On Thursday, a $150,000 settlement in a lawsuit involving a 2023 homicide in a state jail was approved by Governor Laura Kelly and legislative leadership.
Gary Raburn’s brother and daughter filed a lawsuit against the state of Kansas, the Kansas Department of Corrections, and Centurion of Kansas, the state’s prison health care provider, after his cellmate killed him at the Lansing Correctional Facility in January 2023.
In order to spare Centurion and only Centurion from a July 2025 jury trial, the State Finance Council unanimously decided to give public monies to secretly resolve one aspect of the case during a closed-door meeting.
Kelly and leading lawmakers, such as House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson, make up the finance council. Without revealing any information about the case or the terms of the agreement, they authorized the settlement on Thursday. According to court documents, the move to settle was submitted on Wednesday, and as of Thursday afternoon, the judge had not yet granted the motion.
When Raburn passed away, he was sixty-two years old. After entering a guilty plea to a 2005 aggravated kidnapping conviction in Neosho County and repeatedly failing to register, he was serving time for breaching the Kansas Offender Registry Act, which was a requirement of his probation.
Ladarious Barkers, his cellmate, had pleaded guilty to charges related to robbing and assaulting a priest in Kansas City, Kansas, when he was 19 years old and was currently serving a 15-year term.
According to the lawsuit, between March 2017 and the attack on Raburn, Barkers received 100 disciplinary actions from prison authorities. It asserts that Centurion, the state, and the Department of Corrections were negligent in failing to adequately protect Raburn and other prisoners.
Court documents claim that “Defendants assigned Barkers to a cell with Raburn, who was approximately 37 years older than Barkers and physically infirm, despite foreknowledge of Barkers’ extensive violent history.”
In March 2023, Barkers was charged with capital murder by prosecutors. The case was set for trial in March after he entered a not guilty plea. But Barkers’ mental health seemed to be in doubt. According to court documents, ever since the trial was postponed, he has been waiting to be admitted to Larned State Hospital. Barkers might be executed if a jury finds him guilty with a unanimous vote.
Due to confidentiality clauses in the settlement agreement, Mike Atkinson, an Oklahoma-based attorney who represents Raburn’s surviving family, chose not to speak.
The finance council was advised to accept the $150,000 settlement sum by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. The attorney general’s budget contains the state’s tort claim fund.
Requests for a response from the Kansas Reflector were not answered by the attorney general’s office, the Department of corrections, or the governor’s office.
