testify that he does not.

Sean O'Brien recently told a room full of lawyers that he did not know whether his representation of Ted White destroyed or restored his faith in the legal system. He was not complimentary of the assistant prosecutors in the case and while I only heard one side of the story, I could understand how Sean could be cynical.

Most lawyers don't face ethical dilemmas very often. There are specific rules that govern many situations, but sometimes a lawyer must navigate the currents and eddies of right and wrong. A moral compass is not handed to you with your law license. My rule of thumb is that if I have to think very long about whether it is right or wrong, that it is probably wrong and I act accordingly. Unfortunately, not all lawyers have a similar rule.

What frightens me about the Ted White case is that he could have spent a long time in jail if he had not escaped to Costa Rica and ended up being represented by Sean O'Brien. There is enough wrongful behavior in the Ted White case by his ex-wife, by the chief detective and by the assistant prosecutors to make a person cynical about the process. Certainly, one could not call these people voyagers in the currents and eddies of right and wrong.

The prosecutor who let Detective McKinley testify falsely in his deposition that he had no interest in the outcome of the case when in fact he was having an affair with the accuser's mother, probably did not withhold information with evil intent. The desire to win sometimes clouds judgment.

Judge Smart wrote in the appellate opinion on the Ted White appeal that "the duty of the state to disclose evidence favorable to the defendant is grounded on the obligation to seek justice, not merely to convict." Judge Smart further stated this information was the information (of the information concerning the affair of the detective and Mrs. White) of "a kind which any capable trial lawyer would like to have," but it was also information which the defense had specifically sought and been denied.

The Ted White case should frighten us all. Fortunately, most prosecutors and police officers know how to navigate in the currents and eddies of right and wrong. As Judge Smart said, their obligation is to seek justice and not to obtain convictions. Someone once said that justice is truth in action. Sean O'Brien is a guardian of truth. I hope he keeps that in mind as he marches to his own beat.

Bob Buckley is a partner of White, Allinder, Graham and Buckley Law Office. To reach him, e-mail bbuckley@wagblaw.com.

Ted White Files Suit Against City Of Lee's Summit

Acquitted Businessman Sues His Ex-Wife, Lead Investigator

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. -- A Lee's Summit businessman who was acquitted last month of sexual abuse charges filed Friday a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against investigators.

After serving seven years behind bars, Ted White walked out of jail a free man on Feb. 7.

Now, he wants the people who put him there to pay for their mistake.

White was accused of molesting his stepdaughter when she was 10 years old. In his third trial, the jury ruled White was not guilty of 12 charges against him.

KMBC's Donna Pitman reported that Brian McCallister, White's attorney, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the city of Lee's Summit, Police Chief Kenneth Conlee, lead investigator Richard McKinley and Tina McKinley, who is White's ex-wife and the mother of the accuser.

While White and Tina McKinley were still married, she had an affair with investigator Richard McKinley, a fact that prosecutors did not reveal during White's first trial. The two have since married.

"When the lead detective in the case is sleeping with the defendant's wife -- the suspect's wife -- that taints and colors everything," McCallister said.

McCallister said withholding that information violated White's rights to a fair trial and prolonged the process.

"Ted White and his family spent the better part of seven years fighting this in court. It's wiped that family out financially," McCallister said.

The lawsuit asked for compensation of up to $100 million. McCallister said that money couldn't begin to repay the time that was lost.

"If people who are harmed don't stand up for what they believe in -- what good are our courts?" McCallister asked.

The attorney for the city of Lee's Summit told KMBC he hasn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment on it.

Richard and Tina McKinley did not return KMBC's phone calls.

