Case Title: State v. Butler

Citation: 

Docket Number: 123515

State: kansas

Court: Kansas Supreme Court

Date: 2022-02-11T00:00:00Z

Document:
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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF KANSAS 
 
 
No. 123,515 
 
STATE OF KANSAS, 
Appellee, 
 
v. 
 
MARCUS BUTLER, 
Appellant. 
 
 
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT 
 
1.   
A district court abuses its discretion if no reasonable person could agree with its 
decision or if its exercise of discretion is founded on a factual or legal error. 
 
 
2.   
A legal error occurs when the district court's discretion is guided by an erroneous 
legal conclusion. 
 
3.   
The party alleging an abuse of discretion bears the burden of establishing error. 
 
 
Appeal from Wyandotte District Court; JENNIFER L. MYERS, judge. Opinion filed February 11, 
2022. Affirmed. 
 
Joseph A. Desch, of Law Office of Joseph A. Desch, of Topeka, was on the brief for appellant, 
and Marcus Butler, appellant pro se, was on the supplemental brief.  
 
Daniel G. Obermeier, assistant district attorney, Mark A. Dupree Sr., district attorney, and Derek 
Schmidt, attorney general, were on the brief for appellee. 
 
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The opinion of the court was delivered by  
 
WALL, J.:  A jury convicted Marcus Butler of first-degree felony murder and other 
crimes following a January 2013 home invasion in Wyandotte County. Six years later, 
Butler filed a motion for postconviction discovery under State v. Mundo-Parra, 58 Kan. 
App. 2d 17, 462 P.3d 1211, rev. denied 312 Kan. 899 (2020), where a panel of the Court 
of Appeals held that "postconviction discovery should be allowed when the defendant 
shows that it is necessary to protect substantial rights." 58 Kan. App. 2d at 24. The 
district court denied Butler's motion. On appeal from that decision, Butler claims the 
district court abused its discretion in denying his motion for postconviction discovery.  
 
The State argues that there is no statutory basis for postconviction discovery, and 
it urges us to overrule Mundo-Parra. But we need not decide the validity of Mundo-
Parra to resolve the issues in this appeal. Even if we assume, without deciding, that the 
rule announced in Mundo-Parra is sound, Butler has failed to demonstrate that the 
district court's ruling constitutes an abuse of discretion. We therefore affirm the district 
court's order denying Butler's motion for postconviction discovery. 
 
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 
 
Butler was convicted of first-degree felony murder, attempted aggravated robbery, 
and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery after a three-day trial in September 2014. 
The State's case largely relied on the testimony of three men who worked with Butler at a 
Ford dealership in Leavenworth. They testified that Butler had broken into an apartment 
where he had previously bought marijuana, fired his gun after entering the apartment, 
then fled after the planned robbery went awry. One of the coworkers was a coconspirator 
who testified against Butler as a part of a plea agreement with the State. The other two 
witnesses were coworkers who testified that Butler first attempted to recruit them to the 
 
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conspiracy and later threatened to harm them if they cooperated with investigators. The 
facts underlying Butler's convictions are more fully set out in State v. Butler, 307 Kan. 
831, 832-40, 416 P.3d 116 (2018), but those facts are not pertinent to the disposition of 
this appeal. 
 
The district court sentenced Butler to life imprisonment with no chance of parole 
for 20 years for first-degree murder, plus another 64 months' imprisonment for the 
attempted aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery convictions. 
It also imposed lifetime postrelease supervision. We affirmed those convictions on 
appeal, but we vacated the lifetime postrelease portion of Butler's sentence and remanded 
the matter for the district court to impose lifetime parole instead. 307 Kan. at 869. 
 
In August 2020, about six years after his conviction, Butler filed a motion for 
postconviction discovery based on Mundo-Parra, a Court of Appeals decision from 2020. 
In that case, the defendant requested discovery of the State's investigatory file 12 years 
after pleading no contest to kidnapping and rape. The Court of Appeals panel reviewed 
appellate decisions in Kansas and other jurisdictions and held that a defendant is entitled 
to postconviction discovery upon a showing that it is necessary to protect substantial 
rights, even though there is no Kansas statute authorizing such discovery. Mundo-Parra, 
58 Kan. App. 2d at 21-24. 
 
