State v. Scheuerman
| Decision Date | 14 January 2022 |
| Docket Number | 122,253 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Robert Cash SCHEUERMAN, Appellant. |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Randall L. Hodgkinson, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause and was on the briefs for appellant.
Michael J. Duenes, assistant solicitor general, argued the cause, and J. Colin Reynolds, assistant county attorney, M. Levi Morris, county attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were with him on the briefs for appellee.
After a panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed Robert Cash Scheuerman's conviction for possession of methamphetamine under K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 21-5705(a)(1) and (d)(3)(B) for insufficient evidence based upon the parties' stipulation of facts, the State petitioned this court for review. Scheuerman also conditionally cross-petitioned this court for review of the panel's conclusion that he lacked Fourth Amendment "standing" to challenge the search of a vehicle in which he was a passenger. We granted both the petition and the conditional cross-petition.
Upon consideration of the parties' arguments, we reverse the Court of Appeals panel on the sufficiency of the evidence and affirm its determination that Scheuerman cannot challenge the search of the vehicle. We thus affirm Scheuerman's conviction.
The facts of the case are well summarized by the panel below. In brief, Barton County Sheriff's Office Detective Sergeant David Paden stopped a vehicle on a rural road outside of Great Bend, Kansas, on August 8, 2016. Officers were on the lookout for Scheuerman, who was a passenger in the vehicle driven by his girlfriend, Gwen Finnigan. After Paden signaled for her to pull over, Finnigan brought the vehicle to a stop in the traffic lane because there was a "very deep ditch" and "very little shoulder" on which to pull over.
Officers then ordered Finnigan to get out. She complied, walking over to the officers. But as Paden and another officer, Sergeant Lloyd Lewis, approached the car, they discovered that Scheuerman was holding a gun to his own head. One officer then removed Finnigan from the scene for her safety, ultimately transporting her to the Barton County Jail; the remaining officers talked to Scheuerman. After a period of impasse, Scheuerman was eventually convinced to put down the gun and leave the car. After he had done so, officers took him into custody. According to Paden, Scheuerman stated that any "dope" in the car was his, not Finnigan's.
Because Finnigan was still at the jail when Scheuerman was taken into custody, there was no lawful driver on scene to whom the officers could release the car. And because the car was parked in a traffic lane, officers could not leave it unattended without turning it over to a lawful driver—so they impounded it. Lewis retrieved the gun—which Scheuerman had left in the car—and performed an "inventory" search of the car prior to impound. During the search, Lewis found a backpack which contained "numerous items of drug paraphernalia and drugs."
The State charged Scheuerman with six counts relating to his possession of illicit substances and a firearm. Scheuerman filed a motion to suppress, challenging both the stop itself and the lawfulness of the search of the car. After hearing testimony from officers and from Scheuerman himself, the district court denied Scheuerman's motion. The district court reasoned that Scheuerman's disclosure that the vehicle held "dope" prevented law enforcement from releasing the car to Finnigan without "search[ing] that car for anything that might be hazardous and certainly anything that might be illegal."
Eager for a resolution of the suppression issue on appeal, the parties submitted a joint factual stipulation for the district court's consideration on March 18, 2019. Specifically, the parties made this submission "for the Court to determine the defendant's guilt or innocence by an uncontested bench trial on the following stipulated facts" with the intent to "frame legal issues associated with this matter" for an appeal, should the court find Scheuerman guilty. The parties' stipulation provided:
Shortly before the bench trial, the State moved to dismiss five counts against Scheuerman and to reduce Count I "to a severity level 3 drug felony." These modified charges were "part of the agreement" pertaining to the stipulated facts; indeed, Scheuerman's counsel represented that "there's a pretrial issue that we're intending on appealing, and that was how we came to this agreement for the severity level of the crime."
In a Memorandum of Decision issued after trial, the district court found Scheuerman guilty of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute under K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 21-5705(a)(1) and (d)(3)(B). The district court ultimately sentenced Scheuerman to 73 months in prison, with 36 months' postrelease supervision. Scheuerman then appealed.
On appeal, the panel bypassed the district court's basis for denying Scheuerman's motion to suppress by concluding that, as a passenger, he lacked "standing" to challenge the search in the first place. Scheuerman, 60 Kan. App. 2d at 51-53, 486 P.3d 676. But then the panel reversed Scheuerman's conviction for insufficient evidence, concluding that the parties' stipulation—that Scheuerman possessed "at least 3.5 grams of methamphetamine"—could not support a conviction for possession of less than 3.5 grams of methamphetamine, the gravamen of the amended Count I. 60 Kan. App. 2d at 58-59, 486 P.3d 676.
The State filed a petition for review, and Scheuerman filed a conditional cross-petition for review. The court granted both.
The panel incorrectly concluded that Scheuerman's conviction was not supported by sufficient evidence.
We first address the State's sole issue, which challenges the panel's determination that the parties' stipulation to a range quantity of methamphetamine, greater than that required for the charged crime, constituted insufficient evidence to support Scheuerman's conviction.
Standard of review
The State's argument implicates both the standard of review as to sufficiency of the evidence and as to statutory construction. The latter raises a question of law, which is reviewed de novo. E.g., State v. Thurber , 313 Kan. 1002, 1005, 492 P.3d 1185 (2021).
Johnson v. U.S. Food Serv. , 312 Kan. 597, 600-01, 478 P.3d 776 (2021).
An apparently clear statute may nevertheless manifest ambiguity when applied to the particular facts of a case. Cf. State v. Walker , 280 Kan. 513, 523, 124 P.3d 39 (2005).
Challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence in a criminal case are reviewed in a light most favorable to the State to determine whether a rational fact-finder could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. When a trial proceeds on stipulated facts, appellate courts conduct a de novo review for sufficiency of the evidence, again viewing the facts in a light most favorable to the State. State v. Darrow , 304 Kan. 710, 715, 374 P.3d 673 (2016).
The parties stipulated "[t]hat on August 8, 2016, after being taken into custody, the defendant was found to be in possession of at least 3.5 grams but less than 100 grams of methamphetamine as confirmed by KBI lab testing." But "[a]s part of the agreement" of the parties, the State reduced the charge against Scheuerman from a severity level 2 drug felony to a severity level 3 drug felony, as set forth in K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5705(a)(1) and (d)(3)(B).
The panel acknowledged that "[a]s it relates to lesser included offenses whose elements are wholly contained within the originally charged crime, ... if the facts are sufficient to convict of the charged crime, the facts are also sufficient to convict of a lesser included crime." Scheuerman, 60 Kan. App. 2d at 56, 486 P.3d 676. But, while the panel reasoned that the amended charge here was "clearly a lesser included offense of the originally charged crime," it concluded that the amended charge's elements "are not all contained within the originally charged crime" under K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5109(b)(2). 60 Kan. App. 2d at 56-57, 486 P.3d 676. Critically, the panel focused on what it perceived to be a strict elemental separation between the four subsections of K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5705(d)(3) based on quantity, reasoning that "[t]he amended charge's quantity element requires possessing at least 1 gram but less than 3.5 grams of methamphetamine, while the originally charged crime requires possessing at least 3.5 grams but less than 100 grams." 60 Kan. App. 2d at 57, 486 P.3d 676.
We begin by examining the relevant portion of K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5705 :
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