The Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the sentences for a Florida man who was convicted in the murders of a Wichita couple who disappeared after working at the Barton County Fair.

The court upheld two consecutive Hard-50 sentences, 50 years without parole, for Michael Fowler.   He was one of five people convicted in the murders of Alfred “Sonny” Carpenter and Pauline Carpenter.   They disappeared in 2018 from the Barton County Fair and their bodies were later found in northwest Arkansas.

Fowler’s attorneys had appealed the conviction, claiming that the Barton County District Court abused its discretion by refusing to grant a penalty lower than the minimum sentence.   The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the factors raised by Fowler did not constitute “substantial and compelling reasons to depart from the statutory minimum sentence.”