Opinion ID: 2581663
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Single Enterprise Theory

Text: Schroeder also argues that the district court's dismissal should be affirmed because each of the Norton County and Saline County crimes should have been treated as a component of a single criminal enterprise amenable to prosecution in either Norton County or Saline County. Schroeder, the district court, and the Court of Appeals majority have cited three possible sources of authority to support the single enterprise theory. We discuss each in turn. Although it is not perfectly clear, Schroeder appears to rely on an expansive reading of K.S.A. 21-3108(2)(a) and K.S.A. 22-2603. The reasoning of our decisions in Mahlandt, 231 Kan. 665; State v. Calderon, 233 Kan. 87, 661 P.2d 781 (1983); and State v. Baker, 255 Kan. 680, 877 P.2d 946 (1994), provides us no incentive to endorse such a reading. In Mahlandt, as discussed, this court refused to reverse the Sedgwick County kidnapping conviction. This was true despite its obvious close ties in time and circumstance to the Sedgwick County robbery and the Butler County crimes. 231 Kan. at 666. The ties did not translate into treatment as components of a single criminal enterprise. In Calderon, the defendant kidnapped an 11-year-old boy from Riley County and transported him to Pottawatomie County, where he sodomized him. The defendant entered a plea of nolo contendere to a kidnapping charge in Riley County, and the State referenced the sodomy in the factual basis it stated to support the plea. The defendant invoked the earlier prosecution in Riley County to challenge his later aggravated sodomy conviction in Pottawatomie County on double jeopardy grounds, asserting that the sodomy could have been prosecuted in Riley County along with the kidnapping. 233 Kan. at 88-89. This court rejected the assertion. Despite the very close connection in time between the kidnapping and the aggravated sodomy and the fact that the former enabled the performance of the latter, proof of one still was not considered vital to proof of the other under K.S.A. 22-2603. Venue did not lie in Riley County under K.S.A. 22-2603 because no act required to establish the crime of aggravated sodomy under 21-3506(b) occurred there . . . . Because the crime could not have been charged in Riley County there was no violation of the double jeopardy provisions of 21-3108(2)(a). 233 Kan. at 91-92. In the alternative, we also held that the State's mention of the sodomy at the defendant's Riley County plea hearing did not meet the requirement in 21-3108(2)(a) that evidence be introduced in a previous prosecution. 233 Kan. at 92-93. In Baker, the defendant murdered a woman in her home in Shawnee County. When three of her neighbors checked on her welfare the following morning, the defendant kidnapped the three at gunpoint and drove them into Douglas County, where he forced them out of the car. He was then persuaded to leave the three there for an hour while he checked on the status of the murder victim. During this hour, the only one of the three neighbors who was physically able escaped and summoned help from law enforcement. When the authorities arrived at the scene where the two neighbors had been left, they were gone. Two days later, the two neighbors' bodies were found elsewhere in Douglas County. The defendant was convicted of murder, aggravated burglary, conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, and three counts of kidnapping in Shawnee County. He was later convicted in Douglas County of one count of aggravated assault of the neighbor who survived and two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated kidnapping of the two neighbors who did not. On appeal, the defendant argued that all of the crimes should have been prosecuted together in Shawnee County. This court rejected his compulsory joinder argument regarding the two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated kidnapping, because the defendant's act of leaving the three neighbors for a period of time constituted a break in the action. The later second kidnapping of two of the neighbors and their eventual murders, which occurred solely in Douglas County, were not parts of a single criminal enterprise including the Shawnee County crimes. 255 Kan. at 684. On the other hand, the court accepted the defendant's compulsory joinder argument with regard to the Douglas County aggravated assault of the neighbor who escaped. To the extent that neighbor was subjected to an aggravated assault in Douglas County, the court agreed it was a continuation of a kidnapping that had begun in Shawnee County and for which the defendant had already been tried and convicted. The aggravated assault could not be prosecuted separately later in Douglas County without running afoul of 21-3108(2)(a)'s compulsory joinder clause and double jeopardy. 255 Kan. at 685. In this case, several days separated the Norton County and Saline County events. Relying on the logic of Mahlandt, Calderon, and Baker, we reject any assertion by Schroeder that the Norton County crimes and Saline County crimes should have been treated as constituent parts of a single enterprise and tried together in Norton County under an expansive reading of K.S.A. 21-3108(2)(a) and K.S.A. 22-2603. The second possible source of authority for the single enterprise theory comes from the district judge, who cited State v. Martinez, 255 Kan. 464, 874 P.2d 617 (1994), to support his alternative holding that all of the crimes in both counties were part of a single enterprise. The Court of Appeals rejected this rationale, and we agree. Martinez involved aider and abettor liability in a county into which stolen property was transported. 255 Kan. at 467-68. Although it would support prosecution for the theft of the cattle in Saline County, it does not support prosecution for the theft of the check in Norton County. The cattle traveled in one direction across the county line; the check never traveled in the opposite direction across the line. The Court of Appeals majority identifiedand discountedyet a third possible source of support for the single enterprise theory: K.S.A. 22-3202's joinder provision for multiple crimes that make up a common scheme or plan. We agree the operation of K.S.A. 22-3202 is limited to a common scheme or plan executed entirely within one jurisdiction. Mahlandt 's specific rejection of reliance on K.S.A. 22-3202 as an avenue to support prosecution of the Sedgwick County kidnapping charge in Butler County, citing State v. Ralls, 213 Kan. 249, 515 P.2d 1205 (1973), is significant. Ralls' discussion of joinder explicitly noted the requirement that the crimes to be joined under K.S.A. 22-3202 must have occurred in a single jurisdiction. 213 Kan. at 256-57. Joinder under 22-3202 does not trump the requirement of proper venue.