Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
In a series of decisions Friday, the Kansas Supreme Court dismissed the conviction of a man for murder under a stand-your-ground law, vacated a conviction for aggravated burglary because jurors were misinformed and determined sexually violent defendants can be committed to an institution if they are mentally incompetent to stand trial.
In the first case, the court ruled the Kansas Court of Appeals acted out of its jurisdiction when it reinstated the attempted second-degree murder conviction of a man acting under the state’s stand-your-ground law of self-defense.
Mical Barlow, then 37, was arrested in Liberal in 2011 and charged with attempted second-degree murder for shooting another man, identified in court records as J.M.-M.
Barlow testified he shot J.M.-M. while the two were having sex with each other and a woman. When the woman was unconscious, Barlow said J.M.-M. began raping her. In an attempt to scare him, Barlow put a gun to the man’s head and pulled the trigger.
Barlow was convicted of attempted second-degree murder but before he could be sentenced, a district court judge found Barlow qualified for immunity from prosecution under the state’s stand-your-ground law.
The Court of Appeals reversed the district judge’s order, finding Barlow didn’t claim stand-your-ground immunity before entering a plea. Barlow appealed the case to the Kansas Supreme Court, arguing the trial judge’s order was a judgment of acquittal. Judgments of acquittal aren’t appealable.
On Friday, the state’s high court sided with Barlow.
“Because the district judge’s order qualified as a judgment of acquittal, the Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction to reinstate Barlow’s conviction,” the justices concluded in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Carol Beier.
The Supreme Court also answered the overarching question of whether a district judge can grant stand-your-ground immunity to a criminal defendant after a jury has returned a guilty verdict. The answer to that question, the court ruled, is yes — a judge can consider stand-your-ground immunity at any time before the sentence is announced.
In a 4-3 ruling Friday, the Kansas Supreme Court vacated a man’s aggravated burglary conviction because jurors were told he entered an occupied home in Topeka, which wasn’t true.
In 2011, Raul Flores Ramos found the door of a home he was moving out of had been damaged. When he entered, he found Michael Daws inside and told him to leave. Daws left and Ramos found some of his possessions had been tampered with.
Defendants in Kansas can be convicted of aggravated battery for one of two reasons: they enter into an occupied dwelling or they remain within a dwelling. Daws was prosecuted under the first provision and jurors were told they had to find Daws knowingly entered the home without permission “at the time there was a human being in the dwelling.”
Because that wasn’t the case, the high court reversed Daws’ conviction Friday in an opinion written by Justice Dan Biles.
“Under the aggravated burglary statute and these facts, the state should have charged Daws with ‘remaining within’ the dwelling, which it did not do,” Biles wrote.
Three justices — Maria Luckert, Eric Rosen and Caleb Stegall — dissented from Biles’ decision.
“This case illustrates how splitting aggravated burglary into distinct parts confuses the crime,” Luckert wrote.
In another decision Friday, the court ruled a defendant doesn’t have to be mentally competent to be institutionalized as a sexually violent offender.
Paul Sykes spent two decades in prison for burglary and aggravated sexual battery for breaking into a home and assaulting its female occupants. His pants were unzipped and his [filtered word] was visible during the break-in.
After Sykes finished serving his sentence in 2007, the state of Kansas attempted to have him committed to an institution as a sexual offender but Pawnee County District Court determined he wasn’t mentally competent to stand trial.
Wyandotte County District Court saw the matter differently and Sykes underwent a trial to determine if he would be committed. The court determined he was a sexually violent predator and ordered him committed indefinitely.
Sykes, through his attorneys, challenged the ruling, arguing his rights to due process were infringed upon because he couldn’t understand the nature of his crimes. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder and borderline intellectual functioning.
The Court of Appeals ruled against Sykes and the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed that ruling Friday.
Though the ruling in the Sykes case was unanimous, Justice Lee Johnson filed a concurring opinion that questioned whether mentally incompetent defendants receive adequate due process protections when they are unable to understand what is happening to them.
“I would submit that the respondent is not just a spectator, but an observer that does not understand the game that is being played, much the same as most Americans would be at a cricket match,” Johnson wrote.