In our view: Blind justice gets it right 3/11/05

Ted White Jr. is proof that the justice system does work, if at times excruciatingly slowly, and that there is power in prayer, in the unfailing love of a family and in a community that rallied to help him.
White, whose parents, Ted Sr. and Myrna, live in Aurora, spent nearly seven years on the run and in prison after being convicted in 1998 of molesting his adopted stepdaughter. Today he is a free man because a Jackson County jury acquitted him at a retrial in February.
There are so many twists to Ted White Jr.’s case that one might suspect a Hollywood writer of concocting the plot.
After his conviction and before his sentencing, White fled to Costa Rica. He was returned months later to begin his sentence. An appeal overturned his conviction and a new trial was ordered after it was discovered prosecutors knew that White’s estranged wife and the detective investigating the original allegation were having an affair.
Then came the second trial, which ended in an agonizing mistrial when one juror held out against the vote of 11 other jurors for acquittal. After the third trial, a jury deliberated only 45 minutes to acquit him.
Those are just the legal facts.
What is most compelling in Ted White Jr.’s odyssey to freedom are how his parents, family, friends and community stood behind him through the ordeal, the determination of his attorneys and legal experts in winning a new trial and the spiritual renewal of White while behind bars. In the prison chapel he met Mother Opal Williamson, a 95-year-old woman whom he credits with teaching him to pray. “That’s when I dealt with all of my issues,” White said. “What I learned is that it is possible to be free even when you are in prison. That’s when I became free. All of the bitterness and hate lifted. It just lifted.”
White’s family has been economically devastated by the ordeal. Their home, which had been nearly paid off, now has a 30-year mortgage. There is no retirement. Everything, said his father, is mortgaged.
But Ted White Jr. is free. Blind justice finally got it right.

Faith, love, simple things sustain newly freed man

With years of struggle over, Ted White Jr. can look to future.

By Sarah Overstreet
News-Leader

After three trials and almost six years in prison, Ted White Jr. is a free man, acquitted Feb. 7 in his third trial of charges of molesting his adopted stepdaughter.

While White admits he had moments of caving in to fear and depression in jail, he says he has no bitterness. "I'm just so happy, and just looking forward, not back." But when he was first incarcerated, he had been plenty bitter, he says. "When you go in, you're scared out of your mind. You can sense the evilness around you. You feel like the hairs are standing on the back of your neck, you can feel when something's going to happen. My first day in the chow hall, three men came running through chasing another man, trying to stab him. There sure weren't many good places you could go — the church, the school library and the horseshoe pit, because that's where the old-timers hang out."

White was convicted in an abuse of our justice system that is both infuriating and horrifying.

After his first trial, new attorneys Sean O'Brien and Cyndy Short discovered that the mother of the stepdaughter who had accused White of molesting her had been having an affair with the detective who was investigating the charges. White's ex-wife, Tina, and the detective, Richard McKinley, are now married.

Short and O'Brien won a new trial for White, 42, based on new evidence and because the Jackson County assistant prosecutor who prosecuted him had known about the affair and withheld the information.

During his second trial last May, one juror held out for conviction against the other jurors' protestations, leading to a mistrial. White was taken back to prison to wait for another trial.

The other 11 jurors, however, incensed by the lone juror's refusal to follow jury instructions, took to the road in town halls and symposiums to tell the story of why they believed White had been wrongfully convicted. It was an action almost unheard of among jurors.

"We did it because we felt like he'd been so wronged," says Sarah Mehl of Lee's Summit, one of the jurors who took the story of White's plight around the state.

"I don't think I've ever felt so bad for anyone when the jury was hung. If that were me or my brother or someone I knew, it's so scary to think something like that could happen. If we weren't going to stand up for him, who would?"

Mehl was there the day of White's acquittal, along with several other former jurors. "It was just very nerve-wracking. But I can't remember a better day. I am so happy for Ted and his family."

Old friends and family members wonder how the White family survived what they've lived through the past seven years: acrimonious testimony the prosecution couldn't prove. The stepdaughter's allegations with dates that didn't match up, according to defense testimony. White finding out about his ex-wife's affair with the detective investigating him. A prison attack that broke bones in White's face and required him to have reconstructive surgery. Then having to watch White taken back to jail in early June after the mistrial.

White says he couldn't spend all his time thinking about the injustice he'd been dealt, because he was just trying to learn the "prison games" played by the inmates. "You just try to stay alive. I was a duck out of water."

All thoughts of resentment against everyone who'd helped to put him in prison dropped from him, he says, after he met "Mother Opal" Williamson inside prison. In his parents' home in Aurora, White recounts the story between answering continuous phone calls from well-wishers.

"I ran into Mother Opal, and she was glowing: I just had to see her," White remembers. "I'd grown up in church, but I'd never listened. She said, 'Ted, you have to pray for these people.' I thought, 'You are crazy if you think I'm going to get on my knees and pray for them.' But I did, and the feed sack came off of my shoulders. ... I realized that hate and bitterness wasn't going to get me out of prison, only love and forgiveness would."

"I'm very happy," says Williamson, 95, of Jefferson City, who has counseled prisoners for decades inside "The Walls."

