Opinion ID: 2460452
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Constitutionality of Lifetime Postrelease Supervision

Text: Sellers argues on appeal that the imposition of mandatory lifetime postrelease supervision under Jessica's Law violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and § 9 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights because it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. We do not reach this issue because it is not preserved for our review. Ordinarily, constitutional challenges to a statute raise questions of law subject to unlimited appellate review. State v. Seward, 289 Kan. 715, 718, 217 P.3d 443 (2009). But constitutional claims must be preserved for appeal by advancement and argument in the district court. See, e.g., State v. Thomas, 288 Kan. 157, 160-61, 199 P.3d 1265 (2008); State v. Ortega-Cadelan, 287 Kan. 157, 161, 194 P.3d 1195 (2008). Sellers thoroughly preserved the issue of whether the life sentence and mandatory minimum of Jessica's Law violated the federal or state constitutions before the district court. He filed a pretrial motion to dismiss; argued the issue at the opening of trial; renewed his claim to dismissal on the issue at the close of trial; and, finally, challenged those aspects of Jessica's Law at his sentencing hearing. But all of that careful preservation was aimed at unrealized threats. When the district judge sentenced Sellers, he departed from the life sentence and mandatory minimum of Jessica's Law to the nondrug grid under the sentencing guidelines, as he was expressly permitted to do under K.S.A. 21-4643(d). See also State v. Spencer, 291 Kan. 796, 248 P.3d 256 (2011) (discussing departures from Jessica's Law, further departures from sentencing grid imprisonment ranges). Sellers simply never raised a challenge to the constitutionality of lifetime postrelease supervision under Jessica's Law in the district court. We therefore do not reach the unpreserved issue on this direct appeal.