State v. Hurd

316 P.3d 696, 298 Kan. 555
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedDecember 27, 2013
DocketNos. 104,198; 104,765
StatusPublished
Cited by29 cases

This text of 316 P.3d 696 (State v. Hurd) 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. Hurd, 316 P.3d 696, 298 Kan. 555 (kan 2013).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Moritz, J.:

Following a consolidated trial, a jury convicted Eric Hurd of assault, battery, and criminal threat in one case and two counts of failure to register in another case. Hurd appealed his convictions, asserting nine errors, including challenges to the district court’s decision to consolidate the cases, the trial judge’s refusal to recuse, and the district court’s refusal to find the complaint to be jurisdictionally defective. The Court of Appeals rejected each error and affirmed Hurd’s convictions and sentences. State v. Hurd, No. 104,198, 2011 WL 4357826 (Kan. App. 2011) (unpublished opinion). We granted Hurd’s petition for review.

Because we conclude the district court erred in consolidating the two cases, we reverse Hurd’s convictions and remand for separate trials. We also agree with Hurd that the complaint charging him with two counts of failing to register was jurisdictionally defective, but we conclude the State is not prevented from recharging Hurd. We reject Hurd’s challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence of criminal threat. In light of our remand for new trials, we do not address the remainder of Hurd’s asserted errors with two exceptions. Because the issues are likely to arise on remand, we reject Hurd’s allegations of alleged bias on the part of the trial judge, and we conclude the district court erred in determining it lacked authority to disqualify the prosecutor.

Factual and Procedural Background

Frank Hurd (Frank) called police to his rural Seward County [558]*558home after a confrontation between him and his adult son, Eric Hurd. Frank reported that Hurd was staying with him and that he had given Hurd a pickup truck. According to Frank, he asked Hurd to move the truck because Frank’s other son, Jonathan Hurd, was bringing some items to store in the basement and Hurd’s truck was blocking the garage.

Shortly thereafter, Hurd confronted Frank as Frank sat in his home office. Hurd entered the office screaming, calling Frank names, and threatening to “beat [Frank’s] ass.” Hurd grabbed a mechanical pencil from Frank’s hand and threw it against the wall, tiren grabbed Frank’s shirt and shoved him against the wall and into a bookcase.

“[F]igur[ing] two against one would be a little better odds,” Frank got by Hurd and telephoned Jonathan, requesting he come to the house. Hurd, who had been listening to the phone call, told Frank that if Jonathan came to the house he would attack Jonathan. Frank called Jonathan again and instructed him not to come. Hurd then left the farm in his truck but was arrested later that day after a responding officer called in tire truck’s description and tag number.

The State charged Hurd with making a criminal threat against Jonathan and battery and assault of Frank, but later amended the assault charge to aggravated assault with a deádly weapon, i.e., the mechanical pencil.

A few days after Hurd’s arrest, tire Seward County Sheriff s Officer in charge of offender registration learned of Hurd’s arrest and that Hurd had been living in Seward County. The officer knew Hurd was required to register as a sex offender because Hurd had registered with the Seward County Sheriff s Office in February 2008, but the officer had later heard from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation that Hurd had moved to Oklahoma. Based on Hurd’s reappearance in Seward County, the State filed a separate complaint charging Hurd with one count of failure to register. The State later amended the complaint to add a second failure to register count.

Hurd eventually elected to proceed pro se after several attorneys appointed by the court consecutively requested and were allowed [559]*559to withdraw. Hurd filed numerous motions on his own behalf, including a motion to prevent consolidation of the two cases, a motion to recuse the assigned district judge, and a motion to disqualify the prosecutor. Following a hearing on tire State’s motion to consolidate, the district court rejected Hurd’s objections and consolidated the two cases. The district judge also refused to recuse, and the chief judge reviewed Hurd’s affidavit filed under K.S.A. 20-311d and affirmed the district judge’s decision. Finally, because Hurd indicated he was unprepared to present evidence on his motion to disqualify the prosecutor, the district coúrt rescheduled the hearing to the day of the pretrial conference. But the record contains no evidence that the court ever heard the disqualification motion, although the district court did indicate at trial that it lacked jurisdiction to remove the prosecutor.

The district court set the cases for a combined jury trial with both a primary date and an earlier contingent date if an already scheduled trial on the contingent date did not occur. The court later notified tire parties the trial would be held on the earlier contingent date, and Hurd did not object. However, on the trial date Hurd argued that because the trial date had been moved up, he was unprepared, had no witnesses present, and had not had time to communicate with his standby counsel. The district court noted Hurd’s objections but declined to continue the case.

Frank, who testified for both the State and Hurd, testified inconsistently at trial and contradicted his earlier written statement. For instance, in his written statement to officers, Frank reported that he had believed Hurd was going to stab him with the mechanical pencil and Hurd had threatened to “beat [his] ass.” But at trial Frank testified Hurd had not threatened him and he could not understand what Hurd was saying when he yelled at Frank. Later, Frank testified that Hurd had threatened to “kick [his] ass.” Further, while Frank initially told the jury that Hurd grabbed him by the shirt and arm and shoved him against the wall, he later testified that he fell while Hurd jerked him around, and he acknowledged that Hurd may have grabbed his arm to prevent him from falling.

[560]*560Regarding the registration violations, Hurd primarily argued that he had not moved from Oklahoma and, therefore, was not required to register with Seward County.

During the jury instruction conference, the district court informed the parties it would instruct the jury that the State was alleging Hurd failed to register in Seward County. Hurd pointed out that the most recent complaint charged him with failing to register in Oklahoma, not Seward County, but after brief argument, the court refused to modify the instruction. Before closing argument, the State amended the complaint to clarify that Hurd was charged with failing to register in Seward County.

The jury convicted Hurd of criminal threat, battery, and both counts of failure to register. It rejected the aggravated assault charge but convicted Hurd of the lesser-included assault charge. Hurd timely filed a motion for arrest of judgment, arguing the complaint charging him with failing to register was jurisdictionally defective. The district court overruled the motion and sentenced Hurd to a controlling sentence of 187 months in prison consecutive to 7 months in jail.

Hurd timely appealed, asserting seven trial errors and two sentencing errors. The Court of Appeals rejected each of Hurd’s asserted errors and affirmed his convictions and sentences. See Hurd, 2011 WL 4357826. We granted Hurd’s petition for review under K.S.A.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
316 P.3d 696, 298 Kan. 555, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-hurd-kan-2013.