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January 2023
KSSC would like to thank you for your continued partnership. This agency owes its success to people like you. We hope your New Year is filled with joy, happiness and success. We look forward to working with you in the coming year.
The Staff of the Kansas Sentencing Commission
Click here to read KSSC's approved proposals for the upcoming Kansas Legislative Session.
KSSC is proud to announce that Kim Sage has been hired as the Finance Manager. She comes to us from Kansas Legislative Services where she worked since 2019, most recently as a Committee Assistant for the Senate Judiciary Committee and Chair, Senator Kellie Warren. Kim is a Washburn graduate and has experience working as a State Auditor, conducting internal audits, consulting projects, grant closeouts, and information systems quality assurance reviews. Her private sector experience includes general business accounting skills including payroll, accounts receivable/payable, journal entries and corporate tax filings. Kim has been busy acclimating to handling day-to-day financial operations. Welcome Kim!
Congratulations on 25 years, Brenda Harmon!
Congratulations to Brenda Harmon! The Commission celebrated Brenda at our November meeting. Brenda is an invaluable employee to KSSC as she can be trusted with any task, any responsibility, and any deadline. Brenda has served the agency with HR, payroll, office management, research, data entry, and with finance management among many other tasks and roles. She has served as Special Assistant to the Executive Director since 2010. As we move into 30 years of the Sentencing Guidelines next year, we celebrate 25 years of excellence and recognize that the agency has been forever shaped by Brenda’s drive, character, motivation, organization, and determination. Congratulations Brenda Harmon for 25 years of service to the Sentencing Commission!
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Congratulations on 15 years, Trish Beck!
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The Commission congratulated Trish Beck on 15 years with the agency! Trish has been a fixture with the SB 123 program for 15 years, serving in various roles, including webmaster, DRM support, in addition to her duties with SB 123. She is currently the SB 123 Program Auditor. In 2016, Trish was recognized by the agency for Distinguished Accomplishment along with the rest of the SB 123 department for saving the agency and taxpayers $705,000 with reorganization of the program. She was also Employee of the Quarter that same year. Congratulations and thank you, Trish! |
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Recent Cases Affecting Sentencing in Kansas*
- When individuals are required to register pursuant to KORA, the Kansas Supreme Court recently held, “….K.S.A. 2021 Supp. 22-4907(a)(12)'s mandate to register any vehicle “owned or operated by the offender, or any vehicle the offender regularly drives,” does not require an offender to register a vehicle of unknown ownership when the offender has driven it only one time.” See State v. Moler, 519 P.3d 794, 801 (Kan. November 10, 2022).
- In a case where the district court failed to find substantial and compelling reasons to depart from a Hard 50 sentence on remand, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the district court did not abuse his discretion because he made no error of law, his findings are supported by substantial competent evidence, and reasonable people could agree with his conclusion that Galloway failed to establish a substantial and compelling reason to depart from the presumptive hard 50 sentence. See State v. Galloway, 518 P.3d 399, 405 (Kan. October 14, 2022). However, the Court remanded the case for resentencing because the district court exceeded its authority in changing the defendant’s sentence from concurrent to consecutive sentences on remand. Id.
- Where a defendant had a prior conspiracy conviction out of Mississippi, the Kansas Court of Appeals recently found that the district court engaged in impermissible judicial fact-finding compromising the defendant’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), because the district court considered facts recited in the grand jury indictment when determining whether the conviction should be classified as a person or non-person crime in Kansas. See State v. Stilley, No. 124,385, 2022 WL 17411349 at *3 (Kan. App. December 2, 2022)(unpublished opinion).
*This is not an exhausted list of cases affecting sentencing. To view all recent cases, click here.
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