Opinion
No. 110,548.
2014-10-10
STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Adnan HUDEIB, Appellant.
Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; Jeffrey Syrios, Judge.Sean M.A. Hatfield and Carl F.A. Maughan, of Maughan Law Group LC, of Wichita, for appellant.Lance J. Gillett, assistant district attorney, Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellee.
Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; Jeffrey Syrios, Judge.
Sean M.A. Hatfield and Carl F.A. Maughan, of Maughan Law Group LC, of Wichita, for appellant. Lance J. Gillett, assistant district attorney, Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellee.
Before LEBEN, P.J., ARNOLD–BURGER, J., and DANIEL L. LOVE, District Judge, assigned.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
PER CURIAM.
Adnan F. Hudeib appeals the district court's imposition of a jail sentence rather than probation for the sexual battery of his mentally handicapped girlfriend. Though he was sentenced to 1 year in jail in accordance with the statute for a class-A misdemeanor, he argues that the district court abused its discretion by ordering jail time because probation would have allowed him to seek mental-health and substance-abuse treatment.
We review the district court's decision whether to send a person to jail or to grant probation on a misdemeanor conviction only for abuse of discretion, and we find no abuse of discretion here. Hudeib had received both substance-abuse and mental-health treatment in the past but still committed this crime, and the court found that Hudeib presented a danger to himself and others. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment.
Factual and Procedural Background
In December 2012, a neighbor of Hudeib and his girlfriend, T.R.B., called the police when she heard a woman screaming at someone to stop hitting her and saw a man straddling T.R.B. through a window. When the police responded to the neighbor's call, they found T.R.B., a mentally handicapped woman, lying naked on her back on a bed. She told the police that she'd been raped. The police detained Hudeib, who was still at the apartment. T.R.B. was taken to the hospital, where a nurse confirmed that she had numerous injuries on her back, legs, arms, hands, and genitals.
Hudeib was charged with the aggravated sexual battery of T.R.B., a severity–level–5 person felony, and domestic battery, a class-B person misdemeanor. While waiting for his trial, Hudeib called a friend, Nabil Saad, and asked him to keep T.R.B. from coming to court. Specifically, he requested that Saad turn off the gas in their apartment so she'd have to leave, drop her off near a downtown center where she'd get lost because of her mental handicap, and take her to Kansas City so she wouldn't make it to court and the charges would be dropped. In January, Saad contacted the police out of concern for T.R.B., and the police confirmed that Hudeib had been making plans to prevent T.R.B. from appearing for the prosecution so that his case would be dropped. Hudeib was then charged in a separate case with violating a protective order and with aggravated intimidation of a witness.
Hudeib entered into a plea agreement with the State in both cases and agreed to make an Alford plea—a plea under which he agreed to accept punishment for the crimes without admitting to them—to one count of misdemeanor sexual battery, two counts of aggravated intimidation of a witness, and one count of violating a protective order. Hudeib also agreed not to contact T.R.B. In exchange, the State agreed to drop the domestic-battery charge and reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor. The State also agreed to join in Hudeib's request for a sentence of 12 months of probation instead of jail time and support his request to have his sentence for battery run concurrently with the sentences for intimidation and violating a protective order.
On May 3, 2013, the district court accepted Hudeib's plea and found that the State had alleged sufficient facts to support the charges. Hudeib told the court that sentencing him to probation would allow him to get the psychiatric and substance-abuse treatment he needed. But the court denied his request and sentenced him to 12 months in the Sedgwick County Jail for misdemeanor sexual battery. The court ordered that the sentence be concurrent to his controlling 22–month prison sentence in the case for witness intimidation and violation of a protective order.
In denying Hudeib's request for probation, the court noted that while treatment was available for Hudeib, it wasn't sure the treatment would be effective because Hudeib had committed these offenses despite having received substance-abuse and psychiatric treatment in the past. The court also said that Hudeib was a danger to himself and others due to his mental health and his substance-abuse problems, which he seemed unable to control.
Hudeib timely appealed his sentences in both cases. The exclusive scope of this appeal is the 12–month jail sentence imposed for his misdemeanor sexual battery conviction.
Analysis
Hudeib argues that the district court erred by sentencing him to jail for misdemeanor sexual battery when it could have sentenced him to probation. Hudeib contends that in light of the evidence he presented at sentencing—that he committed the crimes while off his medication, that prison couldn't provide him the mental-health and alcohol-addiction services he needed, and that community resources could better assist in his rehabilitation—the district court abused its discretion by not granting him probation.
Hudeib was convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery, a class-A person misdemeanor. K.S.A.2013 Supp. 21–5505(a), (c)(1). Kansas law states that a person convicted of a class-A misdemeanor may be sentenced to a “definite term of confinement in a county jail” for 1 year or less. K.S.A.2013 Supp. 21–6602(a)(1). The district court sentenced Hudeib to exactly 1 year for the sexual battery of T.R.B. Hudeib's sentence therefore fell within the statute's permissible length.
Judges must follow Kansas sentencing guidelines in felony cases, but they may give misdemeanor sentences in any manner the statute allows, subject only to our review for abuse of discretion. State v. McCloud, 257 Kan. 1, 9, 891 P.2d 324, cert. denied 516 U.S. 837 (1995); State v. Girard, No. 100,559, 2009 WL 3172772, at *3 (Kan.App.2009) (unpublished decision), rev. denied 290 Kan. 1098 (2010). A district court abuses its discretion when its sentence is arbitrary, fanciful, or unreasonable, based on a mistake of fact or law, or when no reasonable person would agree with its decision. See State v. Warrior, 294 Kan. 484, 505, 277 P.3d 1111 (2012).
Hudeib's sole argument is that his jail sentence is unreasonable in light of his mental-health and substance-abuse problems, which he argues could be more effectively treated if he received a probation sentence. But the district court considered Hudeib's request, and a reasonable person could agree with the district court's decision to send Hudeib to prison.
While Hudeib said he wanted to receive appropriate treatment, the district court noted that he had received substance-abuse or mental-health treatment multiple times during the last 6 years but could not yet control his mental-health issues and addictions. The district court expressly found that Hudeib presented a danger to himself and to others.
The district court also said that it had “very, very little confidence that Mr. Hudeib is amenable to probation....” Hudeib's conduct in this case supports the court's doubt that Hudeib could follow the conditions of his probation. While out on bond for his sexual-battery charge, Hudeib committed three new offenses, including contacting the victim of his crime in violation of a court order and attempting to prevent her from appearing in court to testify against him. A reasonable person could easily agree with the district court's finding that Hudeib was not amenable to probation and its decision to impose a jail sentence instead.
We find no abuse of the district court's discretion in its decision to sentence Hudeib to jail. We therefore affirm its judgment.