Title: State v. Collier

State: kansas

Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court

Document:

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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF KANSAS 
 
No. 124,047 
 
STATE OF KANSAS, 
Appellee, 
 
v. 
 
JEFFREY SCOTT COLLIER, 
Appellant. 
 
 
 
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT 
 
Under K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b), when a defendant is sentenced for both off-
grid and on-grid crimes, the sentencing court only has authority to impose the supervision 
period associated with the off-grid crime. 
 
Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; KEVIN J. O'CONNOR, judge. Opinion filed July 15, 2022. 
Affirmed. 
 
Kristen B. Patty, of Wichita, was on the brief for appellant.  
 
Julie A. Koon, assistant district attorney, Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, 
attorney general, were on the brief for appellee. 
 
The opinion of the court was delivered by 
 
BILES, J.:  Jeffrey Scott Collier appeals from a district court's summary denial of 
his second pro se motion to correct an illegal sentence imposed for offenses committed in 
1993. The sentencing court ordered a hard 15 life sentence with lifetime parole for a first-
degree murder conviction and a consecutive 97-month prison term for an aggravated 
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robbery conviction. Collier claims the applicable law required 24 months of postrelease 
supervision because the aggravated robbery should have been designated as the primary 
crime for sentencing purposes. The State agrees with him. But we hold the district court 
correctly sentenced Collier and affirm the district court's denial of his motion. 
 
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 
 
The details of Collier's crimes are not relevant to this postrelease supervision issue 
but can be found in State v. Collier, 259 Kan. 346, 348-49, 913 P.2d 597 (1996) (Collier 
I). Our focus here concerns his resentencing after a string of appeals and remands. See 
State v. Collier, 263 Kan. 629, 637, 952 P.2d 1326 (1998) (Collier II). He did not appeal 
that resentencing at the time. 
 
But several years later, Collier filed what became his first pro se motion to correct 
an illegal sentence. He claimed the sentencing court should have classified his prior 
convictions as nonperson offenses when imposing his prison term for the aggravated 
robbery. The district court summarily denied that motion and this court affirmed. See 
State v. Collier, 306 Kan. 521, 394 P.3d 1164 (2017) (Collier III). In 2020, he filed his 
second pro se motion, which appears to seek correction of the supervision term, which he 
asserts is required for the aggravated robbery sentence. That is the basis for this appeal. 
 
His second motion gave few specifics. But it did recite nine "Declarations" about 
his case's procedural history from which an outline for a legal claim emerges. Important 
here, the fourth and fifth declarations discussed the presumptive guideline sentence for 
aggravated robbery as "a prison term of 92 to 103 months and postrelease supervision of 
24 months" and the fact the district court "did not establish a postrelease supervision 
duration" for that conviction. His ninth declaration stated:  "The initial sentence imposed 
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for . . . Aggravated Robbery . . . is still 97 months prison term with no postrelease 
supervision imposed." 
 
Admittedly, his statements are challenging to decipher with precision. But when 
the fourth, fifth, and ninth declarations are read together, it is reasonable to infer Collier 
attacks the lifetime parole ordered by claiming the statute requires postrelease 
supervision. See K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 22-3504(a), (c)(1) (permitting correction at any time 
when a sentence is "ambiguous with respect to the time and manner in which it is to be 
served"). The district court, however, focused only on the 97-month prison term assigned 
to the aggravated robbery conviction to summarily deny the motion as successive, so it 
did not squarely address Collier's likely concern about postrelease supervision. 
 
We view Collier's appeal as arguing the applicable law designates his aggravated 
robbery conviction as the "primary crime" for sentencing purposes and required the 
district court to impose 24 months of postrelease supervision. And he suggests the 
lifetime parole ordered at his 1998 resentencing on the murder conviction is illegal 
because "the only action the trial court was permitted to take to comply with the 
[m]andate" was reducing the mandatory minimum prison time attached to the life 
sentence. 
 
