Supreme Court of Kansas

The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the district court's denial of Barnes' motion to suppress, holding that the plain‑view doctrine applied because probable cause existed to believe the smoked cigar stub was contraband, and that Barnes voluntarily consented to a full search of his person within the scope of that consent.

The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals and the district court, holding that the jury instructions on the standard of care, the contentions instruction, and the verdict form were legally appropriate and did not mislead the jury.

The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s denial of a set‑off claim, holding that the confessed judgment arising from the settlement agreement is not a debt owed to Lorine Mueller’s estate because the agreement, under Nebraska law, bars any collection—including set‑off.

The Supreme Court of Kansas held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions do not apply exclusively to law-enforcement officers, so the conduct of the firefighters and EMS personnel who responded to a welfare check counted in the totality-of-the-circumstances inquiry into whether Nicole Willard was seized.

The court affirmed Brown's convictions and sentence, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying his motions for a mistrial and new trial, and did not err in redacting irrelevant portions of a defense exhibit.

The Supreme Court of Kansas exercised its inherent authority to correct its own prior opinion and mandate in this case, deleting the erroneous language that had reversed Borders' convictions and substituting language that reversed only the denial of her presentencing motions and vacated her sentence pending a new…

The court affirmed concurrent hard 50 sentences imposed for two premeditated first-degree murders. It held that the district court applied the correct standards when considering the defendant's proposed mitigating circumstances and reasonably rejected a departure to concurrent hard 25 sentences.

The court held that the search-warrant affidavit provided the issuing judge with a substantial basis to find probable cause under the totality of the circumstances. It ruled that the lower courts improperly evaluated the affidavit's facts in isolation rather than considering their combined weight, and it affirmed the…

The court affirmed the denial of Alford's motion to correct an illegal sentence. It held that an alleged error in the handling of his direct appeal did not make his sentence illegal because the appellate-review statute did not govern the crime, punishment category, or criminal-history classification.

The court affirmed summary judgment against Arita under Kansas's wrongful-conviction statute. It held that the statute's reference to the "crime or crimes" is ambiguous when applied to alternative-means crimes, but that the phrase refers to the overall crime rather than a particular alternative means.

The court held that Miller violated the confidentiality rule by knowingly mentioning a client's name in the context of controlled buys, but that the evidence did not clearly and convincingly establish a concurrent conflict of interest or dishonest conduct.

The court affirmed Keys' convictions for felony murder and aggravated robbery. It held that a grand jury's second superseding indictment was not an amendment governed by the indictment-amendment statute, and that Keys received adequate notice and opportunity to defend.

The court held that a district court may revoke probation and impose the original sentence without first imposing intermediate sanctions when probation was granted as a dispositional departure. The statutory exception does not require particularized findings or an express invocation of the exception.

The court affirmed Meggerson's convictions, holding that the evidence was sufficient to support his attempted capital murder conviction and that his remaining sufficiency claims were waived because they were not adequately briefed.

The court declined to reach the father's constitutional challenge to the statutory basis for termination because he had not raised it in either lower court and did not establish an exception to the preservation requirement.

The court held that the statutory exception permitting immediate probation revocation after a dispositional departure applies only when the underlying offense was committed on or after July 1, 2017.

The court affirmed Gray's convictions and sentences for first-degree premeditated murder, rape, and aggravated burglary. It declined to review Gray's unpreserved identical-offense sentencing claim, upheld the admission of prior sexual-misconduct evidence because the limiting instruction was adequate and presumed to be…

The court affirmed the consecutive sentences for felony murder and aggravated kidnapping because Johnson failed to preserve his challenge to the sentencing judge's reliance on facts outside the record and did not explain why an exception to the preservation rule should apply.

The court held that a sentence's legality under the illegal-sentence statute is determined by the law in effect when the sentence was pronounced, so a later change in law cannot retroactively make a lawful sentence illegal.

The court affirmed Salary's convictions and hard-25 sentence after concluding that his motion to dismiss raised claims that were previously decided or could have been raised on his first direct appeal.