"I have prayed for this a lot, and God has answered," Williamson says. There was something about White that gave her a feeling of trust she couldn't have with all inmates, she says.

"Ted got baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that made a big impression on me," says Williamson, a member of the Assemblies of God. "I know when someone is yielding to the Holy Ghost. There's something different about him."

"When I forgave, manna came down from heaven," White says. There were tough times and heartbreaking setbacks, but miracles, too: A family who lovingly stood behind him without flinching. A defense team and jurors dedicated to seeking justice for him. A "Secret Santa" who paid White's attorneys after the family's money had been depleted.

White's mother, real-estate broker Myrna White of Aurora, looks like a new woman since her son's release. A striking brunette, she was pale and fearful during Ted's incarceration, especially after the defeat of June's mistrial.

"Even Ryan (Ted Jr.'s brother) says, 'Mom, you look 10 years younger,'" says Myrna, who laughs readily now. "It's like Ryan and I were just talking, we were so used to being up all night thinking of Teddy. Our energy now isn't all going to strategies, money, is he safe? I'd get so frustrated, all I could do is pray and go out into the yard and dig a hole to plant something, and ask God, 'Please just help me make it through this day.' Now, I go out into the yard, and I hear the birds sing, and think how beautiful it is."

Ted White Sr. is happy, but I've watched him buffer the hard winds of his son's fate for several years. The family's pillar for so long, he looks now as if he is finally able to just be tired and relieved. How he kept going as he did, through all the setbacks and pain, was, frankly, stunning.

"I tell you what keeps you going," says the Mount Vernon optometrist: "Deep down in your heart, you're proud to be an American in the land of the free, and I was pissed off. I believe in this country, and it's like, 'They're not going to do this.' That, and love."

The Whites had mortgaged their home twice, severely compromised Ted Sr.'s business and scraped together every dollar they had for Ted Jr.'s defense.

"My dad was working seven days a week, and had a heart attack and five by-passes," Ted Jr. remembers, sucking in his breath, looking away with tear-filled eyes. "He was given a one percent chance to live."

Ted White Sr. not only lived, but is working as hard as he can today, patient after patient, bang, bang, bang. He just doesn't work seven days a week anymore. And he often takes a nap instead of going to lunch.

"My mom had taken her rings to hock. My family was destitute — we didn't know how we were going to pay for another trial," Ted White Jr. says.

Ryan White, an account executive for a Springfield bank, gave up his apartment in Springfield and moved home to his parents' house in Aurora, to put any extra cash he had into his older brother's defense fund.

But on Feb. 7, the family got what they'd prayed for and put their hearts into for seven years: After just 45 minutes of deliberation this time, the new jury found him innocent. "When Sean (O'Brien) came flying back into that room and said, 'We have a verdict,' my eyeballs about popped out of my head," White remembers. "When I heard, 'Not guilty,' I felt like I left my body, I was so happy."

Ted's new girlfriend, who started writing and visiting White after Thanksgiving, was there to share the excitement of the verdict. "I felt very strongly in my heart that Ted would be home soon, and I'd always write him that," says Raeanna Keckler of Aurora. "When the verdict came down, we just praised God."

The couple's blossoming romance is a story in itself. At Thanksgiving, when Keckler couldn't get her old schoolmate Ted White out of her mind, White was going through pre-trial fear and depression. "He prayed and asked God to send someone to lift his spirits," remembers Keckler, who works for Aurora's city planning and zoning department.

"I wouldn't have believed you could have a relationship in prison, but she came after I prayed," White says. "I felt her spirit, that the Lord had sent her to me. What woman in her right mind would have cared for a man in my position?"

The couple have started to date, and are openly affectionate as they plan what they'll bring to the senior Whites' home for a dinner. They now hope to be wed, "when the time is right," they both say.

Ted White Jr. is philosophic about all the trials and imprisonment he's been through, but he hates the toll it's taken on his family. He hopes to get into insurance sales again. "I'm going to stay here and do everything I can to pay them back," he says. His story has been followed by CBS and a "48 Hours" crew. He has been approached to sell the movie rights to his story.

"Yes, I would've liked to have come home in June, but look what I would have missed," White says. "When they put me back in prison, God put me in a place where I could witness to the other men. Maybe I had to come back to win more souls to Christ, because that happened. You do work where you're planted."