Jurisdiction is proper. See K.S.A. 60-2101(b) (Supreme Court jurisdiction over 
direct appeals governed by K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 22-3601); K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 22-
3601(b)(3)-(4) (life sentence and off-grid crime cases permitted to be directly taken to 
Supreme Court). 
 
 
 
 
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DISCUSSION 
 
Under K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 22-3504(a), a court may correct an illegal sentence at 
any time while that sentence is being served. A sentence is illegal when it is "[i]mposed 
by a court without jurisdiction; . . . does not conform to the applicable statutory 
provision, either in character or punishment; or . . . is ambiguous with respect to the time 
and manner in which it is to be served at the time it is pronounced." K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 
22-3504(c)(1). 
 
An appellate court reviews a district court's summary denial of a motion to correct 
an illegal sentence de novo because it has the same access to the motion, records, and 
files as the district court. A sentence's legality is a question of law subject to unlimited 
review. State v. Jackson, 314 Kan. 178, 179-80, 496 P.3d 533 (2021); see also State v. 
Ross, 295 Kan. 1126, Syl. ¶ 2, 289 P.3d 76 (2012) ("Interpretation of a statute raises a 
question of law over which an appellate court has unlimited review."). 
 
As mentioned, Collier and the State agree the aggravated robbery sentence is 
illegal. They believe the applicable law required the district court to impose a postrelease 
supervision term by designating the aggravated robbery as the primary crime. They rely 
on K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b), which was in effect at the time of Collier's sentencing 
and addressed situations when a sentencing judge imposes multiple sentences 
consecutively. Subsection (b)(1) provided:  "[T]he consecutive sentences shall consist of 
an imprisonment term and a supervision term. The postrelease supervision term will be 
based on the primary crime." And subsection (b)(2) stated, "An off-grid crime shall not be 
used as the primary crime in determining the base sentence when imposing multiple 
sentences." (Emphasis added.) And subsection (b)(7) provided:  "If the sentence for the 
consecutive sentences is a prison term, the postrelease supervision term is a term of 
postrelease supervision as established for the primary crime." In their view, Collier's off-
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grid crime of first-degree murder could not be used as the primary crime when deciding 
the supervision period because of the italicized text quoted above. 
 
But we read the applicable provisions differently. K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b) 
declares:  
 
"In cases where consecutive sentences may be imposed by the sentencing judge, the 
following shall apply: 
 
(1) When the sentencing judge imposes multiple sentences consecutively, the 
consecutive sentences shall consist of an imprisonment term and a supervision term. The 
postrelease supervision term will be based on the primary crime. 
 
(2) The sentencing judge must establish a base sentence for the primary crime. 
The primary crime is the crime with the highest crime severity ranking. An off-grid crime 
shall not be used as the primary crime in determining the base sentence when imposing 
multiple sentences. If sentences for off-grid and on-grid convictions are ordered to run 
consecutively, the offender shall not begin to serve the on-grid sentence until paroled 
from the off-grid sentence. . . .  
 
(3) The base sentence is set using the total criminal history score assigned. 
 
. . . . 
 
(7) If the sentence for the consecutive sentences is a prison term, the postrelease 
supervision term is a term of postrelease supervision as established for the primary 
crime." 
 
The use of the term "postrelease supervision" in subsections (b)(1) and (b)(7) is 
not obvious from its plain language, but Ross resolved that ambiguity. The Ross court 
held:   
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"This section is nonsensical if the phrase 'postrelease supervision term' in K.S.A. 21-
4720(b)(2) refers to a period of postrelease supervision under K.S.A. 2008 Supp. 22-
3717(d) because . . . off-grid crimes are followed by parole under K.S.A. 2008 Supp. 22-
3717(b). Accordingly, the phrase, 'postrelease supervision term' in K.S.A. 21-4720(b)(2) 
must refer more generally to the supervision period that follows the defendant's release 
from prison, regardless if that is termed 'parole' or 'postrelease.'" 295 Kan. at 1133. 
 
