Court Opinion

ID: 9955884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-29 17:05:28.956562+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:35.665664
License: Public Domain

NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

                                             No. 125,073

              IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

                                         STATE OF KANSAS,
                                             Appellee,

                                                   v.

                                        LORENA GUTIERREZ,
                                            Appellant.

                                   MEMORANDUM OPINION

        Appeal from Finney District Court; CHRISTOPHER D. SANDERS, judge. Submitted without oral
argument. Opinion on remand filed March 29, 2024. Sentence vacated and case remanded with directions.

        Jacob Nowak and Kai Tate Mann, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellant.

        Isaac LeBlanc, assistant county attorney, Susan Lynn Hillier Richmeier, county attorney, and Kris
W. Kobach, attorney general, for appellee.

Before MALONE, P.J., GREEN and ISHERWOOD, JJ.

        PER CURIAM: This case returns to us on remand from the Kansas Supreme Court.
We previously issued our opinion in this matter on September 8, 2023, State v. Gutierrez,
No. 125, 073, 2023 WL 5811608 (Kan. App. 2023) (unpublished opinion), and affirmed
the district court's jail credit calculation because it aligned with the "solely on account of"
manner of assessment articulated in Campbell v. State, 223 Kan. 528, 528-31, 575 P.2d
524 (1978). Gutierrez filed a petition for review and while that matter was pending, the
Supreme Court issued its opinion in State v. Hopkins, 317 Kan. 652, 652, 537 P.3d 845
(2023), which overruled Campbell, because an award of jail time credit ''is not limited to

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time spent 'solely' in custody for the charge for which the defendant is being sentenced."
Rather, the plain language of K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 21-6615 mandates that defendants
receive credit for all time spent in custody pending disposition of his or her case. The
court's ruling in Hopkins demands that Gutierrez' case be reversed and remanded so that
the district court can award her credit in her KORA case for the entire 167 days she spent
in custody awaiting disposition of that case. Finally, consistent with our initial opinion
issued in this case, because the district court failed to provide an explanation on the
record which detailed how it weighed the required factors for a BIDS attorney fee
assessment, that order must be vacated.

                         FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

       Gutierrez originally brought her case before us to resolve what she perceived to be
a jail credit related injustice. To briefly recap, a dispute arose in the district court
concerning the jail credit to which Guitierrez was entitled following her no-contest plea
to a KORA violation. The terms of that plea agreement extended beyond Gutierrez'
KORA offense to also include the State's dismissal of a felony theft charged in a different
case and the termination of Gutierrez' probation as unsuccessful in yet a third case.

       At sentencing, Gutierrez' counsel advocated for jail credit totaling 167 days. The
State disputed the accuracy of that calculation and asserted Gutierrez was only entitled to
credit for the 37 days she was in custody between her plea hearing and sentencing
because any days preceding that block of time were attributable to the probation violation
she was held on in an unrelated case. In further support of its position, the State directed
the district court's attention to the special rule which mandated that Gutierrez serve her
sentence for the KORA violation consecutive to that case linked to the probation
violation. According to the State, if Gutierrez received jail credit in the KORA case for
days that actually aligned with the probation matter, it would undermine the intent of the
special rule.

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       The district court found the State's argument compelling. In following that lead,
the judge explained that because the special rule designated the probation matter as first
in time for sentencing, it was likewise the first case to which jail credit should be
assigned. According to the district court, the fact Gutierrez' probation in that case was
terminated as unsuccessful was of no moment, it remained the appropriate first stop for
purposes of jail credit calculation. Thus, it assigned 130 days of credit to that case and the
remaining 37 to Gutierrez' KORA case.

       Gutierrez sought a more favorable outcome from our court, but we declined to find
error in the district court's calculation. We instead followed our Supreme Court's decision
in Campbell, 223 Kan. 528, and affirmed the decision of the district court under the
theory that Gutierrez was not held in custody solely on account of her KORA case until
that window of time between the entry of her plea and imposition of sentence. Thus, she
was not entitled to receive jail credit for any days that fell outside those boundaries.
Gutierrez, 2023 WL 5811608, at *2-4. We acknowledged that because her probation case
was later terminated this manner of calculation unfortunately amounted to a loss of "'dead
time.'" Gutierrez, 2023 WL 5811608, at *4.

       Gutierrez petitioned our Supreme Court for review and while that petition was
pending, the court issued its decision in Hopkins, 317 Kan. 652. The Hopkins court
overruled the decades long "solely on account of" rule espoused in Campbell upon
finding that it lacked any statutory or legislative foundation. Rather, "the plain meaning"
of the language chosen by the Legislature in drafting K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 21-6615(a),
indicated that "a defendant shall be awarded jail time credit for all time spent in custody
pending the disposition of his or her case." Hopkins, 317 Kan. at 657. As a result, the
Kansas Supreme Court summarily vacated our opinion in Gutierrez' case and remanded
the matter to us for reconsideration of her jail credit in light of its decision in Hopkins.

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       We requested supplemental briefing from the parties to afford them the
opportunity to analyze the Hopkins ruling in the context of Gutierrez' case. Following
receipt of those additional resources, we conducted a thorough review of Gutierrez' case
utilizing the new analytical framework articulated in Hopkins.

