Justia Kansas Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of rape by penile penetration, rape by digital penetration, aggravated criminal sodomy, and aggravated indecent liberties with a minor and received four concurrent hard twenty-five life sentences. Defendant appealed, raising seven issues. The Supreme Court reversed Defendant’s convictions, holding that the district court erred in failing to provide a unanimity instruction, as (1) there was evidence of multiple acts on each of the four charges against Defendant; (2) the court failed to instruct on unanimity, and the State failed to elect which of the multiple acts underlying each of Defendant’s charges was to be relied upon by the jury in its deliberations; and (3) the error was not harmless. Remanded. View "State v. King" on Justia Law

Prairie Land Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Prairie Land), which purchases wholesale electricity from various suppliers and distributes that electricity to retail customers, entered into temporally overlapping, long-term all-requirements contracts with two different wholesale electricity suppliers, Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (Sunflower) and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. (KEPCo). After a dispute arose regarding which supplier had the right to serve a certain pumping station delivery point, Prairie Land filed a petition for declaratory judgment asking the district court to determine which supplier was entitled to serve the new delivery point. The district court ruled in favor of Sunflower, which entered into the first all-requirements contract with Prairie Land. The court of appeals reversed. The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals’ decision and affirmed the district court’s judgment, holding that under the facts of this case, Prairie Land must meet its obligations under its contract with Sunflower, the first supplier, before it may comply with any obligations under its contract with KEPCo, the second supplier. View "Prairie Land Elec. Coop., Inc. v. Kan. Elec. Power Coop., Inc." on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with thirteen felonies. On the morning trial was set to begin, Defendant’s counsel orally renewed a motion to withdraw at Defendant’s request. The district judge denied the motion. Defendant subsequently decided to change his plea from not guilty to no contest to one count each of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery. The district judge accepted the pleas. Before sentencing, Defendant filed a pro se motion to withdraw his pleas, which the district court denied. Defendant appealed, arguing that the district judge denied his right to counsel by hearing the motion to withdraw plea without appointing a new lawyer for him. The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that, when Defendant filed his motion to withdraw plea, the district judge failed to give due consideration to whether Defendant was represented by competent counsel. In fact, neither Defendant’s counsel nor the district judge communicated all of the appeal rights Defendant would surrender as a matter of law by entering his no contest pleas, and “failure to follow the law is an abuse of discretion.” Remanded. View "State v. Kenney" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder and one count of fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer. Defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment with a mandatory minimum term of fifty years. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) the evidence was sufficient to support Defendant’s convictions; (2) any error in the manner in which the district court handled information about a previous murder trial in which Defendant was acquitted was harmless; and (3) the district court properly weighed the statutorily prescribed aggravating and mitigating circumstances before imposing the hard fifty sentence. View "State v. Lopez" on Justia Law

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

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

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