Opinion
No. 107,488.
2013-06-7
Roderick FIELDS, Appellant, v. STATE of Kansas, Appellee.
Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; Anthony J. Powell, Judge. Roderick F. Fields, appellant pro se. Boyd K. Isherwood, assistant district attorney, Nola Tedesco Foulston, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellee.
Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; Anthony J. Powell, Judge.
Roderick F. Fields, appellant pro se. Boyd K. Isherwood, assistant district attorney, Nola Tedesco Foulston, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellee.
Before STANDRIDGE, P.J., HILL, J., and KNUDSON, S.J.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
PER CURIAM.
Roderick Fields appeals the dismissal of his successive and untimely K.S.A. 60–1507 motion after a preliminary hearing. He argues that a recently discovered revenge plot spanning nearly 2 decades amounts to an exceptional circumstance sufficient to permit his successive motion. Moreover, he claims that to avoid manifest injustice, the district court should consider his untimely motion in a full evidentiary hearing. But because we do not find that Fields provided an evidentiary basis for his conclusory claim of a revenge plot, we affirm the district court's denial of Fields' K.S.A. 60–1507 motion as successive and untimely. The underlying circumstances
On May 21, 1993, a jury found Fields guilty of aggravated robbery. The district court sentenced him to 20 years to life imprisonment. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed his conviction in State v. Fields, No. 70,504, unpublished opinion filed January 27, 1995. Afterwards, Fields filed a motion under K.S.A. 60–1507 alleging prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, and other errors. The district court denied his motion, this court affirmed, and our Supreme Court denied his petition for review. Fields v. State, No. 88,684, unpublished Kan.App. opinion filed June 13, 2003, rev. denied 276 Kan. 968 (2003). Then Fields filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence, the denial of which was affirmed by the Kansas Supreme Court in 2008. State v. Fields, No. 97,292, 2008 WL 307680 (Kan.2008) (unpublished opinion).
On September 23, 2010, Fields filed this K.S.A. 60–1507 motion. Fields claimed that in 2010, a prison guard named Delores Cowans told him how she had taken revenge on him. According to Fields, Cowans said that nearly 2 decades ago she took the fake name, Melanie Anderson, and became a member of his jury panel for his 1993 conviction. As a member of his jury, she influenced the other jurors to find him guilty. She orchestrated this act of revenge and has been stalking Fields for years because she believed he had raped her sister, Idella Dean. Fields had been acquitted of raping Dean in a case prior to his 1993 conviction.
The district court held a preliminary hearing on Fields' K.S.A. 60–1507 motion. Because nothing regarding Fields' claim appeared in the record, Fields' attorney, the State, and the court agreed that the best way to determine if Fields raised an issue substantial enough to overcome the procedural hurdles he faced was to obtain an affidavit from the Department of Corrections or Cowans. After reviewing an affidavit from Cowans in a later hearing, the district court found that Fields' successive K.S.A. 60–1507 motion was procedurally barred. Moreover, based on the affidavit from Cowans, the district court concluded that Fields' allegation was a “total fabrication.” Ultimately, the district court denied Fields' motion. Fields filed a motion to reconsider which was also denied. Thereafter, Fields filed a timely notice of appeal. The district court did not err
Fields asserts that his discovery of Cowans' revenge plot amounted to newly discovered evidence sufficient to entitle him to a full evidentiary hearing under K.S.A. 60–1507. In passing, he also asserts prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel, both of which ultimately stem from his underlying allegation against Cowans (he claims the State or his attorney should have discovered Cowans' plot).
It was uncontested that Fields' current K.S.A. 60–1507 motion was both untimely and successive. However, a district court can entertain a successive motion if exceptional circumstances prevented the movant from previously raising the claims. An exceptional circumstance can be an unusual event that prevented a movant from being able to raise the error in the prior K.S.A. 60–1507 proceeding. State v. Kelly, 291 Kan. 868, 872, 248 P.3d 1282 (2011). Likewise, the district court can entertain an untimely K.S.A. 60–1507 motion in order to prevent manifest injustice, which is something unfair or shocking to the conscious. K.S.A. 60–1507(f)(2); Ludlow v. State, 37 Kan.App.2d 676, 686, 157 P.3d 631 (2007). Fields argues that his allegations regarding Cowans meet both these standards and that the district court erred in failing to conduct a full evidentiary hearing.
After a preliminary hearing to determine if a movant has raised a substantial issue of fact, as was conducted here, we review the district court's factual findings for substantial competent evidence. We then conduct an unlimited review as to whether the facts the district court found supported its legal conclusion. Holmes v. State, 292 Kan. 271, 274, 252 P.3d 573 (2011); Trotter v. State, 288 Kan. 112, 132, 200 P.3d 1236 (2006).
To be entitled to an evidentiary hearing, a movant bears the burden to establish an evidentiary basis for a claim or one must appear in the record; importantly, a movant's own conclusory contentions are insufficient to meet the burden. Trotter, 288 Kan. at 131–32. And if the motion, files, and records in the case conclusively show the movant is not entitled to relief, then no evidentiary hearing is necessary. K.S.A. 60–1507(b); Supreme Court Rule 183(f) (2012 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 274).
Nothing other than Fields' conclusory contention supports his claim that Cowans infiltrated his jury panel nearly 2 decades ago under the false name of Melanie Anderson to exact revenge. The exhibit attached to his motion only indicates that a woman named Melanie Anderson was a juror at his trial. The fact that Melanie Anderson was a member of his jury does not provide any support for his contention that she was really Cowans using a fake name.
Notwithstanding that Fields' motion was successive and untimely, the district court went the extra mile and, as approved by the parties, withheld a definitive ruling until review of the Cowans' affidavit. In the affidavit, Cowans swore she had never used another name, she had never served on a jury panel in Wichita, and she did not have a sister named Idella Dean.
Fields argues it was unfair that the district court considered Cowans' affidavit and not his own. However, the parties agreed with the district court that an affidavit from Cowans would be appropriate to determine if Fields' untimely and successive K.S.A. 60–1507 claim presented circumstances that would warrant the taking of further evidence. A party may not invite error and then complain of that error on appeal. Butler County R.W.D. No. 8 v. Yates, 275 Kan. 291, 296, 64 P.3d 357 (2003). Moreover, Fields' affidavit is in the record and suffers from the same fate as his motion—it is uncorroborated and conclusory.
We find substantial competent evidence in the record to support the district court's finding that Fields' allegation was a “total fabrication,” unsupported by the evidentiary record that was supplemented by Cowans' affidavit. The record before us does not demonstrate exceptional circumstances or the need for an evidentiary hearing to avoid the possibility of manifest injustice. Accordingly, we conclude the district court did not err in dismissing Fields' motion.
Affirmed.