White says that the simple things — a sunny day, the love of his family, just being free — is enough for him. "Listen to the quiet," White says as he stands in the yard of his parents' rural Aurora home in the gorgeous weather Friday. "I haven't had that in seven years. I used to think all the material possessions I had was what it was all about. But when I left prison, all I owned was five trash sacks full of letters from supporters, my family and friends, and a photo album of pictures my family sent me. That's all I need."

One of his most prized possessions is a white legal pad Ryan White left on Ted Jr.'s bed for his homecoming. "He wrote me a letter about the struggle," White says, tenderly touching the careful writing on the pad in his old room with the vintage Thunderbird and Corvette model cars still lovingly kept by Myrna White.

"It was a great moment, to read that," Ted Jr. says. "I have a great family. We just want to tell everybody thanks, we want to tell them how blessed we are. We're still together and we still love each other. And we hope this will raise the standards that law enforcement and prosecutors have to operate under. That's what God does."

The following article from the Kansas City Star, Feb. 11th.

‘I walked out a better man than I went in'

By JOE LAMBE The Kansas City Star

AURORA, Mo. — Ted White Jr., once quarterback of the Aurora Houn' Dawgs, devoured a steak bought by his former high school football coach.
He's “Ted” in this town of 7,000. Not “Theodore,” the name he carried in three trials in a child sex case. His seven-year ordeal ended Monday when a jury acquitted him.
After five years behind bars, White walked out of the Jackson County Jail on Monday crying with joy. He climbed into a car with his family bound for his childhood home and a fresh start. He's been grinning ever since.
Retired football coach Harv Walch was among dozens of family and supporters at trial's end. At lunch Wednesday, Walch said that he and his former quarterback — “who did what he was supposed to do most of the time” — stayed close enough over the years that Walch named one of his mules Ted.
As they parted after White consumed his first steak since jail, Walch forced a little cash into White's hand.
Later, White called Walch part of his new wealth of friends and family. White, 42, once a prosperous Lee's Summit businessman, said he has no money, lives in his parents' house and wears his brother's old clothes. But he kept grinning when he said it.
“I walked out a better man than I went in,” he said, adding that lessons from small-town life and football toughness helped him survive.
On the ride home from jail, his new wealth — all those friends and supporters — jingled constantly in calls that rang four cell phones in the car. There weren't so many cell phones when he went behind bars, and now they seem to be everywhere and always ringing.
When the family stopped at a convenience store, White meekly asked whether he could have a soft drink — before he realized he was free and could get out and get it himself.
They ate at a Denny's restaurant, where his first meal was a country omelet smothered in gravy that was “pretty dad gum good.”
They got home to the large house and 60 acres owned by Ted White Sr., an eye doctor, and Myrna White, a real estate broker. The Whites used to own 30 head of cattle, but those were sold and the house, nearly paid off, was re-mortgaged to help pay legal bills.
Together for the first time in so long, family members talked until midnight that first night. Ted White Jr. went to his big bed in his old upstairs bedroom. He awoke at 3 a.m.
“The bed was way too soft,” he said.
Three hours later, he climbed on his parents' bed and asked, “What's for breakfast?”
That started a Tuesday of visiting friends that blended into lunch with White's former coach on Wednesday.
That same afternoon, White sat at the family dining table with his mother and his sister, Tiffany Means, a registered nurse. Neighbors sometimes visited, and phones rang constantly. White's sister and mother took down caller names and numbers on sticky pads and stuck the papers on the table.