Ross dealt with K.S.A. 21-4720(b)(2), which has slightly different language than 
K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(2), but the use of "postrelease supervision" in Collier's 
case does not differ from that in Ross. And since the statutory meaning of "postrelease 
supervision" in K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(1) and (b)(7) is the same as K.S.A. 21-
4720(b)(2), the Ross holding makes the remaining statutory language clear. In other 
words, under subsection (b)(1), "consecutive sentences shall consist of an imprisonment 
term and a supervision term. The . . . supervision term will be based on the primary 
crime." Subsection (b)(2) states "[t]he primary crime is the crime with the highest crime 
severity ranking," which for the narrow purpose of determining the correct supervision 
term in Collier's case is the first-degree murder, an off-grid crime. This makes his 
supervision term lifetime parole. See K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 22-3717(b). 
 
The parties rely on K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(2) to press their point in favor 
of an illegal sentence, but they do not consider the modifier "in determining the base 
sentence when imposing multiple sentences." (Emphasis added.) K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-
4720(b)(2). And when the relevant portion of the statute is read as a whole, it means a 
defendant's base sentence has nothing to do with the supervision term in cases involving 
multiple convictions. See K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(3) ("The base sentence is set 
using the total criminal history score assigned."). 
 
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We also note the Legislature replaced the term "primary crime" with "longest 
supervision term imposed for any of the crimes" in subsection (b)(1) and added the 
language of "the postrelease supervision term will be based on the off-grid crime" in 
subsection (b)(2) in 1994. L. 1994, ch. 291, § 59; K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6819 (recodified; 
same). But the 1994 amendments do not change the statute's substance. Indeed, they 
reinforce the 1993 legislation's meaning as we describe it. 
 
Here, Collier's primary crime for the purpose of K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(1) 
as we construe it is first-degree murder. And under subsection (b)(2), his off-grid crime 
can be used when deciding the supervision term—but not the base sentence. The district 
court correctly sentenced Collier under the applicable law to a hard 15 life imprisonment 
with lifetime parole for the first-degree murder conviction and a consecutive 97-month 
imprisonment with no postrelease supervision term for the aggravated robbery 
conviction. Like in Ross, when Collier was sentenced for both off-grid and on-grid 
crimes, the sentencing court only had authority to impose the supervision period 
associated with the off-grid crime.  
 
Collier also implies the so-called mandate rule prevented the resentencing court 
from relying on K.S.A. 1994 Supp. 21-4720(b)(2) ("[T]he postrelease supervision term 
will be based on the off-grid crime.") and from imposing parole when it modified the 
mandatory minimum for the life sentence in 1998. He also suggests the parole to be 
ordered under the amendments to K.S.A. 21-4720 would be a prohibited ex post facto 
application of the law. We disagree. 
 
Lifetime parole was the appropriate supervision period under the applicable 1993 
statute, so the resentencing court was within its statutory authority to correct the 
supervision term as required. See State v. Clark, 313 Kan. 556, 576, 486 P.3d 591 (2021) 
(holding trial court that imposed illegal sentence by strictly complying with Court of 
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Appeals mandate committed a technical error that required resentencing to correct 
illegality); State v. Bailey, 313 Kan. 895, Syl., 491 P.3d 1256 (2021) ("A litigant waives 
or abandons an issue by not supporting an argument with pertinent authority or 
explaining why the argument is sound despite a lack of pertinent authority."). Moreover, 
even if the district court were required to impose a postrelease supervision period to 
follow Collier's release from the on-grid crime, as the dissent argues it should, that would 
not exempt Collier from the lifetime parole requirement. The plain language of K.S.A. 
1993 Supp. 22-3717 at the time of Collier's crimes mandated that the end of his prison 
term for the off-grid conviction, if any, must be followed by lifetime parole. See State v. 
Claiborne, 315 Kan. 399, 400, 508 P.3d 1286 (2022) ("'In Kansas, off-grid crimes are not 
associated with periods of postrelease supervision but instead are followed by life 
parole.'").  
 