                                     LEGAL ANALYSIS

The district court failed to award Gutierrez the full amount of jail credit to which she was
entitled.

       The right to jail time credit in Kansas is statutory, thus we exercise unlimited
review in our assessment of the days Guiterrez is entitled to. State v. Hopkins, 295 Kan.
579, 581, 285 P.3d 1021 (2012). The most fundamental rule of statutory construction is
that the intent of the Legislature governs where that intent can be ascertained through an
analysis of the plain language of the provision, giving common words their ordinary
meaning. State v. Busch, 317 Kan. 308, 311, 528 P.3d 560 (2023).

       The 2023 Hopkins court performed this heavy-lifting and clarified that, as written,
K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 21-6615(a) requires sentencing courts "to give a defendant 'an
allowance for the time which the defendant has spent incarcerated pending the disposition
of [their] case'" 317 Kan. at 657. In so doing, the court cleared the decades long fog borne
of the "solely on account of'' court-made rule which gave rise to "confusion, difficulty,
and inconsistency" in the application of jail credit. 317 Kan. at 652.

       In that case, Hopkins agreed to enter a plea to two counts of first-degree
premeditated murder that he was charged with in Cherokee County. In exchange, the
State agreed to dismiss escape charges associated with that case, withdraw its pending
motion to revoke Hopkins' probation in an unrelated case, and dismiss an additional case
he had pending in Labette County. In short, Hopkins clearly had a myriad of matters
pending, which prompted the district court to undertake the "solely on account of"

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analysis. It ultimately concluded that because Hopkins had other cases pending leading
up to the plea, the law did not entitle him to receive any credit for time served. On
review, the Supreme Court disagreed and found that "[u]nder the obvious and plain
meaning of the words chosen by the Legislature, a defendant shall be awarded jail time
credit for all time spent in custody pending the disposition of his or her case." 317 Kan. at
657. Thus, because Hopkins spent 572 days in jail while his murder case was pending,
the law demanded that he receive that precise amount of credit against his hard 50
sentences. 317 Kan. at 659.

       Gutierrez' case presents in a nearly identical way. That is, she entered into a plea
agreement that encompassed all three of her pending cases and contemplated the
dismissal of an unrelated theft case, as well as the termination of her probation as
unsuccessful in a third case. The existence of that trifecta created the all too familiar jail
credit conundrum with respect to the 167 days Gutierrez spent in custody. The district
court ultimately only granted her 37 days, finding that the remaining 130 days were
attributable to her probation case, despite the fact that case was terminated and essentially
rendered that credit dead time.

       Hopkins makes clear that this type of calculation was erroneous and cannot be
permitted to stand. Rather, that 130 days should have been assigned to Gutierrez' KORA
violation alongside the other 37 days she received given that total of 167 days accounted
for the entire time she spent in custody awaiting disposition of her KORA case. In its
supplemental brief, the State concedes that is the appropriate resolution to this matter in
the wake of Hopkins. Accordingly, we reverse Gutierrez' case and remand it to the district
court with directions to assign the entire 167 days Gutierrez spent in custody awaiting the
conclusion of her case as jail credit toward the sentence imposed for her KORA violation.

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The district court failed to make the necessary statutory findings prior to ordering
Gutierrez to pay BIDS attorney fees.

       In the opening briefing, Gutierrez also challenged the district court's assessment of
BIDS attorney fees at sentencing. She specifically argued that the district failed to
explicitly consider her financial resources and the burden such payment would impose as
required by K.S.A. 22-4513(b) and State v. Robinson, 281 Kan. 538, Syl. ¶ 1, 132 P.3d
934 (2006). The State joined in Gutierrez' assertion that the district court's findings fell
short on the matter. We likewise concurred and found the record "undeniably reflects that
the district court failed to conduct the proper inquiry" and that such noncompliance
demanded we vacate the district court's BIDS attorney fee assessment. Gutierrez, 2023
WL 5811608, at *5.

       Our position has not changed since the filing of the original opinion. The district
court failed to conduct the proper analysis at Gutierrez' original sentencing hearing and
therefore, the resulting fee calculation cannot be permitted to stand.

       Sentence vacated and case remanded with directions.

                                             ***
       MALONE, J., concurring: I concur with the result that Lorena Gutierrez must
receive 130 additional days of jail credit in 21CR420 for the days she was in jail from
September 23, 2021, to the date of her plea on January 31, 2022, but only because she
was not awarded credit for these days in any other case. State v. Hopkins, 317 Kan. 652,
537 P.3d 845 (2023), does not address the scenario where a defendant is ordered to serve
consecutive sentences in multiple cases and does not modify Kansas caselaw barring
duplicative credit. See, e.g., State v. Davis, 312 Kan. 259, 287, 474 P.3d 722 (2020);
State v. Lofton, 272 Kan. 216, 217-18, 32 P.3d 711 (2001) ("K.S.A. 21-4614 [predecessor

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to K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 21-6615] contains no provision for credit in excess of the time an
individual is actually incarcerated in jail.").

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