State v. Warren

The Supreme Court affirmed its holding in State v. Guder, 267 P.3d 751 (Kan. 2012), that the statutory changes to sentencing in the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Act, Kan. Stat. Ann. 21-4701 et seq. (KSGA), abrogated the common law authority of district courts to modify any sentences that were not vacated on appeal.Defendant’s sentence for his premeditated first-degree murder conviction was held unconstitutional and vacated on appeal. On remand, the district court imposed a hard twenty-five life sentence for that conviction and ran it consecutive to his sentences for his two on-grid crimes. For those crimes, the district court changed Defendant’s two nonvacated sentences in length and sentence. On appeal, Defendant asserted that Guder, together with the KSGA, barred the district court from resentencing on any nonvacated counts. The Supreme Court declined the State’s request to overrule Guder and vacated Defendant’s sentence, holding that, barring the need to alter a nonvacated sentence as a matter of law, the district court may only modify the vacated sentence. The court remanded this case for resentencing. View "State v. Warren" on Justia Law