Turning to that argument, the dissent argues the crime with "the highest crime 
severity ranking" is not necessarily "the crime we deem most odious or that carries the 
longest sentence." Slip op. at 10 (Rosen, J., dissenting). The dissent relies on State v. 
Woodard, 294 Kan. 717, 280 P.3d 203 (2012), but that reliance is misplaced. In 
Woodard, the defendant appealed from three life sentences with a mandatory minimum 
term of 25 years following his guilty plea to three counts of aggravated indecent liberties 
with a child. He claimed these sentences constituted cruel and unusual punishment and he 
compared punishment for Jessica's Law violations with the penalties for more serious 
crimes in Kansas like murder, arguing his crimes were less serious than homicide but was 
punished more severely. The Woodard court rejected his argument and held: 
 
"This argument suffers from several flaws. In the first place, it assumes that 
murderers necessarily receive more lenient sentences in Kansas than violators of Jessica's 
Law. This is not the case. In fact, the Kansas Criminal Code sets out a list of 
transgressions that constitute capital murder, which is an off-grid offense. Capital murder 
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is subject to punishment by death. The penalty for homicide in Kansas may thus be much 
more severe than the penalties under Jessica's Law. The fact that the penalty for certain 
categories of homicide may be less severe than the penalties for other, nonhomicide 
crimes does not automatically render the penalties for the nonhomicide crimes 
unconstitutional. There is no strict linear order of criminal activity that ranks all 
homicides as the most serious crimes and all nonhomicide crimes as less serious, with the 
corresponding penalties necessarily ranking in diminishing durations of imprisonment. 
[Citations omitted.]" (Emphasis added.) 294 Kan. at 723. 
 
Collier's argument focuses only on the statute setting postrelease supervision, not 
whether a punishment is cruel and unusual and therefore constitutionally invalid. 
Similarly, the dissent's reference to State v. Walker, 283 Kan. 587, 153 P.3d 1257 (2007), 
misses the point. The primary crime discussed in Walker was used for the purposes of 
calculating the base sentence. See 283 Kan. at 614 ("[H]e contends that the sentencing 
court erred in ranking the primary crime for purposes of calculating the base sentence."). 
But postrelease supervision was not an issue in Walker.  
 
The dissent's confusion seems to come from a post-1993 understanding of what 
has constituted "the primary crime," a term which has been used exclusively to calculate 
a base sentence since 1994. But Collier's case concerns the statute's 1993 version. And 
K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b) uses the term "primary crime" in two ways. First, the 
primary crime as used in one sense determines the postrelease supervision term. See 
K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(1) ("When the sentencing judge imposes multiple 
sentences consecutively, the consecutive sentences shall consist of an imprisonment term 
and a supervision term. The postrelease supervision term will be based on the primary 
crime."). Second, the "primary crime" used in the other sense determines the base 
sentence. K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(2) ("An off-grid crime shall not be used as the 
primary crime in determining the base sentence when imposing multiple sentences."). In 
1994, the Legislature replaced the term "primary crime" as used in the first sense in 
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subsection (b)(1) with the phrase "longest supervision term imposed for any of the 
crimes." As a result, only the second sense of primary crime has been used since then, in 
calculating the base sentence. Although the Legislature's use of a single term in two 
different senses in the 1993 statute is unusual, the parole requirement for off-grid crimes 
contained in K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 22-3717 demonstrates that the 1994 amendment clarified 
the law, rather than changed it. 
 
Affirmed. 
 
* * * 
 
ROSEN, J., dissenting:  My reading of K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b) and the 
earlier decisions of this court leads me to disagree with the majority's analysis and 
conclusion. I would agree with the argument the parties jointly presented to this court and 
reverse the district court. 
 
The 1993 version of the statute stated that postrelease supervision was to be 
"based on the primary crime." K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(1). The statute went on to 
state that the primary crime was "the crime with the highest crime severity ranking" and 
an off-grid crime was "not [to] be used as the primary crime in determining the base 
sentence when imposing multiple sentences." K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b)(2). 
 
It is seductive to think that the crime with "the highest crime severity ranking" 
must be the crime we deem most odious or that carries the longest sentence. But this is a 
subjective assessment that this court has consistently rejected. 
  
