State v. Lackey

246 P.3d 998, 45 Kan. App. 2d 257, 2011 Kan. App. LEXIS 11
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kansas
DecidedJanuary 28, 2011
Docket102,531, 102,532
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 246 P.3d 998 (State v. Lackey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals 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. Lackey, 246 P.3d 998, 45 Kan. App. 2d 257, 2011 Kan. App. LEXIS 11 (kanctapp 2011).

Opinion

246 P.3d 998 (2011)

STATE of Kansas, Appellee,
v.
Gary LACKEY, Appellant.

Nos. 102,531, 102,532.

Court of Appeals of Kansas.

January 28, 2011.

*1001 Lydia Krebs, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellant.

Casey L. Meyer, assistant district attorney, Jerome A. Gorman, district attorney, and Steve Six, attorney general, for appellee.

Before GREENE, P.J., GREEN and STANDRIDGE, JJ.

STANDRIDGE, J.

On July 7, 2008, Gary Lackey pled guilty to one count of possession of cocaine in case No. 06CR1017 and one count of possession of cocaine in case No. 07CR1091. On appeal, Lackey argues the district court erred in sentencing him based on a criminal history score of C, which was calculated, in part, using three prior convictions for violating Kansas City, Missouri, ordinances. Alternatively, Lackey argues that even if his criminal history score was calculated correctly, the district court erred when it denied his motion to withdraw both of the pleas prior to sentencing. Finally, Lackey argues his rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were violated because the district court used his criminal history to sentence him under the sentencing guidelines without the criminal history first being proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Brief Procedural History

Lackey agreed to plead guilty to one count of possession of cocaine in case No. 06CR1017 and to one count of possession of cocaine in case No. 07CR1091, both severity level 4 drug felonies. In exchange, the State agreed to dismiss the remaining charges in each case, dismiss a third case that was pending against Lackey for aggravated failure to appear, and recommend at sentencing a 6-month reduction in the sentence Lackey would receive for his conviction in case No. 06CR1017.

The district court accepted Lackey's pleas, found him guilty in each case of possession of cocaine, and ordered a presentence investigation (PSI) report prepared for each case. After the PSI reports were submitted showing that Lackey had a criminal history score of C (one person felony and one or more nonperson felonies), Lackey filed a motion challenging his criminal history score. The district court denied the motion. Given the court's ruling, Lackey filed a motion to withdraw his pleas, which the court also denied.

At sentencing, the district court followed the plea agreement and reduced Lackey's sentence in case No. 06CR1017 by 6 months, imposing a sentence of 24 months' imprisonment. In the other case, the district court granted a durational departure sentence of 24 months. Because Lackey was on felony bond when he was arrested for possession of cocaine in case No. 07CR1091, the district court ordered the sentences in each case to run consecutively. See K.S.A. 21-4603d(f)(3) (when new felony is committed while offender is on release for felony, new sentence may be imposed pursuant to consecutive sentencing requirements of K.S.A. 21-4608).

The District Court Did Not Err in Scoring the Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Ordinance Violations as Person Misdemeanors under Kansas Law

Lackey argues the district court erred in calculating his criminal history score. Relevant to the issue presented here, Lackey's criminal history includes two municipal domestic violence convictions and one municipal aggravated assault conviction—all three in violation of Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Code § 26.13.2 (1967). Recodified in 1995, this section of the Kansas City, Missouri municipal code states: "No person *1002 shall, by an intentional, overt act, unlawfully inflict bodily injury or cause an unlawful, offensive contact upon the person of another." See Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Code § 50-169 (1995).

At sentencing, the district court reviewed the three municipal convictions referenced above and found them to be comparable to convictions for the crime of battery in Kansas, a class B person misdemeanor. See K.S.A. 21-3412(a) (defining battery as "[i]ntentionally or recklessly causing bodily harm to another person" or "intentionally causing physical contact with another person when done in a rude, insulting or angry manner"). Relying on the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Act (KSGA), K.S.A. 21-4701 et seq., the district court determined that the three municipal convictions should be considered as three convictions for person misdemeanors and aggregated into one person felony. See K.S.A. 21-4710(d)(7) ("All person misdemeanors, class A nonperson misdemeanors and class B select nonperson misdemeanors, and all municipal ordinance and county resolution violations comparable to such misdemeanors, shall be considered and scored" for purposes of determining an offender's criminal history classification.); K.S.A. 21-4711(a) ("Every three prior adult convictions ... of class A and class B person misdemeanors in the offender's criminal history, or any combination thereof, shall be rated as one adult conviction ... of a person felony for criminal history purposes."). Lackey claims the district court's decision to convert the municipal convictions into person misdemeanors was error.

Because interpretation of statutes is a question of law, our review of this issue on appeal is unlimited. See State v. Vandervort, 276 Kan. 164, 173, 72 P.3d 925 (2003).

We begin our analysis with the relevant statutes. K.S.A. 21-4710 and K.S.A. 21-4711 set forth various rules for the sentencing court to follow in classifying prior convictions for purposes of calculating a criminal history score. K.S.A. 21-4710(d)(7) directs the sentencing court to consider and score convictions for prior municipal ordinance violations in determining criminal history if the prior violations are comparable to a person or nonperson misdemeanor. Based solely on the directive in K.S.A. 21-4710(d)(7), there is no question the district court properly determined that the municipal domestic violence and aggravated assault convictions were comparable to convictions for the crime of battery in Kansas, a class B person misdemeanor.

It is the out-of-state nature of these convictions that provides the basis for Lackey's appeal here. When the sentencing court is presented with out-of-state convictions, K.S.A. 21-4711(e) directs the sentencing court to classify the crime as a felony or misdemeanor consistent with the classification made by the convicting jurisdiction.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
246 P.3d 998, 45 Kan. App. 2d 257, 2011 Kan. App. LEXIS 11, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lackey-kanctapp-2011.