Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of rape, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated kidnapping. The Supreme Court (1) affirmed Defendant’s convictions, holding (i) Defendant’s claim that his preliminary hearing counsel had a conflict of interest was without merit; (ii) Defendant’s argument that his trial court’s admission into evidence of his prior sex crimes for propensity purposes was not preserved for appeal; (iii) the jury was properly instructed and sufficient evidence supported the aiding-and-abetting rape conviction; (iv) the district court’s delivery of a written response to a jury question outside of Defendant’s presence was harmless error; and (2) vacated the portion of Defendant’s sentence ordering him not to have contact with his codefendants or the victim, holding that the district court exceeded its authority in imposing this portion of the sentence, and affirmed the remainder of Defendant’s sentence. View "State v. Bowen" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with, among other offenses, fleeing or attempting to elude a law enforcement officer by driving recklessly, and driving with a suspended license. A week before trial, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss based upon the alleged violation of his statutory right to a speedy trial. The trial court denied the motion, emphasizing that most of the delay had been caused by Defendant’s absconding and his counsel’s requests for trial continuances. Defendant was convicted after a jury trial. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that, under the facts of this case, the State did not violate Defendant’s statutory right to a speedy trial. View "State v. Sievers" on Justia Law

Police officer Ricky Ritter observed a blue pickup truck traveling without its headlights on. Defendant was driving a red pickup truck behind the blue pickup truck, and a van was following Defendant. Ritter pulled his squad car behind the three vehicles and activated his emergency lights, intending to stop only the blue truck, but all three vehicles pulled over. Defendant left his truck cab and approached Ritter’s squad car, demanding that Ritter explain why he had been pulled over. Defendant eventually returned to his truck, but, believing Defendant was under the influence of alcohol, Ritter asked Defendant to take a field sobriety test. Defendant failed the test and was eventually convicted of DUI. Defendant appealed, arguing that the district court erred in refusing to suppress the evidence from the traffic stop because he was unlawfully seized, tainting the evidence and requiring its suppression. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Defendant’s motion to suppress should have been granted because Defendant’s seizure was unlawful, and all evidence obtained after the unlawful seizure was therefore tainted. View "State v. Reiss" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and robbery for crimes occurring in 2008. To calculate Defendant’s sentence, the district court found Defendant had two prior out-of-state robbery convictions from 1984 and 1990 and a prior Kansas robbery conviction. The court classified all three prior convictions as person offenses, which placed Defendant in criminal history category A under Kan. Stat. Ann. 21-4709. Defendant appealed his sentences, arguing that the district court wrongly classified the two out-of-state convictions as person offenses. The court of appeals affirmed. At issue before the Supreme Court was how Defendant’s prior out-of-state offenses should be classified when the offenses were committed before enactment of the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Act, and where the Act does not expressly provide how such offenses should be classified. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the prior out-of-state convictions should be treated as nonperson offenses. View "State v. Murdock" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of felony murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated battery, and aggravated assault. Defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court affirmed Defendant’s convictions but vacated the lifetime postrelease supervision portion of Defendant’s life sentence, holding (1) the trial court erred in failing to give an accomplice witness cautionary instruction and in including a degree of certainty factor in its eyewitness identification instruction, but neither error was reversible as clear error; (2) certain comments made by the prosecutor did not constitute misconduct; (3) cumulative error did not render the trial fundamentally unfair or require reversal; but (4) the trial court erred in including lifetime postrelease supervision as part of Defendant’s life sentence. View "State v. Todd " on Justia Law

Defendant broke into a home a placed a one-year-old child in a duffel bad, allegedly to kidnap the child. Defendant was subsequently charged with kidnapping, aggravated burglary, and endangering a child. A jury convicted Defendant of the aggravated burglary and endangering a child counts but opted to convict Defendant of the uncharged crime of criminal restraint as a lesser included offense of kidnapping. The court of appeals affirmed Defendant’s conviction for criminal restraint, concluding that that crime was a lesser included offense of kidnapping. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that criminal restraint is a lesser degree of kidnapping and, therefore, constitutes a lesser included crime under Kan. Stat. Ann. 21-3107(2)(a). View "State v. Ramirez" on Justia Law

Two police officers and two training officers entered a locked apartment without a warrant to assist Defendant, who was lying unresponsive on the couch. Once Defendant was awake and clearly not needing emergency medical assistance, the officers began a criminal investigation. Defendant was subsequently arrested and charged with possession with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of school property, failure to affix a drug tax stamp, and felony use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Defendant filed a motion to suppress the drug evidence obtained as a result of the officers' warrantless entry. The district court granted the motion, holding (1) the officers’ initial entry was permitted under the emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement, but (2) the officers’ ensuing search was unlawful. The Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s ruling, holding that the officers unreasonably exceeded the permissible scope of their warrantless entry. In so holding, the Supreme Court realigned its previous Kansas test for applying the emergency aid exception with more recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court. View "State v. Neighbors" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded no contendere to one count each of aggravated sodomy and attempted aggravated sodomy. In exchange for the plea, the State agreed to a sentencing recommendation that permitted Defendant to seek a shorter prison term through a durational departure. The Board of Indigents’ Defense Services approved Defendant’s request to fund a sex offender evaluation to use in support of his motion for a durational departure sentence, but the district court denied Defendant’s request to continue the sentencing hearing to allow for the completion of that evaluation. Defendant appealed, arguing that the district court erred in refusing to continue sentencing so he could present evidence in mitigation of his punishment and to support his motion for downward departure. The court of appeals affirmed, concluding that the district court erred in denying Defendant the additional opportunity to present mitigation evidence, but the error was harmless. The Supreme Court reversed and vacated Defendant’s sentence, holding that the district court committed reversible error by denying Defendant’s motion to continue the sentencing hearing. Remanded. View "State v. Haney" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of capital murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, and two counts of felony theft. The Supreme Court affirmed Defendant’s convictions but remanded for resentencing. On remand, the district court sentenced Defendant to life with a mandatory minimum term of forty years for his capital murder conviction and 238 months on his remaining convictions. Defendant appealed, arguing that his sentence was illegal because the underlying convictions were multiplicitous. The district court denied the motion. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the issue raised in Defendant’s motion was not a sentencing matter but, rather, a collateral attack on his convictions, and the issue was improper when raised in a motion to correct an illegal sentence. View "State v. Bradford" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated robbery. After the sentencing judge found by a preponderance of the evidence the existence of four aggravating factors, Defendant received a hard fifty life sentence for the first-degree murder conviction. Defendant appealed, raising nine issues challenging his convictions and two challenging his sentences. The Supreme Court (1) affirmed Defendant’s convictions, thus rejecting Defendant’s claims of reversible error; and (2) vacated Defendant’s sentence for first-degree murder, holding that Defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, as interpreted in Alleyne v. United States, was violated because the judge, rather than the jury, found the four aggravating factors existed and did so on a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, rather than a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. View "State v. Hilt" on Justia Law