State v. Jamerson

• Court: Kansas Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: The decision of the court was delivered by Nuss, C.J.
• Citation: State v. Jamerson, 309 Kan. 211, 433 P.3d 698 (Kan. 2019)
• Decision Date: 25 January 2019
• Docket Number: No. 115,629,115,629
• Parties: STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. James Lee JAMERSON, Appellant.

309 Kan. 211

433 P.3d 698

STATE of Kansas, Appellee,

v.James Lee JAMERSON, Appellant.

No. 115,629

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Decision filed January 25, 2019.

Joseph A. Desch, of Law Office of Joseph A. Desch, of Topeka, argued the cause, and was on the brief for appellant.

Jodi E. Litfin, assistant solicitor general, argued the cause, and Rachel L. Pickering, assistant solicitor general, Chadwick J. Taylor, former district attorney, Michael F. Kagay, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were on the briefs for appellee.

The decision of the court was delivered by Nuss, C.J.:

James Lee Jamerson challenges his resentencing after the district court granted his motion to correct an illegal sentence but then also modified the duration and concurrent nature of one of his legal, nonbase sentences. The primary issue presented asks: to what extent can a district court modify multiple sentences when only some of them are held to be illegal following a motion to correct an illegal sentence?

We conclude the district court may only correct the illegal sentences. We affirm in part and vacate in part the decision of that court, affirm in part and reverse in part the decision of the Court of Appeals, and remand with directions.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In 2001, Jamerson pled no contest to (1) second-degree murder, a severity level 1 person felony; (2) aggravated robbery, a severity level 3 person felony; and (3) conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, a severity level 5 person felony. Jamerson and the State agreed to recommend a 288-month controlling prison sentence, and the district court agreed to follow the recommendation. In its implementation, the court determined Jamerson had a criminal history score of D and sentenced him to a standard grid box term of 253 months for second-degree murder; a downward departure to 35 months for aggravated robbery; and a downward departure to 35 months for conspiracy. The court ordered the aggravated robbery sentence to run consecutive to the second-degree murder sentence and the conspiracy sentence to run concurrent with both. This resulted in a total controlling sentence of 288 months' imprisonment.

Fourteen years later in 2015, Jamerson filed a pro se motion to correct an illegal sentence, and his appointed counsel later filed a supplemental motion. Jamerson argued his criminal history score was incorrect at sentencing. After holding an evidentiary hearing, the court determined Jamerson's criminal history should have been H, not the more serious D. To correct the error, Jamerson and the State both recommended that the second-degree murder sentence be reduced from 253 months to 176 months. This would in turn reduce the controlling sentence to 211 months' imprisonment.

At resentencing, the court noticed another error in Jamerson's sentences. Specifically, the 2001 sentencing court had erroneously also applied Jamerson's criminal history to the nonbase sentences of aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery. Under the sentencing guidelines, the court does not apply the defendant's criminal history score to nonbase sentences but instead uses the gridbox applicable for no criminal history, or I. K.S.A. 2001 Supp. 21-4720(b)(5) ("Nonbase sentences will not have criminal history scores applied, as calculated in the criminal history I column of the grid, but base sentences will have the full criminal history score assigned."). The error did not impact Jamerson's aggravated robbery conviction because the court's downward departure to 35 months coincidentally was a gridbox sentence for a severity level 3 person felony with no criminal history. But the 35-month sentence for conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery was an illegal upward departure when using the correct criminal history score. That gridbox sentence should have been 31 months (mitigated), 32 months (standard), or 34 months (aggravated).

In an apparent effort to keep the new sentence as close as possible to the one in 2001, the 2015 court resentenced Jamerson to the aggravated gridbox sentence of 186 months for second-degree murder; the standard gridbox sentence of 59 months for aggravated robbery; and the aggravated grid box sentence of 34 months for conspiracy. The court ordered all three sentences to run consecutive for a total controlling sentence of 279 months' imprisonment.

Jamerson appealed, arguing the court only had authority to correct the illegal second-degree murder sentence and lacked jurisdiction to modify his unchallenged aggravated robbery and conspiracy sentences.

