A 27-year-old Hutchinson man sentenced to ten years in prison for other cases saw a hearing in new case continued at the last minute after the state noted to the court that the victim in the case may have been called to jury duty in Federal Court Monday.
Timothy Mendenhall faces charges in the new case which includes one felony and two misdemeanor charges. That includes burglary of a dwelling, one count of theft and criminal damage to property. He’s alleged to have burglarized a home in the 600 block of Wilshire Dr., sometime between December 1 and December 3, 2012. He’s then alleged to have stolen items from the home and also damage some doors in the process of the other crimes.
Because the victim wasn’t available to testify Monday, Judge Joe McCarville pushed the hearing back to December 9.
Mendenhall was sentenced back in August in the other four cases to 126-months total for the other cases while the state sought 240-months, wanting the sentences in each case to run consecutive to each other, while Judge Rose ran them concurrent. Deputy District Attorney Tom Stanton at the time argued that she didn’t sentence him to “1-minute” in prison for being caught selling drugs.
He entered “guilty” or “no contest” pleas to virtually every charge in every case he was charged with.
In one of the cases, he was convicted on 18-felony counts including sexual exploitation of a child, as well as numerous drug charges including being in possession of potpourri. This is the case where they raided his smoke shop at 1108 West 4th, back on November 17, 2011. Mendenhall stated in court he thought selling the potpourri was legal, having purchased it online. He told the judge he sold drugs to “stay high.”
In another case, he was convicted of interference with law enforcement and in another case, charges of possession of methamphetamine, hydrocodone, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, felony interference with law enforcement and carrying a concealed weapon, in this case a fixed blade knife.
Mendenhall is scheduled to be back in court on all those cases Friday for a correction in the sentencing, which is nothing more then a technicality of being on post release supervision for life not being place on the record back in August.