Case Title: State v. Albright

Citation: 

Docket Number: 124319

State: kansas

Court: Kansas Supreme Court

Date: 2022-10-14T00:00:00Z

Document:
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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF KANSAS 
 
 
No. 124,319 
 
STATE OF KANSAS, 
Appellee, 
 
v. 
 
WILLIAM D. ALBRIGHT, 
Appellant. 
 
 
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT 
 
1.  
Where a defendant seeks sentence modification in postconviction proceedings, 
a court lacks jurisdiction and should dismiss the matter unless there is a statute that 
authorizes the specific requested relief. 
 
2. 
 
The rule of law declared in Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99, 133 S. Ct. 2151, 
186 L. Ed. 2d 314 (2013), that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution 
requires any fact that increases a sentence beyond the mandatory minimum to be 
submitted to a jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt, does not trigger K.S.A. 2021 
Supp. 21-6628(c). The Alleyne Court did not find either the term of imprisonment or the 
statute authorizing the term of imprisonment to be unconstitutional. 
 
Appeal from Kingman District Court; FRANCIS E. MEISENHEIMER, judge. Opinion filed October 
14, 2022. Affirmed. 
 
Daniel O. Lynch, of Johnston, Eisenhauer, Eisenhauer & Lynch, LLC, of Pratt, was on the brief 
for appellant.  
 
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Jodi Litfin, assistant solicitor general, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were on the brief for 
appellee. 
 
The opinion of the court was delivered by  
 
WALL, J.:  William Albright appeals the district court's denial of his motion to 
modify his sentence under K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6628(c), which requires a court to 
modify a sentence if certain sentencing provisions are found unconstitutional. Albright, 
who is serving a life sentence for first-degree premeditated murder, argues he is entitled 
to a sentence modification because one of the statutory provisions that the sentencing 
court relied on when imposing his sentence was later found unconstitutional in State v. 
Soto, 299 Kan. 102, 122-24, 322 P.3d 334 (2014). But we considered and rejected the 
same argument in State v. Coleman, 312 Kan. 114, 472 P.3d 85 (2020). And we have 
recently and repeatedly reaffirmed that holding. We therefore affirm the denial of 
Albright's motion. 
 
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 
 
A jury convicted Albright of first-degree premeditated murder in 1999. We set out 
the facts underlying that conviction in State v. Albright, 271 Kan. 546, 547-49, 24 P.3d 
103 (2001). We need not revisit them to resolve the issue before us. 
 
When Albright committed his crime, the penalty for first-degree premeditated 
murder varied depending on whether the sentencing court made certain factual findings. 
If the court found that one or more statutory aggravating circumstances were present and 
were not outweighed by mitigating circumstances, it had to impose a life sentence 
without the possibility of parole for 40 years (commonly called a hard 40 sentence). See 
K.S.A. 21-4635(a)-(c) (Furse 1995); K.S.A. 21-4636 (Furse 1995) (providing aggravating 
 
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circumstances); K.S.A. 21-4637 (Furse 1995) (providing nonexhaustive list of mitigating 
factors). Without that finding, the penalty was still life imprisonment, but the defendant 
would be eligible for parole after 25 years. See K.S.A. 1998 Supp. 22-3717(b)(1). 
 
Albright received a hard 40 sentence after the sentencing court found by a 
preponderance of the evidence that he had committed the murder for monetary gain—
an aggravating factor under K.S.A. 21-4636(c) (Furse 1995). We affirmed Albright's 
conviction and sentence. 271 Kan. at 560.  
 
Several years later, Albright secured a second trial after a panel of the Court of 
Appeals held that his defense attorney's deficient representation had deprived him of a 
fair trial. See State v. Albright, No. 90,216, 2004 WL 1041350, at *9 (Kan. App. 2004) 
(unpublished opinion). At his retrial in 2005, Albright was again convicted of 
premeditated first-degree murder. 
 