As the yellow notes grew in front of him, White recounted his story.
In 1998, when White's wife had filed for divorce, his 12-year-old stepdaughter accused him of molesting her from 1995 to 1998. A Jackson County jury convicted him in 1999. But police and Jackson County prosecutors did not tell the defense that White's estranged wife had an affair with the Lee's Summit detective investigating the case.
Before sentencing, White had fled to Costa Rica. He saw it as fleeing injustice. He worked selling real estate and took potential buyers deep sea fishing. Then his story ran on “America's Most Wanted,” and a customer recognized him and turned him in.
More than five months in a Costa Rican jail followed, as White awaited return to Jackson County. That experience was so grim that he revealed some details to mother and sister for the first time this week.
There was no hot water, holding areas were all dirt and concrete, and inmates dumped buckets of water to flush toilets. The only food was some rice and beans. White lost more than 100 pounds, more than a third of his body weight.
“Everybody sleeps on the floor like a sea of bodies,” he recalled. “There were 19 gringos, and I was the only one who walked out alive.”
Murders were common among prisoners, who included rival drug gangsters, he said. People died for minor drug debts or simply showing disrespect.
“We didn't see a prison guard from 8 at night to 7 a.m.,” he said. “Inmates ran the prison.”
Killing usually came fast, he said: “About 17 guys came at you with ice picks tied on the end of sticks.”
His mother visited him once and went home and told family he would die there. Looking at her Wednesday, White said: “You saved my life.”
That's because she gave him $400 cash during the visit that he stuffed in a shoe. He lent it to the “number two” inmate, who saved his own life by paying a debt to the top inmate. Later the number two boss killed the top boss.
So White lived to return to a 50-year sentence and a stint in a Jefferson City prison.
He restarted a defunct prison newsletter. He also worked at night pushing a broom. One night a man who wanted his broom job clubbed him in the eye with a hunk of metal, breaking his eye socket. The injury required surgery and permanently damaged his peripheral vision.
Child sex offenders usually are treated badly in prison, but White escaped that because his cell mates and other inmates believed he was innocent.
So did some lawyers. Kansas City law professor Ellen Suni and defense lawyer Sean O'Brien shaped a ground-breaking appeal in his case. Normally, an appeal would have been forbidden because White had fled. The lawyers argued that the police and prosecutors were so wrong in not disclosing his wife's affair with the detective that it overrode the escape rule. The appeals court overturned the convictions.
White was transferred to Kansas City area jails. Defense lawyers O'Brien and Cynthia Short and their investigators found new evidence. A three-week retrial last year ended with jurors voting 11-1 for not guilty.
That, White says, was the lowest point in his ordeal. Especially when he heard that the lone holdout juror refused to deliberate.
He decided, though, that it just wasn't time to go home.
“I wanted 12 people to find me innocent,” he said.
As the final trial progressed, White grew confident watching the jurors' faces.
“They weren't buying it,” he said of the allegations. “I prayed we'd make 12 new friends.”
He did.
White is considering a lawsuit against police, prosecutors or both to get back money for his parents, but that is not his main concern right now. He has more grinning to do and people to visit and thank.
Tiffany Means, his sister, said his return carried a kind of energy.
“For seven years there has been no music in the family,” she said. “The laughter and music are back.”
White said he would stay in Aurora and focus on family and friends. “This is where my roots are.”
But his mother told him something had to be done about his early awakening.
“You're getting (sleeping) tablets in your drink tonight,” she said.