As explained below, Butler's discovery request included phone records and 
witness statements that he claimed were necessary to protect his fundamental right to 
confront witnesses under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 
district court denied Butler's motion, finding that Butler had not met the standard set out 
in Mundo-Parra because he had not shown that the requested discovery might change 
the result of his trial or cast doubt on his conviction.  
 
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Butler appealed the district court's ruling directly to our court. Jurisdiction is 
proper under K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 22-3601(b)(3) (appeal must be taken directly to Supreme 
Court when the maximum sentence of life imprisonment has been imposed). 
 
ANALYSIS 
 
We begin by stating what this opinion does not do. It does not endorse the rule 
established in Mundo-Parra, as Butler requests on appeal. Nor does it abrogate that 
holding, as the State requests. This appeal is not ideally postured to address this larger 
question. Instead, the issues before us may be resolved without embarking upon a 
comprehensive analysis of a defendant's postconviction discovery rights, if any, under 
Kansas law.  
 
Butler has alleged the district court erred by not granting his motion for 
postconviction discovery. But even if we assume, without deciding, that defendants do 
have the right to postconviction discovery as set forth in Mundo-Parra, Butler has not 
established that the district court abused its discretion by denying his motion. We 
therefore affirm the district court's order. 
 
I. 
Standard of Review and Legal Framework 
 
Butler argues on appeal that the district court abused its discretion by denying his 
postconviction discovery motion. See Mundo-Parra, 58 Kan. App. 2d at 25 (reviewing 
a district court's decision to grant or deny postconviction discovery only for abuse of 
discretion); State v. Riis, 39 Kan. App. 2d 273, Syl. ¶ 3, 178 P.3d 684 (2008) (same). 
Our standard of review is well-established:  a district court abuses its discretion if no 
reasonable person could agree with its decision or if its exercise of discretion is founded 
on a factual or legal error. State v. Thomas, 307 Kan. 733, 739, 415 P.3d 430 (2018). 
 
 
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Butler specifically contends that the district court committed a legal error by 
misapplying the rule set forth in Mundo-Parra. A legal error occurs when the court's 
"'discretion is guided by an erroneous legal conclusion.'" State v. McLinn, 307 Kan. 307, 
332, 347-48, 409 P.3d 1 (2018). As the party alleging an abuse of discretion, Butler bears 
the burden of proving error. 307 Kan. at 348. 
 
In Mundo-Parra, the panel identified a two-part test for analyzing postconviction 
discovery requests. Under this test, a defendant must make a good cause showing for the 
requested discovery by:  (1) identifying the specific subject matter for discovery and 
(2) demonstrating why discovery about those matters is necessary to protect substantial 
rights. Mundo-Parra, 58 Kan. App. 2d at 24. The panel further defined a "'substantial 
right'" as "'[a]n essential right that potentially affects the outcome . . . and is capable of 
legal enforcement.'" 58 Kan. App. 2d at 23 (quoting Black's Law Dictionary 1584 [11th 
ed. 2019]).  
 
II.  Butler Fails to Establish That the District Court Misapplied the Rule Set Forth in 
Mundo-Parra  
 
 
Butler's motion clearly identified the subject matter for discovery, satisfying the 
first prong of Mundo-Parra's two-part test. First, Butler requested the cellphone number 
and service-provider information of his coconspirator and one of the coworkers who 
testified against him. Second, he requested the statements made to law enforcement by 
the apartment's residents who witnessed the home invasion. Butler's request was not the 
sort of fishing expedition that Mundo-Parra disallowed. 
 
 
Butler asserted that discovery of those matters was necessary to protect his right 
to impeach the State's witnesses, "a fundamental right, protected by the Confrontation 
Clause of the Sixth Amendment." State v. Brooks, 297 Kan. 945, 952, 305 P.3d 634 
(2013). Butler explained that he wanted the cellphone information so that he could 
 
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subpoena his coconspirator's and coworker's phone records. He claimed those records 
would show that the coworker was an accomplice in the crime, which could have been 
used to impeach the coworker's credibility at trial when he testified that he was not 
involved in the criminal activity. Butler also wanted the witness statements because he 
claimed they would show that Butler had never bought marijuana at the apartment prior 
to the home invasion. He argued this information could have been used to impeach 
Butler's coworkers and coconspirator, who all testified that Butler's motivation for 
robbing the apartment stemmed from his previous drug purchases at that location.  
 
