Conviction stands in ‘carnival mafia’ case

TOPEKA, Kan. — A woman who convinced two fairgrounds workers to murder an elderly couple on the promise that it would result in their initiation into a nonexistent “carnival mafia” unsuccessfully challenged, to the Kansas Supreme Court, the trial court’s evidentiary rulings. The state’s high court rules that the trial court held “permissible views of the evidence” and his rulings about video testimony during the Covid pandemic were reasonable, so the woman, “who orchestrated the crimes,” fails in her appeal.