After that verdict but before sentencing, Albright filed a posttrial motion arguing 
that the hard 40 sentencing scheme violated a defendant's Sixth Amendment jury-trial 
right as stated in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S. Ct. 2348, 147 L. Ed. 2d 
435 (2000). Apprendi held that any fact (other than the existence of a prior conviction) 
that increases the statutory maximum penalty must be found by a jury beyond a 
reasonable doubt. 530 U.S. at 490. Albright claimed that K.S.A. 1999 Supp. 21-4635 
violated Apprendi because it allowed a sentencing court to extend the time until parole 
eligibility from 25 years to 40 years based on facts that the judge, not the jury, had found. 
The sentencing court denied that motion and again imposed a hard 40 life sentence after 
finding that Albright had committed the murder for monetary gain.  
 
 
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On appeal, we rejected Albright's Apprendi argument and affirmed his conviction 
and sentence, reasoning that Apprendi's holding expressly applied to facts that raise the 
statutory maximum penalty, not facts that raise the statutory minimum penalty. See State 
v. Albright, 283 Kan. 418, 423-25, 153 P.3d 497 (2007). Albright's sentence became final 
in April 2007 after we issued the mandate in that case.  
 
Albright's argument would prove prescient because six years later, in Alleyne, the 
United States Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment required any fact increasing 
a mandatory minimum sentence also be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. 
Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99, 107-08, 133 S. Ct. 2151, 186 L. Ed. 2d 314 (2013). 
The following year, we applied Alleyne to strike down K.S.A. 1999 Supp. 21-4635 
because the statute permitted a judge to find by a preponderance of the evidence the 
existence of one or more aggravating factors necessary to impose an increased mandatory 
minimum sentence, rather than requiring a jury to find the existence of the aggravating 
factors beyond a reasonable doubt. Soto, 299 Kan. 102, Syl. ¶ 9. 
 
Albright seized on our decision in Soto. In 2016, he filed a pro se motion for 
resentencing. In that motion, Albright asserted that his sentence was unconstitutional 
under Alleyne because it resulted from judicial fact-finding. State v. Albright, 307 Kan. 
365, 366-67, 409 P.3d 34 (2018). On appeal from the district court's denial of Albright's 
motion, we construed his claim both as a motion under K.S.A. 22-3504 to correct an 
illegal sentence and a motion under K.S.A. 60-1507 to collaterally attack his sentence. 
See State v. Redding, 310 Kan. 15, 18, 444 P.3d 989 (2019) (courts should liberally 
construe pro se postconviction motions to "consider the relief requested, rather than a 
formulaic adherence to pleading requirements"). 
 
We held that neither statute afforded Albright an avenue for relief. Albright, 307 
Kan. at 368-69. A motion under K.S.A. 60-1507 that is filed more than one year after a 
sentence has become final may be considered only to "prevent a manifest injustice." 
 
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K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 60-1507(f)(2). Albright's motion was filed several years after his 
sentence became final, and because we had recently held that the rule of law declared in 
Alleyne could not provide the basis for a manifest-injustice finding, we concluded that 
Albright was entitled to no relief under that statute. Albright, 307 Kan. at 368 (citing 
Kirtdoll v. State, 306 Kan. 335, 341, 393 P.3d 1053 [2017]). And because "'the definition 
of an illegal sentence does not include a claim that the sentence violates a constitutional 
provision,'" we determined that Albright could not "'use a motion to correct an illegal 
sentence under K.S.A. 22-3504 to seek relief based on the constitutional holding in 
Alleyne.'" 307 Kan. at 368 (quoting State v. Brown, 306 Kan. 330, 332, 393 P.3d 1049 
[2017]). Thus, we affirmed the district court's denial of Albright's motion. 307 Kan. at 
368-69. 
 
