Court Opinion

ID: 9363030
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-13 16:06:05.064928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:27.875946
License: Public Domain

NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

                                              No. 124,385

               IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

                                          STATE OF KANSAS,
                                              Appellee,

                                                    v.

                                       RAYMOND P. STILLEY,
                                           Appellant.

                                   MEMORANDUM OPINION

        Appeal from Douglas District Court; SALLY D. POKORNY, judge. Opinion filed December 2,
2022. Sentences vacated and case remanded with directions.

        Corrine E. Gunning, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellant.

        Jon Simpson, assistant district attorney, Suzanne Valdez, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt,
attorney general, for appellee.

Before ATCHESON, P.J., BRUNS, J., and PATRICK D. MCANANY, S.J.

        PER CURIAM: Defendant Raymond P. Stilley contends the Douglas County
District Court overstated his criminal history score in this case by treating an earlier
Mississippi conviction for conspiracy as a person felony when it sentenced him on two
counts of aggravated robbery. We agree. The district court engaged in impermissible
judicial fact-finding in making that determination. The State simply counters that the
district court ruled correctly and should be affirmed. In the absence of any request from
the State for alternative relief if there were error, we vacate Stilley's sentences and

                                                    1
remand to the district court with directions to score the Mississippi conspiracy conviction
as a nonperson felony and to resentence Stilley accordingly.

                           FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

       In May 2021, Stilley pleaded no contest to and was convicted of the aggravated
robberies stemming from a July 2020 incident in which he entered the home of his
grandparents and robbed them at gunpoint. The details of the crimes are irrelevant to the
sentencing issue before us. The presentence investigation report to the district court
indicated the Mississippi conspiracy conviction should be treated as a nonperson felony
for criminal history purposes. The State objected, and the district court continued the
sentencing to allow the State to obtain documents bearing on the conviction.

       At the reconvened sentencing hearing in August 2021, the State produced a grand
jury indictment returned in DeSoto County, Mississippi, in February 2008, charging
Stilley with one count of conspiracy to commit a crime under Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-
1(1)(a) and identifying the crime as armed robbery and with a second count of robbery by
use of a deadly weapon under Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-3-79. The State also produced an
order from the DeSoto County Circuit Court showing that Stilley was sentenced in May
2008 following guilty pleas to crimes identified as one count of conspiracy and one count
of armed robbery. The sentencing order does not specify what crime Stilley conspired to
commit.

       The State argued those documents established the Mississippi conspiracy
conviction to be a person felony for purposes of Stilley's criminal history score. Stilley
said not. The district court sided with the State. As a result, the district court found Stilley
had two past person felonies, placing him in criminal history category B. Had the district
court treated the Mississippi conspiracy conviction as a nonperson felony, Stilley would
have been in criminal history category C. The district court imposed a standard guidelines

                                               2
sentence of 216 months in prison on the first count of aggravated robbery and a
concurrent term of 59 months on the second count with postrelease supervision for 36
months. The controlling standard guidelines sentence using criminal history C would
have been 102 months in prison. Stilley has appealed.

                                      LEGAL ANALYSIS

       For his only issue on appeal, Stilley disputes the district court's treatment of the
Mississippi conspiracy conviction as a person felony. We perceive no dispute about the
material facts. The outcome here turns on the relevant Kansas and Mississippi statutes
and the documents the State offered related to Stilley's conspiracy conviction. That adds
up to a question of law we decide without deference to the district court's ruling. See
State v. Arnett, 290 Kan. 41, 47, 223 P.3d 780 (2010) (appellate court exercises unlimited
review over question of law); State v. Mejia, 58 Kan. App. 2d 229, 231-32, 446 P.3d
1217 (2020) (when material facts are undisputed, issue presents question of law; no
deference given to district court).

