Opinion ID: 2498642
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: off-grid sentencing for on-grid conviction

Text: Although Portillo received a departure sentence, he contends that the district court erred in finding that the starting point was the mandatory hard-25 life sentence under Jessica's Law, K.S.A. 21-4643. Instead, he believes that the district court should have departed downward from his grid-based presumptive sentence for a severity level 1 offense, which listed a mid-term sentence of 155 months. Portillo argues that the off-grid sentencing was precluded for three reasons: (1) The State did not include the element of defendant's age in the complaint; (2) the State did not introduce evidence of defendant's age during the jury trial; and (3) the district court did not instruct the jury on the element of the defendant's age. Although Portillo refers to a complaint, the applicable charging document in this case is an information, albeit the distinction does not affect our analysis.