On the Eve of Trial

Dionne Scherff worked all weekend leading up to the trial for her first and only death penalty case. The former Wyandotte and Johnson County prosecutor of child- and sex-abuse cases was no stranger to jury trials or homicide cases; she’d had as many as 11 trials in a year, and in private practice she often took homicide court appointments when judges asked.

That was how she came to represent Ataven Tatum, who was accused, along with two other defendants, of a quadruple homicide in Kansas City, Kansas, in 2006. 

“They asked me and William Shull out of Liberty to come in on [it],” Scherff says. “You have to have tried so many high-level felonies [to be asked]. It’s the most serious case that a person can encounter. You want to have individuals who are passionate about criminal defense, and who are comfortable going to trial. I see it as a service to the bar, a service to my community and humanity. I always look at it from the standpoint of: If this was one of my family members, I’d want the best person in the world to take their case and do everything to save their life.”

Scherff and Shull started with a mitigation specialist, digging into Tatum’s background, and interviewing family members who could attest to his difficult childhood and how he essentially raised himself. “He’s very smart, and it just makes you so sad that if he had other opportunities or other chances, I don’t think we would be here. It’s really heart-wrenching,” she says.

During the lead-up to trial, Scherff filed multiple motions to dismiss, which were all denied. 

So, on Monday, Dec. 1, 2008, she arrived in court for the first day of trial. “Our theme was that there wasn’t sufficient evidence,” Scherff says. “We were going after the way the case was investigated, the credibility of the witnesses, and the fact that nobody identified him as actually being there. He was acquaintances with the other individuals charged, and had run in that crowd, which I think was maybe why he was looped in.”

But instead of starting jury selection that day, the district attorney’s office filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Tatum—which the court approved. The order still hangs on Scherff’s wall. 

“I was very surprised and happy for Ataven,” she says. “But I was also angry, because … I was so worried for our client, and I felt like the prosecutor should have let us know going into the weekend that they decided to dismiss it.

“I think it was truly lack of evidence, but I don’t know whether there was a witness that backed out,” Scherff continues, speculating the reasoning behind the DA’s last-minute change. “I called the head of the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services, and she said this was only the second time in the history of Kansas that a capital case had been dismissed on the eve of trial.”

Scherff remains one of only a handful of lawyers qualified by Kansas courts to handle death penalty cases in the state, and though she’s defended clients as high-profile as Matthew Richards—the Shawnee youth pastor who attempted to stab and kill his wife and five children in their sleep in 2023—Tatum’s near-trial has been her only death penalty case.

“They just don’t have that many in Kansas, thank goodness,” she says, noting, however, that given the U.S. attorney general’s statements that federal death penalty filings are going to increase, that may change. “We haven’t seen that in Kansas yet, and I hope we don’t. But we want to be ready if that comes to fruition. The federal public defender sent out an alert for anyone who does criminal defense work in federal court and is death-penalty qualified, to be ready.”

Scherff’s Overland Park office at Joseph, Hollander & Craft has two corkboards covered in letters and photos from former clients who’ve kept in touch. Just this summer, she got a call from Tatum, checking in from a halfway house in Wichita after his release in a different case. He wanted to let her know he had a job lined up and was ready to put “all that other stuff” behind him. They met for lunch upon his return to the Kansas City area, and Scherff was happy to see that he’s committed to a lifestyle change.

“I was tickled that he called,” she says. “He sounded great. I just want the best for him.”

Source: Death Penalty Information Center