Justice for Baby Roston

By Sr. Anderson

About the Book
Justice for Baby Roston discuss the traumatic birth, short life, and tragic death of Roston Hanson and the unjust prosecution of Roston’s father, Kody Hanson, on charges of felony child abuse and murder. The book highlights law enforcement investigators’ rush to judgment to clear a death case and charge a parent without having the final results of the autopsy or conducting a complete criminal investigation or considering all possible causes for Roston Hanson’s skull fracture found for the first time by a CT scan taken on April 7, 2015.
About the Author
Robert A. Anderson, Sr. served in the United States Army as a military policeman from 1970 to 1973. He worked for the Fairfax County, Virginia Police Department from 1973 to 1979 where he was a patrol officer for four years and a detective for two years. From 1979 to 1980 he worked for the Rock Springs, Wyoming Police Department as a patrol officer and later as a lieutenant. He was an adjunct police science instructor at the Rock Springs Community College where he taught criminal investigation classes in 1980. He received an A.A.S. Degree in Police Science (with honors) from the Northern Virginia Community College in 1976, a B.A. Degree in the Administration of Justice (with honors) from the University of Wyoming in 1981, and a Juris Doctorate Law Degree (with honors) from Washburn University of Topeka School of Law in 1984.
Anderson semi-retired at age sixty-five and moved with his wife to Biloxi, Mississippi, in October 2016 but returned to Kansas in November 2016 for Kody Lee Hanson’s jury trial. He fully retired effective June 30, 2021 after being licensed to practice law in Kansas for thirty-seven years. For thirty-three years, he practiced criminal defense. For over twenty-nine years, he accepted Board of Indigent Defense Services (BIDS) court appointments in higher level felony criminal cases from BIDS and multiple judicial districts in Northwestern, Western and Central Kansas. Anderson also performed pro bono legal services in every year that he was a licensed Kansas attorney from 1984 through 2021.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886837759

Book preview

"Justice for Baby Roston:  

Prologue"

This book chronicles the arrest and prosecution of Kody Hanson, a new father who was charged with felony child abuse and murder in the death of Roston Hanson, his seventy-seven day old son who died on April 8, 2015 at a hospital in Wichita, Kansas. It is a recount of a new father’s real-life nightmare - being falsely accused of felony child abuse and murder where law enforcement investigators failed to conduct a complete criminal investigation and inaccurately advised other criminal investigators; law enforcement supervisors; the prosecutors and the court that the father had made an incriminating statement during his interrogation, that he threw his son to the ground.

An audio and video tape of that interrogation clearly shows that Kody Hanson never made any such statement to law enforcement investigators and forensic evidence, diagnostic testing and the neuropathology report requested by the coroner all showed that no injury occurred to Roston Hanson on April 7, 2015 as alleged by law enforcement investigators and the prosecutors.

From the arrival of Roston Hanson at a Wichita, Kansas hospital where he was flown from Jetmore, Kansas by a life watch fixed-wing airplane on April 7, 2015 until the case was submitted to a jury on December 9, 2016, a medical pediatric specialist who examined Roston Hanson upon his arrival at the hospital, criminal investigators, and eventually prosecutors all jumped to a false conclusion of guilt, which was not supported by available diagnostic testing and forensic evidence.

The coroner’s office failed to use histology during the provisional autopsy conducted on April 9, 2015 to view the edges of Roston Hanson’s skull fracture under a microscope to determine whether the skull fracture was an acute or fresh fracture or an old healing injury. The coroner failed to meet the minimum expectations of an autopsy or follow the standards of practice for a baby’s autopsy.

According to data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), forty nine states reported a total of 1,585 children died from child abuse or neglect in 2015 in the United States. Roston Hanson of Jetmore, Kansas who died at age seventy-seven days on April 8, 2015 in a Wichita, Kansas hospital was alleged by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) to be one of those 1,585 children who died from child abuse in 2015.

Because Kody Hanson was a Hodgeman County Deputy Sheriff at the time his son was flown to get treatment at a Wichita hospital and a pediatric specialist trained in child injuries suspected Roston Hanson’s condition to be the result of child abuse, the Hodgeman County Attorney recused himself and asked the Kansas Attorney General’s Office to accept assignment of the case on April 7, 2015 involving a fellow Hodgeman County employee to investigate whether felony child abuse had occurred against Roston Hanson by Kody Hanson in Jetmore, Kansas. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) is a division of the Office of the Kansas Attorney General and it is led by a director appointed by the Attorney General. Upon its establishment in 1939 by the Kansas Legislature, the KBI was given statewide jurisdiction to assist local agencies in dealing with more mobile and complex criminal activity.

On April 8, 2015 when Roston Hanson passed away at the Wichita hospital, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office and the KBI opened a murder investigation claiming that Roston Hanson’s death resulted from suspected child abuse which they alleged occurred against Roston Hanson by Kody Hanson on April 7, 2015 between 12:00 P.M. and 3:00 P.M. while Kody Hanson was watching Roston at their home in Jetmore, Kansas. A CT scan taken of Roston Hanson’s head on April 7, 2015 at the Wichita Hospital soon after his arrival, showed for the first time that Roston had a large skull fracture. Law enforcement investigators alleged that Roston sustained the large skull fracture earlier that day between the specific three hours when Roston’s mother was home for lunch and Roston appeared to be healthy and the time Kody Hanson called 9-1-1 and texted Roston’s mother at the hospital where she was working as a nurse.

Justice for Baby Roston discuss the traumatic birth, short life, and tragic death of Roston Hanson and the unjust prosecution of Roston’s father, Kody Hanson, on charges of felony child abuse and murder. The book highlights law enforcement investigators’ rush to judgement to clear a death case and charge a parent, Kody Hanson without having the final results of the autopsy or conducting a complete criminal investigation or considering all possible causes for Roston Hanson’s skull fracture found for the first time by a CT scan taken on April 7, 2015.

When babies and young children who because of their age cannot communicate or explain how they were injured are brought to medical facilities to be examined and treated for those injuries some medical personnel assume without any supporting medical or diagnostic evidence that the injuries are acute or fresh conditions that occurred from neglect or child abuse.

Where trained medical personnel jump to inaccurate assessments of neglect and child abuse or are misinformed by law enforcement personnel that a parent advised during his interrogation that he had thrown his baby to the ground and fail to use or consider the results of available diagnostic testing and forensic evidence which can determine whether an injury is an acute or fresh injury or an old and healing fracture and where coroners and other forensic experts fail to use histology during a provisional autopsy or meet the minimum expectations of an autopsy or follow the standards of practice for a baby’s autopsy then parents, caregivers and others risk being falsely accused of neglect, felony child abuse and murder in unexplained and untimely baby death cases.

In any baby death case it is important for law enforcement investigators, pediatric specialists at hospitals and medical clinics and prosecutors to understand which diagnostic tests can be read by a radiologist who is trained in child trauma to date and determine whether a skull fracture found for the first time after a diagnostic CT scan of the baby’s head is taken, is an acute and fresh injury or an old healing fracture. This is especially important when law enforcement investigators and prosecutors are claiming that the skull fracture occurred during a specific three-hour period earlier in the day before the baby was transported to the hospital and the diagnostic CT scan of Roston’s head was taken within hours of the baby’s arrival at the hospital.

One of the universal caveats of life is that there is nothing more painful to parents than the death of their child. Most parents pray to God that they live a long and healthy life and that their child or children are healthy and safe so that as parents they will never have to bury one of their children. A few parents who