The Court of Appeals panel concluded the 2015 resentencing court had jurisdiction to modify the conspiracy sentence from the erroneous downward departure of 35 months to the appropriate aggravated term of 34 months because the sentence itself was illegal, independent of the illegal base sentence for second-degree murder. State v. Jamerson , No. 115629, 2017 WL 462716 (Kan. App. 2017) (unpublished opinion). But it concluded the court did not have jurisdiction to deviate from the original sentence by making the conspiracy sentence run consecutive to the second-degree murder and aggravated robbery sentences or to resentence Jamerson to 59 months for aggravated robbery. The panel held Jamerson should have a controlling sentence of 221 months—186 for the base sentence for second-degree murder; 35 for aggravated robbery, consecutive to the murder; and 34 for conspiracy, to be served concurrently with the other two sentences. 2017 WL 462716, at *4.

The State petitioned this court for review of the panel's decision. Our jurisdiction is under K.S.A. 60-2101(b) (review of Court of Appeals decision).

ANALYSIS

Issue: When correcting an illegal base sentence, did the resentencing court have jurisdiction to vacate and resentence Jamerson's two nonbase sentences?

Standard of review

Jamerson's arguments require us to interpret sentencing statutes. Their interpretation is a question of law over which this court exercises unlimited review. State v. Guder , 293 Kan. 763, 765, 267 P.3d 751 (2012). Furthermore, whether a sentence is illegal within the meaning of K.S.A. 22-3504 is also a question of law over which we have unlimited review. State v. Lee , 304 Kan. 416, 417, 372 P.3d 415 (2016). The court may correct an illegal sentence at any time. K.S.A. 22-3504(1) ; State v. Dickey , 305 Kan. 217, 219, 380 P.3d 230 (2016).

The State argues Guder should be overruled.

The State first urges this court to reexamine our holding in Guder because here it leads to an absurd result. The State asks us to either reverse or carve out an exception to Guder and hold that some authority still exists to treat criminal sentences as a single entity. Per the State, this is especially compelling in instances where the record clearly shows the State and defense reached the original sentence in a plea deal by considering the sentence in its entirety. The State complains that under Guder a defendant can game the system and undermine a plea agreement by waiting until after sentencing to object to incorrect criminal history scores.

The Guder court, however, thoroughly analyzed legislative intent and the effect of the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Act, K.S.A. 21-4701 et seq. (KSGA), on common law sentencing power and rejected this particular argument. Moreover, this court has repeatedly held that the KSGA deprived district courts of the jurisdiction to modify sentences except to correct arithmetic or clerical errors, to consider or reconsider departures from presumptive sentences, or to modify sentences by reinstating previously revoked probations. Guder , 293 Kan. at 766, 267 P.3d 751. We recently reaffirmed our holding from Guder in State v. Warren , 307 Kan. 609, 612-13, 412 P.3d 993 (2018). So we again reject the State's argument.

The State argues Guder does not apply.

Alternatively, the State argues Guder does not apply because of the procedural differences between the facts in Guder and in this case. Specifically, the resentencing court here found Jamerson's sentence illegal under K.S.A. 22-3504 (correction of sentence), whereas Guder involved the court's authority to modify a nonvacated portion of a sentence on remand from an appellate court. The State argues Guder and its progeny should only be applied to cases following a remand.

In a case based on a motion to correct an illegal sentence and without remand instructions, the State contends K.S.A. 21-4720(b) (now cited as K.S.A. 2017 Supp. 21-6819 ) should control. That statute permitted the sentencing judge to exercise discretion when deciding whether to impose concurrent or consecutive sentences in a multiple conviction case:

"The sentencing judge shall otherwise have discretion to impose concurrent or consecutive sentences in multiple conviction cases. The sentencing judge shall state on the record if the sentence is to be served concurrently or consecutively." K.S.A. 21-4720(b).

The State suggests that correcting an illegal sentence should follow the same rules as those applied to sentencing on all counts for the first time. It asserts that K.S.A. 21-4720(b) gives the district court authority to alter every sentence in a multiple conviction case at resentencing, not just the illegal ones.

Admittedly, the statutory authority to correct an illegal sentence does not come from the KSGA. Rather, K.S.A. 22-3504 —one chapter later in the Kansas Statutes—provides the authority for correction of an illegal sentence. And it simply says that the court may correct an illegal sentence at any time, and that clerical mistakes in judgments, orders, or other parts of the record and errors in the record arising from oversight or omission may be corrected by the court at any time. K.S.A. 22-3504. The only guidance the statute provides on correcting an illegal sentence is that the defendant shall receive full credit for time spent in custody under the sentence prior to correction and that he or she is entitled to a hearing and counsel.

Absent...