State v. Blansett

435 P.3d 1136, 309 Kan. 401
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedMarch 8, 2019
Docket115634
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 435 P.3d 1136 (State v. Blansett) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Blansett, 435 P.3d 1136, 309 Kan. 401 (kan 2019).

Opinions

The opinion of the court was delivered by Stegall, J.:

**401While suffering from a psychotic episode, Lindsey Nicole Blansett stabbed her 10-year-old son, Caleb Blansett, to death. A jury convicted Blansett of first-degree premeditated murder and aggravated assault. On appeal, Blansett challenges the jury instructions *1139concerning her mental disease or defect defense. She also alleges several instances of prosecutorial error and claims cumulative error merits reversal.

At first, Blansett argued that premeditation is a culpable mental state that can be negated by the mental disease or defect defense. But while her case was pending, we decided State v. McLinn , 307 Kan. 307, 323, 409 P.3d 1 (2018), and rejected the same argument, holding that premeditation is not a "culpable mental state" under K.S.A. 2013 Supp. 21-5209. We later granted Blansett's request for supplemental briefing to discuss McLinn 's impact and raise **402additional arguments. Now, Blansett argues the jury instructions prevented the jury from considering how the evidence of her mental disease or defect affected her ability to premeditate.

We hold Blansett has failed to establish instructional error because we disagree with her characterization of the jury instructions. Also, we find one instance of prosecutorial error but hold it was harmless. As a result, there are not multiple errors to accumulate and cumulative error does not apply. For these reasons, we affirm.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Just before midnight on December 14, 2014, the Sumner County 911 dispatcher received a call from Blansett. The first thing Blansett said was, "Hi, this is Nicole Blansett, I just stabbed my son.... I thought somebody was coming in to get us." The dispatcher asked Blansett where she had stabbed her son, and Blansett replied, "In the chest.... I thought somebody was coming in." After the dispatcher told her to hold on the line, Blansett exclaimed, "God, what did I fucking do? ... I'm never gonna get out of jail ... never. Oh God, you're gonna have to live with dad. Oh, God, why? Why?" and then began crying. When the dispatcher returned to the line, he asked Blansett if her son was breathing. Blansett said she could feel his heartbeat but just "barely."

Officer Sara Owens was the first to arrive at Blansett's house in Wellington. Officer Owens would later testify: "When I walked into the house, I noticed that the house was completely dark, and I saw a white female that I identified as Nicole Blansett, and a young child, who ended up being Cadence Blansett. Nicole was kind of in a daze and Cadence was crying." Officer Owens "found Caleb laying on his back on the bed with blood covering his chest." Caleb had no pulse.

Blansett told Officer Owens that "she had been frightened"; "she thought that something was going to happen"; "she felt like she heard something by the window"; and "her son's toy gun had fallen for no reason." Blansett talked "about having peoples' arms ... chopped off, people being cut up, Caleb living like a dog, being in pain, and she didn't want her [ ] son to live like that." Blansett "thought she was saving him from all the years of pain. She didn't **403specify what kind of pain. Just somebody coming and getting him. Somebody hurting him."

When the EMTs arrived, they found Caleb lying motionless in bed with multiple stab wounds to his left pectoral area. They pronounced Caleb dead at the scene. In the same room, investigators found a knife on the dresser and an 11-pound rock lying next to the bed.

Detective Bobby Wilson interviewed Blansett at the scene of the crime. Blansett told Detective Wilson that she was having financial issues and was depressed. She explained that she had been trying to reconcile with her ex-husband Clint, and he wanted her "to go to mental health" on the following Monday. Blansett had agreed to do so in hopes of reconciling with Clint.

Blansett told Detective Wilson that earlier in the evening she was tending to two puppies she had gotten the children as an early Christmas present. At some point, she took their large adult dog outside. When she came back inside, she took three knives out of a kitchen drawer and laid them on the counter. According to Blansett, she heard a noise and walked through house carrying one of the knives. Turns out, the noise was caused by a toy gun falling off the wall in Caleb's room.

Blansett recalled that she returned to the kitchen, set the knife down, and went back to the dogs. But shortly after, she decided "that Caleb just needed to go to heaven, and he needed to go to heaven that night. She was going to ease his pain. And that's when she *1140made a decision to end his life." Then Blansett went to Caleb's room and stabbed him while he was asleep. As Detective Wilson summarized, Blansett stabbed Caleb once, realized what she had started, and then decided to stab him a couple more times.

Detective Wilson probed why Blansett killed her son. She commented that Caleb was "meek, a weak child." Blansett was hard to follow and "[n]ever gave an exact reason why." But she insisted that "[s]he needed to stop his pain. She needed to save him. And he needed to go to heaven."

After the on-site interview, Detective Wilson took Blansett to the Sumner County jail. Later that morning, Blansett asked to speak with Detective Wilson again, and over the course of three **404more interviews she discussed the killing and her mental process in more depth.

At the outset, Blansett told Detective Wilson that she had hit Caleb with a rock before stabbing him. She first thought the rock would kill Caleb, and when it did not, she stabbed him. Detective Wilson asked if, after hitting Caleb with the rock, Blansett had to leave the room to get the knife. Blansett said "no." She also told Detective Wilson that Caleb woke up after she hit him with the rock. As Blansett stabbed Caleb, he yelled, " 'Mommy, stop. Mommy, stop.' " Cadence also yelled at Blansett to stop. But Blansett kept stabbing and told Caleb that this was the only way he could get to heaven.

When Detective Wilson asked Blansett why she killed Caleb, Blansett said, "I just lost my mind." In the days leading up to the crime, she had not been eating or sleeping well and her mind was racing "nonstop." That day, Blansett believed people were coming to hurt them. She explained, "I thought something bad was gonna happen to them, I thought something bad was gonna happen to me, and I thought that that was the only way that I could save them," and, "I felt like I was being closed in on." Blansett expressed that Caleb would struggle in life and she was doing the best thing for him.

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Bluebook (online)
435 P.3d 1136, 309 Kan. 401, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-blansett-kan-2019.