Opinion ID: 2627284
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: burden of proving prior convictions

Text: On review, Schow concentrates his arguments on the issue of whether the district court erred in shifting the burden to him to refute the existence of both Florida misdemeanors. Thus, we take the liberty of discussing that issue first. Our analysis will focus on an interpretation of the applicable statutes. The interpretation of a statute is a question of law over which this court has unlimited review. An appellate court is not bound by the trial court's interpretation. [Citation omitted.] State v. Bryan, 281 Kan. 157, 159, 130 P.3d 85 (2006). The statutes in play on this issue are K.S.A. 21-4714 and K.S.A. 21-4715. We begin with a review of each statute's content and apparent purpose. K.S.A. 21-4714 begins in subsection (a) by directing that [t]he court shall order the preparation of the presentence investigation [PSI] report by the court services officer [CSO] as soon as possible after conviction of the defendant. K.S.A. 21-4714(b) describes the information that is to be contained in the report, with the most notable subsection for our purposes, (b)(5), providing: (5) A listing of prior adult convictions or juvenile adjudications for felony or misdemeanor crimes or violations of county resolutions or city ordinances comparable to any misdemeanor defined by state law. Such listing shall include an assessment of the appropriate classification of the criminal history on the criminal history scale and the source of information regarding each listed prior conviction and any available source of journal entries or other documents through which the listed convictions may be verified. If any such journal entries or other documents are obtained by the court services officer, they shall be attached to the presentence investigation report. Any prior criminal history worksheets of the defendant shall also be attached.  (Emphasis added.) K.S.A. 21-4714(c) prescribes who is to have access to which parts of the report, and subsection (d) clarifies that a criminal history worksheet will not substitute for a PSI report. Subsection (e) precludes certain optional report components from inclusion in the report. Subsection (f), relied upon by the State, reads as follows: (f) The court can take judicial notice in a subsequent felony proceeding of an earlier presentence report criminal history worksheet prepared for a prior sentencing of the defendant for a felony committed on or after July 1, 1993. K.S.A. 21-4714(f). Finally, subsection (g) directs that all PSI reports are to be submitted on a form approved by the Kansas Sentencing Commission. It is readily apparent that K.S.A. 21-4714 was intended to address the preparation and submission of the PSI report. As noted above, K.S.A. 21-4714(b)(5) directs the CSO preparing the current PSI report to attach any criminal history worksheets previously prepared for the defendant. In that context, the apparent purpose of the judicial notice provision of subsection (f) would be to permit the court to consider the attached prior worksheets as part of the PSI report without further foundation from the preparer of the prior worksheet, who may well be unavailable for the current proceeding. In other words, the judicial notice provision deals with the admissibility of the prior worksheets. In contrast, K.S.A. 21-4715 addresses the legal effect of the PSI report on the sentencing proceedings. Subsection (a) directs that either the defendant must admit to the reported criminal history in open court or the sentencing judge must determine the criminal history, by a preponderance of the evidence, at the sentencing hearing. The remaining two subsections read as follows: (b) Except to the extent disputed in accordance with subsection (c), the summary of the offender's criminal history prepared for the court by the state shall satisfy the state's burden of proof regarding an offender's criminal history. (c) Upon receipt of the criminal history worksheet prepared for the court, the offender shall immediately notify the district attorney and the court with written notice of any error in the proposed criminal history worksheet. Such notice shall specify the exact nature of the alleged error. The state shall have the burden of producing further evidence to satisfy its burden of proof regarding any disputed part, or parts, of the criminal history and the sentencing judge shall allow the state reasonable time to produce such evidence to establish the disputed portion of the criminal history by a preponderance of the evidence. K.S.A. 21-4715. Subsection (b) appears to extend the judicial notice provision of K.S.A. 21-4714(f) to the current criminal history worksheet. The court may admit the PSI report without the State providing further foundation or further proof of its contents, i.e., the preparing CSO need not testify and provide evidence to establish the veracity of the sources of his or her information. However, subsection (b) is explicitly subject to the provisions of subsection (c), which permit the defendant to file specific written objections to the criminal history worksheet and require the State to carry the burden of proving the disputed parts by producing further evidence. While the PSI report has been initially admitted into evidence under K.S.A. 21-4715(b), the report is no longer conclusive proof of the disputed parts so as to satisfy the State's burden. The statute makes no exception for disputed parts which may have been contained in a prior criminal history worksheet. The Court of Appeals majority relied upon the judicial notice provision of K.S.A. 21-4714(f) to affirm the district court's ruling that, even after the defendant files a written objection, a prior criminal history worksheet remains conclusive proof of