The following article is from the Lee's Summit Journal Feb. 11th, 2005.

Former
LS businessman returns to life as a free man
By Ann Scheer The Journal Staff

All that Ted White has to show for the past seven years of his life are five trash bags.

        Trash bags filled with letters, notes and encouraging words of faith and support — representation that the years he spent defending his name and innocence after being charged with 12 counts of child sexual misconduct were worth the fight. White, a former Lee’s Summit businessman, was acquitted on all 12 charges Monday.
“It was a great moment — a great day,” White said during a recent interview from his home in Aurora, Mo. “All I have is good things to say. It’s great to be free.”
        Since returning to his hometown after the trial ended Monday, White said a majority of his time has been spent reuniting with friends and family. With a litany of accomplishments to back him — from his status as a four-year varsity quarterback for his high school football team and being a member of the National Honors Society to acquiring business experience and building his own company — White said his hometown friends have supported him every step of the way.
White also said he appreciates the many Lee’s Summit residents who have supported him.
“I’m very happy. It’s taken a long time to get to this point,” he said.
        When the charges were first brought against him in 1998, White said he was “numb” from the shock of the allegations and that he had always had a good relationship with his stepdaughter. He did not think it would result in a seven-year process of going to trial and spending five years in jail.
         “You’re automatically assumed guilty instead of innocent when the words are spoken,” White said. “It’s hard to stand up to people you’ve known for 30 years and they look at you differently.”
         At the time of his arrest, White was on his way to building a national health insurance and payroll company for small businesses. It would have been one of the first of its kind, he said. However, having started the business just five months prior to his arrest, White said his partners had a difficult time growing the company and only survived a couple months after he was arrested. The business closed shortly after he was charged.
“We would have been the first (payroll company to go national),” White said. “(My business partners) deserve better than what happened.”
       After being convicted at his first trial in 1999 and before sentencing, which was suggested by the jury to be 250 years in prison, White fled to Costa Rica where he remained for approximately five months. An act that should have cost him any chance at an appeal trial.
       “I just sat there and heard a jury give recommendation to a judge for 250 years (in prison),” White said. “I realized I had to make a decision. Some people think it was a bad choice. But I knew I just needed more time.”
After he was brought back and sentenced to 50 years in prison, by law, the conviction should have been irreversible. However, after reviewing the case, a circuit court overturned his conviction, citing that the investigation was unjust because White’s former wife was having an affair with the lead Lee’s Summit detective assigned to the case and the relationship was not made known to the court.
       The court ruled that the omission of the relationship during trial proceedings was a graver injustice than White’s action of fleeing.
       Looking back now, White said he sensed something wasn’t right about the investigation and that there possibly was someone involved with his wife. He just did not know it was the detective working the case, he said.
       “(The lead detective) never interviewed me,” White said. “I’ve said all along the conspiracy theory is alive and well.
“When you have a biased investigation, it makes it very difficult to defend yourself,” White said.
      After the second trial last year that ended in a hung jury, with one juror holding out for a guilty verdict and the 11 other jurors voting for acquittal, White said he was emotionally drained going into the third trial last month.
He didn’t think it was fair to have to go through another trial after coming so close to victory, but now is glad the process is finally over.
    “You’re tired because you have to go through it again,” White said. “You’re trying to go home. And I got to go home (Monday) night. We got our fair day in court, finally.”
    White said he’s taking things one day at time, readjusting to his life and enjoying spending time with his family. But there are still some tough issues to deal with, including the fact that he has not seen his biological son in seven years and there is no definite time when he will get to see him again.
     Although White said he has no plans at this time to file any civil lawsuits, he intends to take plenty of time reviewing the options available to him as he works to regain his life.
    “I’m not saying yes (we will file a counter suit) and I’m not saying no,” White said. “My family is a good family and we’re not about that.
“I’m not bitter,” he said. “I’m glad it’s over.”

After seven years and three trials, Theodore White heard the final outcome Monday in his child sex case. Twelve counts — 12 not guilty verdicts.

As Jackson County Judge Charles Atwell read the verdicts, White hugged his attorney and cried as many family members and supporters cried with him. His alleged victim and her family quickly left the crowded courtroom.

White, 42, a former Lee's Summit businessman, was finally freed after serving about five years behind bars in a case that set state legal precedent and attracted national media attention.

Jurors deliberated less than two hours Monday before reaching the verdicts. They left quickly after telling lawyers that there was abundant reasonable doubt and not enough evidence of guilt. Some jurors hugged White before leaving.

And among his supporters were some members of the jury from his trial last year that deadlocked 11-1 for acquittal. Milanez Harrison, one of those past jurors, said after Monday's verdicts: “That's what we tried to do the first time. I'm happy for Ted and his family.”

Former juror Jill Miller also was there. “Finally, justice has prevailed,” she said. “We just knew it was only a matter of time.”

White praised the current jury as guards took him to jail for quick processing and release.

O'Brien said he was not surprised by the quick verdicts, which he said would have happened in the previous trial except for one recalcitrant juror.

“I knew a jury that heard everything would find him not guilty,” O'Brien said.

Elizabeth Bock, the special prosecutor in the case, said, “We're disappointed, but this is closure for our victim one way or another — after seven years, she needed closure.”

White was charged with counts that included statutory rape and statutory sodomy for alleged sex acts from 1995 to 1998 with his stepdaughter. She was 10 years old when the alleged acts began.

Six years ago, a jury found White guilty on all 12 counts but was not informed that his estranged wife, the mother of the alleged victim, had had an affair with the lead detective in the case. White fled to Costa Rica before sentencing and was captured there after the case was featured on the “America's Most Wanted” television show.

A judge sentenced White to 50 years in prison. Normally, a defendant who flees before sentencing loses his appeal rights. But an appeals court ruled in 2002 that not disclosing the affair to defense attorneys was so wrong that White's right to a fair trial outweighed the so-called escape rule.

His convictions were overturned, and White went to trial again last year and got the 11-1 deadlock. Some of the jurors in the majority said that the holdout had refused to deliberate.

The trial that ended Monday lasted about three weeks, most of it taken up by the defense presentation.

There was no dispute in closing arguments that White's then-estranged wife had a sexual relationship with the lead Lee's Summit detective, and no dispute that the detective did little to explore evidence of innocence.

