Title: State v. Turner
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 125505, 125,506, 125,507
State: Kansas
Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court
Date: March 10, 2023

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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF KANSAS 
 
Nos. 125,505 
        125,506 
        125,507 
 
STATE OF KANSAS, 
Appellee, 
 
v. 
 
NATHANIEL TURNER III, 
Appellant. 
 
 
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT 
 
 
Appeal from Wyandotte District Court; WESLEY K. GRIFFIN, judge. Opinion filed March 10, 
2023. Affirmed.  
 
Joseph A. Desch, of Law Office of Joseph A. Desch, of Topeka, was on the brief for appellant.  
 
Kayla Roehler, deputy district attorney, Mark A. Dupree Sr., district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, 
attorney general, were on the brief for appellee. 
 
The opinion of the court was delivered by 
 
STANDRIDGE, J.:  In 1992, Nathaniel Turner III pled no contest to multiple felonies 
in three separate cases. He currently is serving an aggregated sentence of 80 years to life 
in prison. In the years following his convictions, Turner unsuccessfully challenged his 
sentence in various ways. In his most recent challenge, Turner moved for an order nunc 
pro tunc to correct his sentencing journal entries, claiming they are at odds with the actual 
sentence he is serving. He argued the journal entries should be amended to reflect either 
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(1) the individual sentences imposed by the district court or (2) an aggregated sentence 
imposed by the court rather than the Kansas Department of Corrections (KDOC). After 
the district court denied Turner's motion, he directly appealed to this court.  
 
Nunc pro tunc orders are used to correct arithmetic or clerical errors. The Court of 
Appeals previously affirmed the KDOC's calculation of Turner's 80-years-to-life 
aggregated sentence. Since the KDOC's calculation of his aggregate sentence reflects the 
sentence imposed by the district court, there is no arithmetic or clerical error to correct. 
Accordingly, we affirm. 
 
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 
 
In September 1992, the district court sentenced Turner for eight felony convictions 
in three cases. In case 92 CR 11, the district court imposed concurrent sentences of 5 to 
20 years for one count of robbery and one count of aggravated burglary. In case 92 CR 
16, the court imposed four consecutive sentences of 15 years to life for one count of rape, 
one count of aggravated criminal sodomy, and two counts of aggravated robbery. In case 
92 CR 90, the court imposed a sentence of 5 to 20 years for one count of robbery to run 
concurrent with a sentence of 15 years to life for one count of aggravated robbery. The 
court ordered Turner to serve the sentences in each case consecutively. We affirmed 
Turner's sentences in State v. Turner, No. 69,638, unpublished opinion filed April 15, 
1994.  
 
In 2011, Turner petitioned for habeas corpus relief under K.S.A. 60-1501. He 
claimed the KDOC impermissibly aggregated his sentences to a controlling term of 80 
years to life with parole eligibility possible after 40 years subject to the amount of good 
time credits earned. Turner argued he was entitled to a conditional release date. The 
district court denied Turner's petition, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. See Turner v. 
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McKune, No. 108,428, 2013 WL 2936140, at *1, 4 (Kan. App. 2013) (unpublished 
opinion).  
 
In 2016, Turner filed a second K.S.A. 60-1501 petition, alleging he was denied 
due process when the KDOC deprived him of 10 years' presumed earned good time credit 
in calculating his conditional release date for his sentence in case 92 CR 11. After the 
district court dismissed the petition, the Court of Appeals affirmed. See Turner v. State, 
No. 118,932, 2019 WL 325218, at *1, 3 (Kan. App. 2019) (unpublished opinion). Turner 
unsuccessfully sought relief on these same grounds in the Kansas federal district court. 
See Turner v. Peterson, No. 20-3095-SAC, 2021 WL 699841, at *1-2 (D. Kan. 2021).  
 
In 2021, Turner filed the motion that is the subject of the present appeal, titled 
"Request for Nunc Pro Tunc Order to Effectuate Compliance With K.S.A. 22-3426." In 
the motion, filed in all three cases, Turner claimed his aggregated sentence of 80 years to 
life differed from the sentence imposed by the district court. As a result, Turner argued 
the sentencing journal entries did not comply with K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 22-3426 because 
the KDOC, rather than the court, aggregated his sentence. Turner asked the district court 
to amend the sentencing journal entries to explicitly reflect the actual sentence imposed.  
 
The district court denied Turner's request for amendment, holding that the 
sentences reflected in the journal entries were correct and noting the previous decisions 
that upheld the KDOC's aggregation of Turner's sentence. The court later denied Turner's 
motion to alter or amend its ruling.  
 
Turner directly appealed the district court's decision in each case to this court. We 
granted Turner's motion to consolidate the cases for appeal.  
 
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Jurisdiction is proper. See K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3601(b)(3) (direct appeals to 
Supreme Court allowed for life sentence crimes); K.S.A. 60-2101(b) (Supreme Court 
jurisdiction over direct appeals governed by K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3601). 
 
ANALYSIS 
 
Turner argues the district court erred in denying his motion to amend the 
sentencing journal entries. Turner claims, as he did below, that the KDOC's aggregation 
of his sentences is at odds with the sentences imposed by the district court. As a result, he 
asks for a nunc pro tunc order amending the journal entries to accurately reflect the 
sentence he is serving.  
 