its listed convictions, unless the defendant can disprove their existence. Schow, 37 Kan.App.2d at 948, 161 P.3d 222. Such a finding isolates a provision in the statute addressing the preparation and filing of the PSI report, K.S.A. 21-4714, and applies it to trump the clear language of the statute specifically addressing the legal effect of the report, K.S.A. 21-4715. It does not appear to be consistent, harmonious, or sensible to assign the burden of proof on disputed crimes based solely upon the source of the information utilized by the CSO to prepare the current worksheet. See McIntosh v. Sedgwick County, 282 Kan. 636, 642, 147 P.3d 869 (2006) (court should construe all parts of an act in pari materia and reconcile the different provisions so as to make them consistent, harmonious, and sensible). Moreover, K.S.A. 21-4714(b)(5) provides that prior criminal history worksheets are to be attached to the current criminal history worksheet, i.e., the prior worksheets are a part of the current PSI report. Therefore, the provisions of K.S.A. 21-4715(c) requiring the State to produce further evidence to prove the disputed part, or parts, of the criminal history would necessarily apply to the disputed part or parts of the prior criminal history worksheet. To be fair to the Court of Appeals majority, it dutifully followed the holding recited in State v. Hobbs, 276 Kan. 44, Syl. ¶ 8, 71 P.3d 1140, that a district court is permitted to take judicial notice of a defendant's presentence report filed in a previous case without objection instead of requiring the State to produce evidence to establish the disputed portion of the criminal history by a preponderance of the evidence. In that case, the defendant had attempted to hold the State accountable in a subsequent sentencing for what the district court found to be a clerical error in the prior case by misclassifying a residential burglary as a nonperson felony. In other words, the Hobbs decision effected an application of the correct criminal history. Without any independent analysis, Hobbs quoted from Hatt, 30 Kan.App.2d at 86, 38 P.3d 738. 276 Kan. at 57-58, 71 P.3d 1140. As the Court of Appeals dissent points out, that court has retreated from Hatt's judicial notice holding in favor of the more important consideration that a defendant be sentenced based upon an accurate criminal history calculation. Schow, 37 Kan.App.2d at 951-53, 161 P.3d 222; see State v. Welty, 33 Kan. App.2d 122, 98 P.3d 664, and State v. Prater, 31 Kan.App.2d 388, 65 P.3d 1048. Nevertheless, the district court in Hobbs did not blindly adopt the prior criminal history worksheet. It considered Hobbs' objection and made a finding that there had been a clerical error and calculated the current criminal history based upon its determination of the correct classification of the prior crime. Therefore, Hobbs' recitation of the Hatt rule was unnecessary to that decision. Moreover, criminal statutes must be strictly construed in favor of the accused, provided the judicial interpretation is reasonable and sensible to effect legislative design and intent. State v. Snow, 282 Kan. 323, 340-41, 144 P.3d 729 (2006). K.S.A. 21-4715(c) clearly provides a defendant the right to file a written objection to his or her criminal history worksheet and requires the State to carry the burden of producing further evidence to prove the convictions contained in the worksheet. To find that the burden shifts to the defendant to disprove convictions contained in a prior criminal history worksheet would require us to ignore the plain language of K.S.A. 21-4715(c) and employ an extremely liberal construction of K.S.A. 21-4714(f) in favor of the State. Such a departure from our construction rules does not appear justified by legislative intent. The statutes lean toward maximizing the probability that a defendant will be sentenced with the correct criminal history score. For instance, in addition to providing for an opportunity for written objections, the legislature has provided that prior convictions discovered after a plea is accepted are required to be included in the criminal history score, K.S.A. 21-4707(c)(4). Likewise, upon any appeal, the appellate court can review a claim that the district court erred in including or excluding a prior conviction. K.S.A. 21-4721(e)(2). Therefore, we find, as a matter of statutory interpretation, that a defendant may file a written objection to his or her criminal history worksheet, including those convictions which may have been contained in a previous criminal history worksheet, and that such an objection places the burden on the State to produce further evidence establishing the existence of the challenged conviction(s) by a preponderance of the evidence. Any suggestion to the contrary in Hobbs is disapproved. Here, the district court erred in shifting the burden to the defendant to disprove the existence of the disputed prior convictions. The sentence is vacated, and the matter remanded to the district court for a proper determination of criminal history and resentencing, if necessary. Before moving to the next issue, we pause to note that we have not been presented with a situation in which the State could have asserted collateral estoppel to avoid relitigating the existence of a prior conviction. As the Court of Appeals dissent noted, an essential element of collateral estoppel is that the issue had been decided on its merits in the prior proceeding. Schow, 37 Kan.App.2d at 952, 161 P.3d 222 (citing Prater, 31 Kan. App.2d at 395, 65 P.3d 1048). Here, there was no prior judgment on the merits of the existence of the two Florida convictions. In the proper case, the State might be able to rely upon collateral estoppel to avoid repeatedly litigating the efficacy of the same prior convictions in successive sentencing hearings.