Bock argued in closing that the soap-opera aspects of the case were irrelevant — that what mattered was what White did to his then-stepdaughter, now 19.

The teen testified that White molested her in various ways at two homes in Lee's Summit, at a lake house and at other locations. O'Brien countered in closing that the teen's details about the dates, timing and order of the abuse — and even the nature of the sex acts — varied over the years.

Bock joined the defense in attacking the mother and the detective but said their failings did not reflect on the girl. The mother may be manipulative, Bock said, but her daughter is not.

“The defense says (the victim) was needy, she was starved for attention and she made it all up,” Bock said. “If you believe that, you would have to believe (the victim) is evil. She is not evil.”

O'Brien said that the girl's actions were so intertwined with those of the mother that the mother's role was critical.

“When the bomb goes off,” he said, “you can't ignore the hand that lights the fuse.”

He told jurors that the alleged victim was an insecure girl, too weak to step forward after her mother trapped her into lies.

“She is her mother's daughter,” O'Brien said, “and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.”

There was no dispute that the girl was 12 in March of 1998, when she went to her mother and told her of abuse as her mother wrote it down. The mother had a divorce pending with White but had reconciled with him until then. O'Brien told jurors that the girl was angry with White when she went to her mother. The first thing the girl told her, he said, was that her words would lead to a divorce.

“What she did not know was the other thing those words would put into action,” O'Brien said of the girl. “She had no notion of jury trials and prison.”

Bock countered that the divorce went forward long ago, that money was divided and that the teen had no motive to lie now.

“It was great,” he said. “It was a wonderful feeling, and I'm still living it right now.”

“Right now I just want to think about my son coming home,” he said. “I'm glad he survived.”

As they were driving home Monday night from Kansas City to Aurora, optometrist Ted White Sr. and his son, Ted White Jr., 42, stopped at a convenience store to fill up their car's tank.

"Ted wanted to go in and get a Coke, and I told him, 'Go ahead. You're a free man now,'" Ted White Sr. said via a cellular phone while driving along Highway 71 near Lamar. "He's been in jail for so long and so used to being treated like a criminal that he hasn't gotten used to the idea of going to get a Coke without asking permission."

Ted White Jr. doesn't have to ask for permission anymore after a jury acquitted him on charges of sexually abusing his stepdaughter.

A Jackson County Circuit Court jury deliberated about two hours Monday afternoon before finding White innocent on 12 charges, including statutory rape and statutory sodomy.

"After they turned him loose, I thanked the jury foreman for what they did, and he said I didn't have to thank him because we had been through enough," Ted White Sr. said.

"It was very emotional for us when they read the verdict. My wife told my son, 'It's so good to finally touch you.' There were a lot of friends in Joplin and Columbia who stood behind us, and we so appreciate it."

The case began when White was charged in 1998 with molesting his stepdaughter over three years beginning in 1995, when the girl was 10. He was convicted in February 1999 by a jury that recommended he be sentenced to more than 200 years in prison.

He fled to Costa Rica while awaiting sentencing but was captured there after the case was featured on the "America's Most Wanted" television show. After he was returned to Missouri, a judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison.

That conviction was overturned by the Missouri Court of Appeals because prosecutors did not reveal that a Lee's Summit detective investigating the abuse allegations had an affair with White's estranged wife. The two have since married.

The ruling was unusual because almost all defendants who flee before sentencing lose their rights to appeal. White's right to a fair trial, the appeals court ruled, outweighed that rule, setting a new legal precedent.

Last June 2, Jackson County Circuit Judge Charles Atwell declared a mistrial in White's second trial after the jury deliberated for three days without reaching a unanimous verdict. Jurors said the vote was 11-1 for acquittal. They said the lone holdout conceded that there was reasonable doubt about White's guilt but refused to deliberate.

The jurors who voted for acquittal cited a lack of physical evidence and inconsistent testimony by White's stepdaughter. Some jurors went public with their belief that White was innocent, and they were among a group of people who had urged Atwell after the second trial to acquit White.

But the judge ordered the third trial, saying that protecting the sanctity of the jury system required that White be retried.

"Seven years is longer than World War II lasted, and I don't know how my son survived it," Ted White Sr. said. "We all kept our faith, and we didn't give up. It took seven years to get to the truth. Now we're bringing him home, and it just shows there is a God after all."