       The parties agree we should start with K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6811(e), governing
how to score out-of-state convictions for criminal history purposes. The parties also agree
Mississippi considers Stilley's conspiracy conviction to be a felony, and that designation
controls in determining his criminal history in this case. See K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-
6811(e)(2)(A). What remains is whether the conspiracy conviction should be classified as
a person crime or a nonperson crime under the Kansas sentencing scheme. There are two
ways an out-of-state conspiracy conviction may be considered a person crime:

       • A conspiracy to commit a felony offense will be scored as a person crime if an
element of the underlying or target offense of the conspiracy requires a specified form of
violence, the exchange of a controlled or illegal drug, the commission of specified sexual

                                              3
acts, or entering or remaining in a placed used as dwelling. K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-
6811(e)(3)(B)(i). In its entirety, K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B)(i) states:

                "(i) An out-of-state conviction or adjudication for the commission of a felony
       offense, or an attempt, conspiracy or criminal solicitation to commit a felony offense,
       shall be classified as a person felony if one or more of the following circumstances is
       present as defined by the convicting jurisdiction in the elements of the out-of-state
       offense:

               (a) Death or killing of any human being;

                (b) threatening or causing fear of bodily or physical harm or violence, causing
       terror, physically intimidating or harassing any person;

               (c) bodily harm or injury, physical neglect or abuse, restraint, confinement or
       touching of any person, without regard to degree;

               (d) the presence of a person, other than the defendant, a charged accomplice or
       another person with whom the defendant is engaged in the sale, distribution or transfer of
       a controlled substance or non-controlled substance;

              (e) possessing, viewing, depicting, distributing, recording or transmitting an
       image of any person;

               (f) lewd fondling or touching, sexual intercourse or sodomy with or by any
       person or an unlawful sexual act involving a child under the age of consent;

               (g) being armed with, using, displaying or brandishing a firearm or other weapon,
       excluding crimes of mere unlawful possession; or

               (h) entering or remaining within any residence, dwelling or habitation."

       • A conspiracy to commit a felony offense will be scored as a person crime if the
elements of the underlying or target offense of the conspiracy require the presence of a
person other than the defendant, a charged accomplice, or someone engaging in a drug
transaction with the defendant. K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B)(ii).

       If neither subsection covers the out-of-state conspiracy conviction, then the
conviction should be scored as a nonperson felony for criminal history purposes. K.S.A.
2021 Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B)(iii) (out-of-state conviction for conspiracy "to commit a

                                                    4
felony offense . . . shall be classified as a nonperson felony if the elements of the offense
do not require proof of any of the circumstances in subparagraph [B][i] or[ii]").

       We now turn to Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1 that criminalizes conspiratorial
conduct in that state. Relevant here, the statute punishes two or more persons if they
"conspire to commit a crime." Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1(1)(a). In separate subsections,
the statute then identifies agreements to engage in seven other types of wrongful conduct
that can be punished as criminal conspiracies. Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1(1)(b)-(h). The
other subsections appear to have no bearing on Stilley's conviction, since the indictment
cited Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1(1)(a) as the operative subsection. Nobody has suggested
otherwise in the district court or in this appeal.

       The statutory language in K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B) describing what
out-of-state conspiracies should be scored as person felonies does not cleanly dovetail
with the language in Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1(1)(a) defining a criminal conspiracy. A
Mississippi conspiracy simply requires an agreement to commit "a crime." And any
felony will suffice. See Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1(4) (conspiracy to commit a
misdemeanor "shall be punished as a misdemeanor"). Mississippi recognizes various
property crimes as felonies that do not satisfy the requirements of either K.S.A. 2021
Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B)(i) or K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B)(ii). For example,
grand larceny, criminalized as a felony in Miss. Code Ann. § 97-17-41, requires only the
"taking and carrying away" of the property of another person valued at $1,000 or more.
The penalties are stair-stepped to increase as the value of the taken property does. So a
conviction for conspiracy in which the object crime is grand larceny would not be a
person felony in Kansas for criminal history purposes.

       Moreover, the Mississippi appellate courts have held that the government need not
prove the elements of the target crime to convict a defendant of conspiracy—proof of a
general agreement to commit a crime is enough. Berry v. State, 996 So. 2d 782, 788-89

                                               5
(Miss. 2008); Magee v. State, ___ So. 3d ___, 2022 WL 1013267, at *13 (Miss. Ct. App.
2022). So, based on the statutory elements alone, a Mississippi conviction for conspiracy
is necessarily ambiguous as to the underlying or target crime. In turn, the fact of
conviction for conspiracy cannot, without something more, establish the crime as a
person felony under K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 21-6811(e)(3)(B).

       Here, the district court filled that void by considering the facts recited in the grand
jury indictment of Stilley for conspiracy and the companion charge of armed robbery. In
doing so, the district court engaged in impermissible judicial fact-finding compromising
Stilley's rights to jury trial and to due process protected respectively in the Sixth and
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as the United States Supreme
Court held in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 476, 120 S. Ct. 2348, 147 L. Ed. 2d
435 (2000), and reiterated in a series of cases. Measured against that authority, the district
court's designation of Stilley's Mississippi conspiracy conviction as a person felony
cannot stand.

