Making his cases

When Dan Knight, Boone County’s new chief prosecutor, is in the courtroom, so is a petite woman with short blonde hair, sitting in the front row on the right. Sandy Knight-Hatfield, Knight’s mother, has watched almost every one of the 43 jury trials her son has prosecuted in his career.

“When he became an assistant prosecutor, I decided I didn’t want to miss out on watching him develop,” she said. “And he has.”

Knight has enormous presence and energy in front of a jury. Knight’s a workout enthusiast, and the athleticism is obvious in the way he walks — even in the way he paced back and forth in front of the 12 men and women chosen to decide the fate of a murder defendant recently. As he spoke, he sounded almost personally offended by the injustice of what the defendant had done.

“He knew she had money, that’s why he went into the residence,” Knight told the jury during closing arguments at the August trial of Dearl W. Jackson, a Boone County man charged with first-degree murder in connection with the beating and strangling death of his 77-year-old neighbor, Zelpha Turner. The jury found Jackson guilty after five hours of deliberation.

Knight has worked as an assistant prosecutor in Boone County for 14 years, winning all but four of the cases he has prosecuted. Knight, who describes his specialty as trying cases built on DNA evidence, has won every one of the 10 murder trials he has tried, and he has never had a case reversed on appeal.

Defense attorneys who have faced Knight in the courtroom praise his thoroughness and professional manner.

“From the defense attorney point of view, I can say that trying a case against Dan Knight is always a challenge,” said Greg Mueller, a Columbia attorney who defended David Dewey, a 16-year-old Columbia youth convicted of second-degree murder in 2000 in connection with the suffocation death of 12-year-old Sheena McDonald. “Dan will leave no stone unturned in getting ready for a jury trial.”

Knight went through more than 100 hours of recorded phone conversations while preparing for the trial of Shannon Gregory, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2002 stabbing death of 17-year-old Dexter Bradford. The evidence Knight found in just one telephone conversation Gregory had from jail, which linked him to the slaying, proved to be crucial at the trial.

But it’s clear that Knight loves the work — especially the preparation for trials — and the challenges it brings.

After receiving his law degree from the MU School of Law in 1992, Knight got a job as an assistant prosecutor in the Boone County prosecuting attorney’s office. He was not sure, at first, exactly what he wanted to do. That changed after he tried his first case six weeks after starting the job.

“I realized I would have the opportunity to do what was right every single day,” Knight said.

And it gives him an outlet for his competitive nature, which became apparent early in his life when he and his father, longtime Columbia attorney David Knight, took up the habit of playing ping-pong after dinner every evening.

“When he started beating me (at table tennis), he was merciless,” David Knight said with a laugh.

The younger Knight got serious about tennis when he was about 11 years old. His father took him to many of the tennis tournaments he played in.

“We became really close,” Dan Knight said. “The times we’d really bond were when I lost. He would always try to help me put things in perspective.”

That competitive streak helped him in his career when he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and became an attorney.

“In the courtroom, lawyers are in a win-lose situation,” he said. “I feed off that competitive atmosphere.”

But he said it’s important to keep things in perspective.

“Overall, I can never lose sight of the fact that we’re trying to do the right thing,” he said.

He keeps a photograph of the victim and a mug shot of the defendant within sight in his office when he tries a case.

“It fuels my fire and keeps me focused,” Knight said.

His desk is meticulously organized, with highlighters neatly arranged by color and papers in perfect piles. The walls are mostly bare, except for a few framed posters, including one of Uma Thurman from the film “Pulp Fiction” that he was given by outgoing Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Kevin Crane.

Knight will move down the hall in January, taking over the office of his current boss. He said he will have to find more pictures to fill the walls of his new, larger office.

Crane, who has been Boone County’s prosecuting attorney since 1993, was elected to be a judge in the 13th Judicial Circuit in November’s election.

“I’m looking forward to a new challenge,” Crane said. “I’ve been blessed with a lot of great people in the office. Naturally, I’m going to miss those people.”

But Crane said he feels confident that Knight, who has been Crane’s first assistant since 1998, is the right person for the job.

“A prosecutor has to balance wanting to protect the public and appropriately prosecute criminals, but at the same time you have to be fair to people accused of crimes,” Crane said. “Dan is going to do all of those things.”

Knight said he’s looking forward to leading the team he has been part of for 14 years. He’s been reading a lot of adventure stories, such as “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex” and “Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe.”

“I enjoy reading about the leadership styles of captains of ships because I’m going to be in a leadership position,” he said. “It’s not very far away from me.”

Knight, who has chosen Assistant Prosecutor Richard Hicks to be his first assistant, said he won’t worry as much about how many cases assistant prosecutors win or lose as he will about how fairly and effectively they enforce the law.

“I’ve tried to lead by example,” Knight said. “I can encourage my assistants to do the same thing.”

In November, Knight celebrated his 40th birthday with a small group of family members, including his sister and his girlfriend, at his mother’s Columbia home. The next day, his mother brought a birthday cake to the prosecutor’s office so he could celebrate with his co-workers. It was a milestone he wasn’t especially happy to talk about, but his mother urged him to take the age issue in stride.

After all, she’s the mother of a 40-year-old — one she has seen grow comfortable in a courtroom, learning to use the space like a stage. She said she has seen him get better at questioning witnesses on the stand, learning how to expose lies.

“He digs deep to make sure that people are telling him the truth,” she said.

That’s something he’s looking forward to doing more of, while he takes on a greater leadership position as Boone County’s chief prosecuting attorney.

“I have the opportunity to stand up for people who might not have any hope,” he said. “It really keeps me going.”