Kansas Court of Appeals Remands Prison Contraband Sentence

State v. Warren, 104,489, 2012 WL 516159 (Kan. Ct. App. Feb. 17, 2012)

 Last month, the Kansas Court of Appeals held the district court must consider inmate Warren’s request for a lesser sentence because the district court “wrongly refused to consider the possibility [of a downward departure sentence when] it misinterpreted a sentencing statute.”  Id. at *4.  Inmate Waddell Warren was sentenced to an additional 122 months in prison by the district court after a small amount of marijuana was found in his socks but argued for 40 months based on the small amount of drugs found.  Id. at *1.  The issue addressed by the appellate court was “whether a lesser, or departure, sentence can ever be granted based on the small quantity of drugs involved when sentencing a defendant for bringing contraband into prison.”  Id. at *5. 

The appellate court found that the district court had misinterpreted the Kansas statute, K.S.A. 21-3826, when finding it had no authority to deviate from the sentencing guidelines because “the statute prohibits any contraband in a prison and no specific amount threshold is found in the statute.”  Id.  The court remanded the sentencing concluding, “that the possession of only a small quantity of drugs constitutes a valid factor upon which a departure sentence may be entered on a prison-contraband conviction.”  Id. at *6 (emphasis in original).

Please contact Lindsey Erickson or Dionne Scherff with Erickson Scherff, LLC at www.ericksonscherff.com if you have any questions.