In May 2020, Albright filed another pro se motion, which is the subject of this 
appeal. This time, Albright asserted that he was entitled to a sentence modification under 
K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6628(c). That statute is a fail-safe provision that requires a court to 
modify a sentence when the term of imprisonment or the statute authorizing the term of 
imprisonment are found to be unconstitutional. Citing our holding in his previous appeal, 
Albright argued that K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6628(c) was the "procedural vehicle" for his 
claim. He emphasized that his motion "should not be construed as either a motion to 
correct an illegal sentence or a K.S.A. 60-1507 motion." 
 
While Albright's motion was pending in the district court, we issued our opinion in 
Coleman. There, we held that K.S.A. 2019 Supp. 21-6628 does not provide a statutory 
vehicle for a sentence modification based on a defendant's claim that a hard 40 sentence 
violates the Sixth Amendment as interpreted in Alleyne. Coleman, 312 Kan. at 119-20, 
123-24. The State filed a supplemental memorandum arguing that Coleman controlled 
Albright's claim. The district court agreed and denied Albright's motion.  
 
Albright now appeals the district court's decision to our court.  
 
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ANALYSIS 
 
Where a defendant seeks sentence modification in postconviction proceedings, a 
court lacks jurisdiction and should dismiss the matter unless there is a statute that 
"authoriz[es] the specific requested relief." 312 Kan. at 120-21. Whether such a statutory 
vehicle exists presents a question of law that we review de novo, meaning that we give no 
deference to the district court's conclusions. See 312 Kan. at 117, 120-21. 
 
Albright points solely to K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6628(c) as the necessary statutory 
vehicle authorizing his request for a sentencing modification. In the past, we have also 
construed similar motions as motions under K.S.A. 22-3504 to correct an illegal sentence 
or motions under K.S.A. 60-1507 collaterally attacking a sentence. See, e.g., State v. 
Appleby, 313 Kan. 352, 356, 485 P.3d 1148 (2021); Coleman, 312 Kan. at 121-24. But 
such a construction is not appropriate here. In Albright's last appeal, we held that the 
same substantive claim Albright raises in this appeal cannot support a motion under 
either of those statutes. Albright, 307 Kan. at 368-69. And although "pro se 
postconviction pleadings must be analyzed by their content, not necessarily by their 
label," Albright specifically requested that the court not construe his motion under K.S.A. 
22-3504 or K.S.A. 60-1507. Coleman, 312 Kan. at 120. Given that context, we will focus 
only on Albright's claim that he is entitled to relief under K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6628(c). 
 
Under that statute, a court must modify a defendant's sentence if that person's 
"mandatory term of imprisonment or any provision of chapter 341 of the 1994 Session 
Laws of Kansas authorizing such mandatory term is held to be unconstitutional." K.S.A. 
2021 Supp. 21-6628(c). Albright contends that K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6628(c) applies to 
him because K.S.A. 21-4635, the statute under which the sentencing court found the  
 
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existence of the aggravating factor necessary to impose his hard 40 sentence, was a 
provision of chapter 341 of the 1994 session laws and was found unconstitutional under 
Alleyne and Soto. See L. 1994, ch. 341, § 6.  
 
But as Albright recognizes, this court considered and rejected that argument in 
Coleman. There, we held that the "change in law effected in Alleyne . . . does not trigger 
K.S.A. 2019 Supp. 21-6628(c)" because the "Alleyne Court did not find either the term of 
imprisonment or the statute authorizing the term of imprisonment to be unconstitutional." 
312 Kan. 114, Syl. ¶ 5. Given that holding, Albright argues not that the district court 
erred but that this court should overrule Coleman.  
 
We decline Albright's invitation to revisit our decision in that case. As we 
recognized earlier this year, we have "recently and repeatedly reaffirmed Coleman." 
State v. Bedford, 314 Kan. 596, 599, 502 P.3d 107 (2022). Like the defendant in Bedford, 
Albright "only reprises the failed arguments advanced" in those recent appeals. 314 Kan. 
at 599. Thus, we hold the district court correctly denied Albright's motion.  
 
The judgment of the district court denying Albright's motion is affirmed.