Plumbing contractor Adell Hardiman has homes in Blue Springs and Kansas City. Being a good citizen, he voted in Blue Springs. Being clueless (he said), he'd vote again in KC.
That habit - they called it vote fraud - got him put on probation in Jackson County in 2001 under a Suspended Imposition of Sentence (SIS).
This made the news in 2004 when I wrote that the assistant county prosecutor who prosecuted him, Phil LeVota, himself may have run afoul of voting laws when he voted in Independence after moving to Lee's Summit.
Nothing happened to LeVota, other than he was elected county Democratic chairman. Hardiman, naturally, felt a double standard was going on. But far-off legal experts told me "residence" is where one says it is, and no prosecution of LeVota would likely succeed.
That's where it rested, until Hardiman called me last month and said the county wouldn't give him a concealed-carry permit because that law - and state law - bar felons from owning firearms. I posted about his unsuccessful court fight for the permit.
In a comment to that post, sharp-eyed reader tex saw this in my 2004 story:
- He pleaded guilty to one felony count and was placed on probation. Hardiman said the case cost him "a tidy sum" of "less than $10,000" in legal fees. Hardiman was given a suspended sentence, which means that when his probation ends, he will have no criminal record.
Was that wrong? Yes and no. For purposes of a job app or almost anything else, Hardiman is not a felon. For "law enforcement purposes", however, Hardiman is a felon, deputy prosecutor Jim Kanatzer told me. That's Missouri law. It's the same with SIS for DUI cases, he said.
