Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, left, and Kate Brubacher, an assistant prosecutor, traveled to Cameron, Missouri, to see the release of Kevin Strickland.
rsugg@kcstar.com
President Joe Biden has nominated Kate Brubacher, who recently served as an assistant prosecutor in Jackson County, Missouri, to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas.
The nomination was announced Tuesday morning by the White House. The nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Brubacher served as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Jackson County, Missouri, from 2016 to August 2022. Before that, she was was an associate at the law firm Cooley LLP in New York.
In Jackson County, Brubacher prosecuted homicide cases, helped with a federally-funded restorative justice program and worked on initiatives aimed at reducing gun violence in Kansas City.
In 2018, she spoke to KCUR about an anti-violence effort she was leading and said, “Look, we need law enforcement.”
“Every community member that I speak to, they will tell you that there are people who need to be removed from the streets,” Brubacher told the radio station. “But let’s be smarter about who needs to be removed and who are community members that need to be empowered. And these people are living on the same block.”
Brubacher was later among Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s team that in 2021 fought for the release of Kevin Strickland, a Kansas City man who spent more than 40 years in prison for a triple murder he did not commit. She questioned witnesses during the evidence hearing that led to Strickland’s exoneration in November 2021 and stood among the crowd that watched him walk out of prison.
Brubacher, a 2010 graduate of Yale Law School, is from a Mennonite family in Newton, Kansas, which is north of Wichita, KCUR reported.
As the chief federal law enforcement officer in Kansas, Brubacher would oversee about 50 assistant U.S. attorneys and their offices in Kansas City, Kansas; Topeka and Wichita.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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Luke Nozicka is an investigative reporter who focuses on criminal justice in Missouri and Kansas. In 2021, his reporting was credited with helping to free Kevin Strickland, a Kansas City man who spent more than 40 years in prison for a triple murder he did not commit. Nozicka is now reporting on Kansas City, Kansas, police. Before joining The Star, he covered courts for The Des Moines Register.
Daniel Desrochers covers Washington, D.C. for the Kansas City Star. He previously covered politics and government for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky and the Charleston Gazette-Mail in Charleston, West Virginia.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
