State v. Dukes, 121,790
| Decision Date | 12 February 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 121,790,121,790 |
| Citation | 481 P.3d 184 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellant, v. Leon A. DUKES Jr., Appellee. |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
Matt J. Maloney, assistant district attorney, Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellant.
Patrick H. Dunn, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellee.
Before Warner, P.J., Powell, J., and McAnany, S.J.
Kansas law immunizes a person from criminal prosecution when he or she uses deadly force while reasonably believing the force is necessary to protect that person or others from imminent death or great bodily harm. In recent years, Kansas appellate courts have considered the contours of use-of-force immunity on multiple occasions, often instructing district courts on various aspects of the interpretation or application of the statutes that define it. This case presents a set of circumstances where the district court appropriately considered and applied the law, concluding Leon A. Dukes Jr. was immune from prosecution. We affirm the court's ruling.
Leon "Tony" Dukes Jr. owned a barbershop in Wichita. Because Dukes' customers often paid for his services with cash, Dukes carried a concealed handgun for protection.
On June 19, 2018, Dukes finished at the barbershop and met up with a friend, Tanisha Bryant. Bryant and Dukes ran an errand and then returned to let the cleaner into the shop. As the two waited in Dukes' truck, a car quickly pulled into the parking lot and abruptly stopped near the truck. Neither Dukes nor Bryant recognized the car or its occupants at first. But they could see that a man in the driver seat was yelling at a woman in the passenger seat. As they watched, the man appeared to punch the woman in the face. Dukes asked Bryant to stay calm, as he did not want to get involved; such confrontations were unfortunately common in the neighborhood.
The enraged driver (later identified as Lafian Berryman) got out of his car and started toward Dukes' truck. As he approached, Berryman shouted at the car's passenger (later identified as Leatha Lawton), "Where's the nigga at?" Dukes looked around, trying to find who Berryman might be referring to, but he and Bryant were the only other people in the parking lot. Lawton then got out of the car, and Dukes recognized her.
Dukes and Lawton had been involved in a relationship about a year before. More recently, Lawton had borrowed a small amount of money from Dukes so her son could put gas in his car, and she had paid him back about a week before the incident in the parking lot. A few days after she dropped the money off, Lawton messaged Dukes on Facebook, asking if he was still "loving around." Dukes had responded that he had "just been chilling." The night before the encounter in the parking lot, Dukes had received a series of messages from Lawton's Facebook account, stating:
Dukes did not take these threats seriously when he received them.
As Lawton followed Berryman toward Dukes' truck, she shouted, "Tony, please tell him you and me ain't messed around." Dukes then addressed Berryman out of the cracked truck window, saying, "I ain't got nothing to do with that" and "I don't want no problems." Berryman continued towards the truck, and Bryant (who was terrified) told Dukes she thought Berryman had a gun. She then got out of the truck and ran away. Bryant later testified,
Dukes drew his own handgun from between his seat and the console and pointed it at Berryman as he came up beside the truck in an effort to deter his assault, telling Berryman he did not "want any problems." When Berryman saw Dukes' gun, he said, Berryman ran to the passenger door of his car, which was closest to Dukes' truck. Dukes testified that he believed Berryman was going back to his car to get a gun:
When Berryman reached the open passenger door, Dukes fired his weapon several times. Dukes later explained, "I fired the gun to save my life." He continued, "I'm just explaining the way I felt, and I was scared for my life." One of the shots hit Berryman in the left arm or shoulder and then lodged in his ribcage. Berryman died from the injury.
Surveillance footage did not show whether Berryman was armed when Dukes started shooting. But a loaded semi-automatic handgun with a scratched-off serial number was later found under Berryman's body on the passenger seat of the car.
After firing his weapon, Dukes backed out of the parking lot—still holding his gun out the window—and drove away towards his grandmother's house. Dukes testified that he saw Berryman holding a gun as Dukes drove away. Dukes then called 911. Later, Dukes went back to the parking lot to speak to the police, telling them that he fired only after Berryman "[came] out with the gun" and pointed it at him.
The State charged Dukes with voluntary manslaughter, alleging he acted with an honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force was justified. Dukes moved to dismiss the charge, asserting his actions were immune from prosecution. He claimed that he "fired his gun ... in reasonable anticipation that [Berryman] intended to shoot him."
The district court held an evidentiary hearing on the immunity question. The court later issued a decision explaining its findings of fact and conclusions of law. In its factual findings, the court noted that the evidence was "unpersuasive" as to whether Berryman was carrying a weapon when he first approached Dukes' truck; the surveillance footage did not conclusively demonstrate this point, and two 911-callers who observed the incident provided conflicting accounts. But the court found the evidence was "clear" that "a semi-automatic weapon was found in the passenger seat of [Berryman's] vehicle." And the court found it compelling that Dukes "stressed during his testimony that [Berryman] clearly said, ‘I've got something for you’, as he was running back towards his car where the gun was later found on the seat." Thus, the court found it "clear" that Dukes "had a subject[ive] belief that [Berryman] posed a danger to both [Dukes] and his passenger."
The court's decision then assessed the reasonableness of this belief. The court indicated that the State had to show probable cause "only that deploying deadly force may not have been justified." The court found the State met this burden, and thus Dukes was not immune from prosecution (though he was free to argue self-defense at trial).
Dukes filed a motion to reconsider, arguing the court applied the wrong standard in its ruling. Dukes argued that the State was required to establish by probable cause that a reasonable person would not have believed that deadly force was necessary under the circumstances, not that a reasonable person may not have believed such force was necessary. After reconsidering the caselaw on this point, the court agreed and granted Dukes' motion to dismiss.
Upon reconsideration, the court found that the "correct standard" for use-of-force immunity considers whether the State demonstrated "there was probable cause to believe that deadly force by [Dukes] was not justified." Applying this standard to the facts, the court underscored that the semi-automatic weapon was found on the passenger seat in Berryman's car. The court noted that the weapon was "found by [Berryman's] hand lying across the passenger seat as if he had dropped the gun once he was shot." And it observed that this was "clearly not the location of the gun" when Berryman and Lawton arrived at the parking lot because Lawton was in the passenger seat at the time.
Based on these observations and its previous factual findings, the district court concluded that "both [Dukes'] subjective belief and the objective reasonable person standard establish that [his] use of deadly force meets the requirement under K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 21-5231." The court therefore dismissed the case. The State appeals.
Kansas' use-of-force immunity is defined by statute. See K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5220 through K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5231. K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5222(b) states that a person is "justified in the use of deadly force" when he or she "reasonably believes that such use of deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm" to that person or to someone else. Courts have indicated that this statute includes both subjective and objective components. From a subjective standpoint, a defendant's use of force is justified only if he or she "sincerely believed it was necessary to kill to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to the defendant or a third person." State v. Thomas , 311 Kan. 403, 410, 462 P.3d 149 (2020). And objectively, the statutory justification only applies when "a reasonable person in the defendant's circumstances would have perceived the use of deadly force in self-defense as necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm." 311 Kan. at 410-11, 462 P.3d 149.
A person who is justified in the use of deadly force under K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5222(b) () is "immune from criminal prosecution and civil action" for that act. K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5231(a). This statutory framework thus provides an actor "true...
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