A journal entry of judgment may be corrected at any time by a nunc pro tunc 
order, which is appropriate for correcting arithmetic or clerical errors arising from 
oversight or omission. See K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3504(b); State v. Potts, 304 Kan. 687, 
708, 374 P.3d 639 (2016). Whether a nunc pro tunc order is required here necessarily 
involves the interpretation of Kansas statutes and administrative regulations. Such 
interpretation presents a question of law over which appellate courts have unlimited 
review. State v. Stoll, 312 Kan. 726, 736, 480 P.3d 158 (2021). 
 
 
We begin with a review of the relevant Kansas statutes and administrative 
regulations. At Turner's sentencing, the district court imposed consecutive indeterminate 
sentences in each of his three cases. K.S.A. 1991 Supp. 21-4608(6), the statute in effect at 
the time of Turner's crimes, sets forth the rules for calculating the time to be served on 
concurrent and consecutive sentences. Applicable here, K.S.A. 1991 Supp. 21-4608(6)(c) 
provides for the method of calculating the time to be served on multiple consecutive 
indeterminate sentences: 
 
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"When indeterminate terms imposed on the same date are to be served consecutively, the 
minimum terms are added to arrive at an aggregate minimum to be served equal to the 
sum of all minimum terms and the maximum terms are added to arrive at an aggregate 
maximum equal to the sum of all maximum terms." 
 
The KDOC regulations provide additional guidance on this sentence computation, 
defining "'[c]onsecutive sentence'" as "a series of two or more sentences imposed by the 
court in which the minimum terms and the maximum terms, respectively, are to be 
aggregated." K.A.R. 44-6-101(n) (1992). The KDOC regulations define "'[a]ggregated 
controlling sentence'" as  
 
"a controlling sentence composed of two or more sentences. An aggregated controlling 
sentence has a minimum term consisting of the sum of the minimum terms and a 
maximum term consisting of the sum of the maximum terms." K.A.R. 44-6-101(j) 
(1992). 
 
 
The district court sentenced Turner to the following controlling consecutive 
sentences:  (1) 5 to 20 years in case 92 CR 11, (2) four consecutive terms of 15 years to 
life in case 92 CR 16, and (3) 15 years to life in case 92 CR 90. The KDOC then applied 
the law cited above to calculate Turner's aggregated controlling sentence by adding the 
sum of each minimum term (5+15+15+15+15+15) to arrive at the aggregate minimum 
and adding the sum of each maximum term (20 years + 5 life terms) to arrive at the 
aggregate maximum, a sum of 80 years to life. See K.A.R. 44-6-106(a) (providing KDOC 
with authority to interpret court documents "to the extent necessary to execute the 
sentence and commitment"). 
 
Turner argues that by calculating his sentence in this way, the KDOC improperly 
modified his sentence by combining the individual sentences into one, thus creating a 
higher minimum term for each. Turner suggests that the resulting aggregate sentence 
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violates K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3426(a), which he claims "requires particularity in any 
given sentence in a single case, and in essence, creates a finality to that sentence." Noting 
he already has served the minimum terms of some of his individual sentences, as well as 
the maximum 20-year sentence in case 92 CR 11, Turner complains that the KDOC's 
aggregation under K.S.A. 1991 Supp. 21-4608(6)(c) "delegitimizes the integrity of the 
discrete sentence for each case" because it means that no individual sentence is 
considered served until all three are served. Given this alleged conflict between the 
sentence imposed by the district court and the KDOC's aggregation of that sentence, 
Turner seeks clarification of the actual sentence he is serving. To that end, he requests 
amendment of the sentencing journal entries to reflect the discrete nature of each 
sentence or, in the alternative, a court-ordered aggregation of his sentences.  
 
Turner's argument, while framed as a request for amendment of the journal entries 
by nunc pro tunc order, is merely another attempt to challenge the legality of his 
sentence. The Court of Appeals previously affirmed the KDOC's calculation of Turner's 
80-years-to-life aggregated sentence. See Turner, 2013 WL 2936140, at *1, 3-4 (finding 
Turner's controlling sentence was 80 years to life and holding completion of first 
sentence did not entitle him to recalculation of sentence term); Turner, 2019 WL 325218, 
at *3 (same). Thus, it may be considered the law of the case. The law-of-the-case doctrine 
is "a discretionary policy which expresses the practice of the courts generally to refuse to 
reopen a matter already decided, without limiting their power to do so." State v. Collier, 
263 Kan. 629, Syl. ¶ 2, 952 P.2d 1326 (1998). "Ordinarily, under the law of the case 
doctrine, once an issue is decided by the court, it should not be relitigated or reconsidered 
unless it is clearly erroneous or would cause manifest injustice." 263 Kan. 629, Syl. ¶ 3.  
 
 
The KDOC's aggregation of Turner's sentence is not clearly erroneous. As 
confirmed by the Court of Appeals and reviewed in detail above, the KDOC properly 
calculated Turner's aggregate sentence as 80 years to life, in compliance with the relevant 
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statutory and regulatory authority. And contrary to Turner's reading of K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 
22-3426(a), there is no conflict with K.S.A. 1991 Supp. 21-4608(6)(c). K.S.A. 2022 
Supp. 22-3426(a) addresses the record of a district court's judgment or sentence and sets 
forth the requirements for the form and content of the court's journal entry. It does not 
apply to the KDOC's aggregation of Turner's sentence. Turner makes no manifest 
injustice argument, and, given the KDOC's proper aggregation of his sentence, none 
exists.  
 
The KDOC's calculation of Turner's aggregate sentence reflects the sentence 
imposed by the district court. As a result, there is no arithmetic or clerical error to correct. 
See K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3504(b); Potts, 304 Kan. at 708. The district court did not err 
in denying Turner's request for a nunc pro tunc order.  
 
Affirmed.