       In Apprendi, the Court held that a fact, other than the existence of a previous
conviction, used to increase a criminal defendant's sentence above a statutory maximum
must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. 530 U.S. at 490. The Court has since
recognized that a defendant's factual admissions—in the course of a guilty plea, for
example—may be used to increase his or her sentence. United States v. Booker, 543 U.S.
220, 244, 125 S. Ct. 738, 160 L. Ed. 2d 621 (2005). The Kansas Supreme Court has
applied the rule of Apprendi to factors increasing a criminal defendant's presumptive term
of incarceration under the sentencing guidelines, including his or her criminal history.
State v. Dickey, 301 Kan. 1018, 1021, 350 P.3d 1054 (2015); see State v. Gould, 271
Kan. 394, 410-11, 23 P.3d 801 (2001). As explained in Dickey, a conviction in and of
itself establishes the statutory elements of the crime and any facts inherent in those
elements. 301 Kan. at 1036-38. Accordingly, as we have indicated, a Mississippi

                                              6
conspiracy conviction establishes no more than the defendant conspired with another
person to commit "a crime" or to act in one of the other proscribed ways.

       If a statute defines multiple ways of committing a particular crime, the district
court may review documents related to a defendant's conviction to determine which way
governed the conviction. In turn, the district court should then consider the statutory
elements of that particular means of committing the crime. Descamps v. United States,
570 U.S. 254, 261-64, 269-70, 133 S. Ct. 2276, 186 L. Ed. 2d 438 (2013); Dickey, 301
Kan. at 1037-38. Because the Mississippi conspiracy statute outlines multiple ways of
committing the crime, the district court properly could consider the indictment, the
sentencing order, or other documents from that case to determine which statutory
subsection applied to Stilley's conviction. As we have explained, the indictment charged
Stilley under Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-1-1(1)(a) for conspiring (in the words of the statute)
to commit "a crime." The district court could determine that much about the conspiracy
conviction without stepping over the line drawn in Apprendi marking constitutionally
impermissible judicial fact-finding.

       But the district court could not rely on any case-specific factual recitations in those
documents to augment the statutory elements applicable to Stilley's conviction. That
would cross the constitutional line. Descamps, 570 U.S. at 263-64; Dickey, 301 Kan. at
1038-39. The district court, therefore, erred in considering the factual circumstances
stated in the indictment to find the objective of the conspiracy was an armed robbery. The
error violated Stilley's constitutional right to have a jury determine a fact beyond the
statutory elements of the conspiracy conviction to increase his criminal history and
sentences in this case.

       In wrapping up our discussion, we recognize the language in K.S.A. 2021 Supp.
21-6811(e)(3)(b)(i) can be read to direct the district court to consider the elements of the
predicate or target crime in scoring a defendant's out-of-state conspiracy conviction for

                                              7
criminal history purposes. The phrase "the elements of the out-of-state offense" at the end
of the introductory paragraph of that subsection more naturally seems to refer to the
target crime if the out-of-state conviction is for conspiracy. Here, that would be robbery
by use of a deadly weapon under Miss. Code. Ann. § 97-3-79. Even assuming that's what
the Legislature intended, a statutory directive cannot override a criminal defendant's
constitutional rights and, therefore, cannot rescue the district court from its constitutional
error. Conversely, of course, if the statutory phrase refers to the elements of Stilley's out-
of-state conspiracy conviction itself, the district court erred in looking beyond those
elements to consider the factual assertions in the indictment and the companion charge
for robbery. In short, under no circumstance could the district court properly consider the
factual content of the indictment or conviction order as the basis for scoring Stilley's
Mississippi conspiracy conviction as a person felony.

       On appeal, the State has argued simply that the district court committed no error
and should be affirmed. Stilley has asked that we find error, vacate his sentences, and
remand to the district court for resentencing with the conspiracy conviction scored as a
nonperson felony. The State neither suggests that relief would be legally inappropriate if
the district court erred nor proposes some alternative remedy.

       Sentences vacated and case remanded to the district court with directions to
resentence Stilley scoring his Mississippi conviction for conspiracy as a nonperson
felony.

                                              8