WICHITA– After the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of a Kansas man for contempt of court, he sought a review with the Kansas Supreme Court and they accepted.

Jose Delacruz, 35, Hutchinson, was found guilty of the charge for refusing to testify in a murder trial of co-defendant Anthony Waller for the April 2010 killing of Joshua Haines.

A Reno County judge sentenced Delacruz to 9-years in prison.

The sentence was also ordered to run consecutive to the nearly 7-years he received in the aggravated robbery case in association with the murder.

He had been found not guilty of murder in that case, but convicted of the aggravated robbery charge against him.

A hearing over the contempt case will be heard by the state’s high court on Thursday, according to Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder

The murder case centers on Haines being savagely beaten and strangled in a Hutchinson apartment and then placed in his own car and driven to a nearby street where police found it later that day.

A co-defendant in the murder case, Vassie Coons entered pleas to aggravated robbery, possession of cocaine, possession of methamphetamine, and misdemeanor possession of marijuana while the murder charge against him was dropped.

He was given the maximum sentence for the aggravated robbery conviction and ordered to prison for nearly 12-years.

Waller, the man the state suspected of being responsible for the murder was sentenced to 40-years in prison.