In State v. Woodard, 294 Kan. 717, 723, 280 P.3d 203 (2012), we held:  "There is 
no strict linear order of criminal activity that ranks all homicides as the most serious 
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crimes and all nonhomicide crimes as less serious, with the corresponding penalties 
necessarily ranking in diminishing durations of imprisonment." We have consistently 
followed this holding. See, e.g., State v. Spear, 297 Kan. 780, 801-02, 304 P.3d 1246 
(2013); State v. Seward, 296 Kan. 979, 987, 297 P.3d 272 (2013); State v. Britt, 295 Kan. 
1018, 1034, 287 P.3d 905 (2012). That this principle was followed in cases relating to 
cruel and unusual punishment does not diminish the relevance of that principle to this 
case:  we do not give a statutory construction that benefits the prosecution in one 
situation and a contrary construction so that it will also benefit the prosecution in a 
different situation.  
 
How was the district court to sentence Collier in 1993? The off-grid crime had no 
severity ranking; by what rationale could the court have found it to be the "crime with the 
highest crime severity ranking"? See K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4702(b)(2). There is simply 
no basis for determining that murder was the crime with the "highest crime severity 
ranking" as of 1993. It had no severity ranking. As recently as two years ago, we 
explained that the severity level of a crime is determined by determining the "intersection 
of the crime severity ranking of a current crime of conviction and an offender's criminal 
history classification." State v. Fowler, 311 Kan. 136, 140, 457 P.3d 927 (2020). Where 
there is no grid, there is no corresponding means of calculating the severity ranking. This 
is consistent with our statement in State v. Torres, No. 99,308, 2009 WL 862166, at *2 
(Kan. 2009) (unpublished opinion), that the "primary crime" means "the on-grid crime 
with the highest severity level."   
 
In State v. Walker, 283 Kan. 587, 153 P.3d 1257 (2007), this court expressly 
agreed with my understanding of the statute and disagreed with the conclusion the court 
is reaching today. In Walker, this court noted that felony murder was an off-grid crime. 
The court went on to hold that felony murder could not be the "primary crime" under 
K.S.A. 2006 Supp. 21-4720(b)(2) because it was an off-grid crime. 283 Kan. at 615. 
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The majority in the present case attempts to distinguish Walker, but the asserted 
distinction simply creates two different rules for interpreting the same language in the 
same statute. I contend that Walker was correctly decided and should remain controlling 
law. 
 
In 1994, our Legislature amended K.S.A. 21-4720(b) to add language to sections 
(1) and (2). This new language stated that postrelease supervision would be for the 
longest supervision term for "any of the crimes" of conviction, and "the postrelease 
supervision term will be based on the off-grid crime." This language is now found in 
K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6819(b)(1) and (2). 
 
The majority contends the 1994 amendment simply "clarified" and "reinforce[d]" 
the law already in effect. Slip op. at 7, 10. The amendment was not "clarifying" or 
"reinforcing" language; it was language intended to change the peculiar, and probably 
unintended, results flowing from the earlier language. The Legislature does not clarify 
and reinforce statutes that already have an uncontested meaning. If the 1994 amendment 
is to be considered simply a clarification of an ambiguity, then this court should apply the 
rule of lenity, which requires courts to construe ambiguous statutes in favor of the 
accused. See, e.g., State v. Gensler, 308 Kan. 674, 680, 423 P.3d 488 (2018). If the 1993 
version of the statute was ambiguous (which I don't think it was), then Collier should 
benefit from the reading most favorable to him. 
 
 
I recognize that the language of K.S.A. 1993 Supp. 21-4720(b) and this court's 
consequent reading of that plain language in Walker can produce results that the 
Legislature did not contemplate and that appear contrary to our general sense of how 
criminal behavior should be penalized and supervised. It was the role of the Legislature—
not of this court in 2022—to amend that language, and that is precisely what the 
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Legislature did in 1994. Collier was sentenced for crimes committed under the earlier 
version of the statute, and this court should recognize the sentence was illegal and should 
remand the case for correction.  
 
STANDRIDGE, J., joins the foregoing dissenting opinion.