The court held that relocation benefits are required for property acquired through negotiation only when the negotiation occurred before condemnation proceedings and condemnation would have followed if negotiations failed.

The court affirmed Ingham's conviction for criminal use of explosives. It held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by permitting references to the device as a bomb, pipe bomb, or improvised explosive device; any error in admitting an officer's legal characterization was harmless; and the challenged…

The opinion addresses claims of prosecutorial error, denial of the right to be present, jury-instruction error, involuntary statements, improper evidence in a recorded interrogation, and evidentiary error.

The court held that a colorable actual-innocence claim may serve as a gateway to overcome the time and successive-motion bars applicable to a postconviction motion. Because Beauclair presented recantations and an explanation for an allegedly false confession that could satisfy the applicable standard, the court…

The court held that the federal statute governing division of military retirement benefits limits a state court's exercise of personal jurisdiction over the servicemember, not the court's subject-matter jurisdiction.

The court affirmed the denial of the grandmother's participation in a stepparent adoption because she failed to establish statutory standing as an interested party and failed to preserve or adequately support her alternative theories.

The court affirmed Butler’s convictions for felony murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, and attempted aggravated robbery. It held that the conspiracy statute and the instruction presented a single sequence of overt acts rather than alternative means, and that knowingly was the legally appropriate culpable…

The court affirmed Thomas' aggravated-battery conviction, rejecting her confrontation, prosecutorial-error, and cumulative-error claims. It held that KORA registration is not part of a criminal sentence and that, absent the required court-made deadly-weapon finding, no registration duty arose; the Court of Appeals…

The court reversed Chandler's two premeditated first-degree murder convictions because the prosecutor repeatedly presented unsupported and false assertions, most significantly that a judge had issued a protection-from-abuse order against Chandler and that she violated it.

The court held that restitution for damages resulting from a defendant's crime does not require a direct causal connection, but must satisfy traditional proximate-cause principles of cause-in-fact and legal causation.

The court held that Wetrich's Missouri second-degree burglary conviction was not comparable to Kansas burglary of a dwelling because the Missouri offense had broader intent and structure elements.

The court affirmed the Court of Appeals solely because Daniel failed to preserve his constitutional challenges to the lifetime registration requirement and failed to identify an exception permitting review of an unpreserved issue.

The court held that Kansas charging documents do not confer subject matter jurisdiction; jurisdiction derives from the Kansas Constitution, while charging-document defects are analyzed as statutory or constitutional errors.

The court affirmed Rosa’s conviction for possessing methamphetamine, holding that the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to establish his knowing and intentional control over drugs found in a bedroom of his home.

The court held that a district court may certify an earlier order adjudicating fewer than all claims or parties as a final judgment after the order was entered, provided the certification expressly determines that there is no just reason for delay and is memorialized in a filed journal entry.

The court affirmed Fisher's convictions for attempted second-degree murder and criminal damage to property and his 247-month sentence. It found a Doyle violation, prosecutorial misconduct in the prosecutor's use of "bull," and error in omitting an attempted voluntary manslaughter instruction, but held each error…

The court held that the appeal was not moot because the record did not clearly and convincingly establish that the controversy had ended or that a judgment would be ineffectual. It affirmed the Court of Appeals' dismissal because Kansas appellate jurisdiction in civil cases is statutory, and the appellant had not…

The court affirmed Dupree’s convictions and sentences after rejecting five appellate challenges. It held that the amended statutory speedy-trial provision applied retroactively and eliminated a remedy for the alleged violation, that the peremptory strikes were not shown to be racially discriminatory, and that the…

The court affirmed all of Logsdon's convictions, concluding that the evidence, viewed favorably to the State, was sufficient and that the challenged hearsay and Confrontation Clause errors either were admissible, were cured by a limiting instruction, or were harmless.

The court held that Kansas's compulsory-joinder statute does not bar a later prosecution unless evidence admitted in the earlier prosecution was sufficient to support a conviction for the later-charged crime.