 
But the district court did not find these explanations convincing, and it determined 
that "[t]here is no suggestion in the record or in [Butler's] request for discovery that there 
is any substantive reason that his conviction should be questioned." Specifically, the 
district court rejected the cellphone-records request because Butler possessed and utilized 
similar information at trial. Butler's coconspirator testified that the coworker had helped 
set up the robbery, and Butler's trial counsel argued to the jury that the coworker had 
taken part in the robbery. As a result, the district court found the coworker's credibility 
was impeached at trial and the jury made a credibility determination.  
 
The district court also rejected the witness-statement request because none of 
the apartment's residents testified at trial. Because these witnesses did not testify, the 
impeachment evidence Butler sought through postconviction discovery would not 
have been admissible at trial and served no useful purpose in challenging the verdict. 
Therefore, Butler had not established that "there was a likelihood that the evidence would 
change the result of the trial."  
 
 
Butler argues the district court misapplied Mundo-Parra in its decision. He 
contends that a defendant need only describe the materials for discovery and merely 
articulate how the materials could implicate his substantial rights. Butler contends the 
 
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Mundo-Parra test does not require a defendant to make a showing that the requested 
discovery could affect the outcome of the proceedings. Butler therefore claims the district 
court went further than Mundo-Parra requires or allows and denied Butler's request 
based on an erroneous legal conclusion. 
 
 
We disagree with Butler's rendition of Mundo-Parra. There, the panel's analysis 
confirms that a defendant must do more than just articulate or assert that a substantial 
right is implicated. Instead, Mundo-Parra found that postconviction discovery is allowed 
only when a defendant shows that it is necessary to protect substantial rights. In turn, the 
panel defined substantial rights as those "'potentially affect[ing] the outcome'" of his trial. 
Mundo-Parra, 58 Kan. App. 2d at 23. In fact, in applying its legal test, the panel in 
Mundo-Parra rejected the defendant's discovery request because there was "simply no 
suggestion in our record or in Mundo-Parra's request for discovery that there is any 
substantive reason that either his pleas or his convictions should be questioned in any 
way." 58 Kan. App. 2d at 25. This analysis confirms that the Mundo-Parra panel 
believed that a defendant's right to postconviction discovery is contingent on a showing 
that the requested discovery relates to a factual matter that could affect an essential right 
that potentially affects the outcome of the proceedings. 
 
 
We therefore conclude that the district court's analysis of whether the requested 
materials would have affected the outcome of Butler's trial falls well within the 
framework established in Mundo-Parra. And we agree with the district court that Butler's 
request has not called his convictions into question or otherwise shown that the discovery 
is necessary to protect his substantial rights. As to Butler's request for cellphone records 
to establish his coworker's involvement in the crime, similar information (coconspirator 
testimony implicating the coworker in the crimes) was already used to impeach Butler's 
coworker at trial. As to Butler's request for witness statements to law enforcement for 
purposes of impeaching these witnesses, the apartment residents' statements to police 
 
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could not have been introduced at trial because neither Butler nor the State called them 
as witnesses. See State v. Davis, 255 Kan. 357, 365, 874 P.2d 1156 (1994) (evidence of 
defendant's prior conviction could not be admitted for impeachment purposes where 
defendant did not testify at trial); State v. Hilsman, 333 N.W.2d 411, 413 (N.D. 1983) 
(trial court properly excluded defendant's impeachment evidence challenging credibility 
of potential witness who did not testify at trial); Cf. K.S.A. 60-420 ("for the purpose of 
impairing or supporting the credibility of a witness, any party . . . may examine the 
witness and introduce extrinsic evidence" relevant to the witness' credibility) (emphases 
added). 
 
 
Assuming (without deciding) that Mundo-Parra defines a defendant's legal right to 
postconviction discovery under Kansas law, we hold that the district court did not base its 
decision on an erroneous legal conclusion. Butler has not established that the district 
court abused its discretion. We therefore affirm the district court order denying Butler's 
motion for postconviction discovery. 
 
 
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.