Court Opinion

ID: 9762924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:33:53.490465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:38.487355
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
dissenting: I respectfully disagree with the majority’s decision to affirm Garza’s sentence for the off-grid version of rape under K.S.A. 21-3502(a)(2). I believe Garza should have been sentenced for the crime with which he was charged and of which he was convicted by the juiy, i.e., the severity level 1 version of the offense.
I discussed my reasons for dissenting on this issue in State v. Reyna, 290 Kan. 666, 690, 234 P.3d 761 (2010), upon which the majority in this case relies. I will not replow that ground here. However, the majority’s opinion in this case has sparked some additional thoughts which I will share.
In discussing Garza’s claim that the district court erroneously excluded relevant evidence, the majority notes that the materiality component of relevance requires that the evidence be material to a fact at issue in the case. If the defendant’s age was not identified as an element of the crime in either the charging document or the jury instructions, what made the defendant’s age a fact at issue during the guilt phase of the trial? I would submit that where the jury will not be asked to find that the defendant is age 18 years or older, that fact is not at issue during the trial and, therefore, is not material evidence. Accordingly, Garza received an enhanced sentence based upon evidence which was irrelevant when it was introduced.
Apparently, the prosecutors in the State v. Morningstar, 289 Kan. 488, 213 P.3d 1045 (2009), State v. Gonzales, 289 Kan. 351, 212 P.3d 215 (2009), and State v. Bello, 289 Kan. 191, 211 P.3d 139 (2009), cases did not believe the defendants’ respective ages were material evidence, because no evidence of age was introduced at their trials. In fact, the evidence of Reyna’s age came not from *1037the State but from Reyna’s direct testimony. One can only surmise, but it would not be totally unfair to presume, that defense counsel did not believe that the client’s age was a fact at issue in that trial when asking Reyna to recite his age. The result is that Reyna and Garza received hard 25 life sentences, whereas Momingstar, Gonzales, and Bello did not, based solely upon the fortuitous circumstance that immaterial evidence just happened to be placed in evidence at trial. One might ponder whether the framers of our federal and state Constitutions envisioned such a circumstance as comporting with due process of law and fundamental fairness. I think not.