State v. Contreras
Decision Date | 13 August 2021 |
Docket Number | No. 119,584,119,584 |
Citation | 492 P.3d 1180 |
Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Jose Armando CONTRERAS, Appellant. |
Kasper Schirer, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause and was on the briefs for appellant.
Steven J. Obermeier, assistant solicitor general, argued the cause, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, was with him on the briefs for appellee.
The State appeals from a Court of Appeals decision reversing Jose Armando Contreras' convictions and remanding his case to the district court for a new trial. The facts of the case are exhaustively set forth in the Court of Appeals opinion. State v. Contreras , 58 Kan. App. 2d 255, 467 P.3d 522 (2020). For our purposes, the following limited recital will suffice.
Mother of the victim, K.B., was dating Contreras. When she spent the night at Contreras' apartment, her children—including K.B.—would go with her. About a year into the dating relationship, when K.B. was eight years old, Contreras told Mother that K.B. had attempted to perform oral sex on him. He reported that K.B. told him she had learned this behavior from her father.
Police were soon notified of the situation and began an investigation into possible sexual abuse of K.B. During several forensic interviews, K.B. related facts that demonstrated she had been sexually abused by both Contreras and Father. At one point, K.B. attempted to retract her allegations against Contreras, but she admitted to the forensic interviewer that Mother had put her up to the retraction. During the police interview with Contreras, he admitted there had been some sexual contact between he and K.B., but he insisted it had either been accidental or unwanted by him.
The State developed additional evidence over time and eventually charged Contreras with two counts of rape, two counts of criminal sodomy, and one count of aggravated intimidation of a victim. At trial, as part of his defense, Contreras called Father to testify, but Father invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Defense counsel argued Father could not invoke the privilege because he had already been convicted of the crime that was the intended target of questioning (the incidents occurring in December 2012).
At this point, the parties and the court attempted to discern Father's jeopardy status with respect to the December 2012 incident. Father had previously been convicted of sexual abuse of K.B. With respect to that conviction, the prosecutor told the court, But the prosecutor added that "[w]e can call up [Clark County] and get a copy of the plea agreement if the Court would like." The Court of Appeals recites what happened next, which is the key moment for purposes of this appeal:
At the conclusion of the trial, the jury convicted Contreras on all five counts—two counts of rape, two counts of aggravated criminal sodomy, and one count of aggravated intimidation of a victim. The district court denied Contreras' departure motion and imposed a controlling life sentence without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
Contreras raised multiple issues on appeal, but the panel only addressed one—holding the district court erred when it permitted Father to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. 58 Kan. App. 2d at 274, 467 P.3d 522. After a harmless error analysis, the panel concluded it could not 58 Kan. App. 2d at 277, 467 P.3d 522. Thus, the panel reversed all of Contreras' convictions, remanded for a full new trial, and refused to address the other briefed issues on appeal. 58 Kan. App. 2d at 277, 467 P.3d 522. We granted the State's petition for review.
The only issue before us is whether the Court of Appeals correctly found the lower court committed reversible error when it excluded Father's testimony because he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. When analyzing this question, the panel concluded that the district court erred because it did not have the documents which showed that Father actually was not in any legal jeopardy for the December 2012 incidents, and therefore had no Fifth Amendment privilege to invoke. Specifically, the panel held:
As a result, the panel found reversible error in the exclusion of the evidence. Before us, the parties spend a great deal of effort continuing to argue about the propriety of taking appellate judicial notice of these documents as well as arguing about what those documents actually say about Father's legal jeopardy. But these arguments are not relevant to the panel's far more basic mistake....
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State v. Showalter
...against self-incrimination to invoke constitutes a question of law over which this court exercises de novo review. State v. Contreras , 313 Kan. 996, 999, 492 P.3d 1180 (2021). When a witness invokes the privilege against self-incrimination, the party seeking to admit evidence over the witn......
- State v. Contreras