Opinion
No. 112401.
03-06-2015
STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Jeffrey A. TURNER, Appellant.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
PER CURIAM.
Jeffrey A. Turner appeals the district court's decision denying his motion to correct an illegal sentence. We granted Turner's motion for summary disposition under Supreme Court Rule 7.041A (2014 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 66). Because we do not find merit in Turner's argument, we affirm.
On November 12, 2002, Turner pled guilty to one count of aggravated criminal sodomy. According to the presentence investigation report, he had been adjudicated for a juvenile person felony aggravated sexual assault of a child offense in Texas on November 20, 2001. The presentence investigation report scored this adjudication as a person felony, which meant Turner had a criminal history score of D. As such, the district court imposed the standard 190–month prison sentence for the aggravated criminal sodomy conviction with a criminal history of D. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Turner's sentence on appeal. State v. Turner, No. 90,677, 2004 WL 556732 (Kan.2004) (unpublished opinion).
About 10 years later, Turner filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence in which he argued that the State improperly scored his 2001 Texas adjudication as a person felony. Specifically, Turner argued that under State v. Murdoch, 299 Kan. 312, 323 P.3d 846 (2014), modified by Supreme Court order September 19, 2014, and State v. Williams, 291 Kan. 554, 244 P.3d 667 (2010), the adjudication should have been scored as a non-person felony for purposes of determining his criminal history. Thus, he requested that the district court resentence him with a criminal history of G.
The district court denied Turner's motion to correct an illegal sentence, and he appealed. Turner admits, however, that Murdoch contains language indicating that its holding is limited to prior offenses that were committed before 1993. In other words, Turner is asking us to disregard established precedent.
Whether a sentence is illegal within the meaning of K.S.A. 22–3504(1) is a question of law, which we review de novo. State v.. Taylor, 299 Kan. 5, 8, 319 P.3d 1256 (2014). Here, Turner has not shown why we should disregard Murdoch, which held that all out-of-state convictions committed prior to the enactment of the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Act (KSGA), K.S.A. 21–4701 et seq. , in 1993 must be classified as nonperson offenses for criminal history purposes. 299 Kan. 312, Syl. ¶ 5. Accordingly, we are duty bound to follow Murdoch.
Because Turner's juvenile adjudication occurred in 2001, at which time Kansas was categorizing crimes as person or nonperson felonies, it was not erroneous for the sentencing court in 2002 to categorize his prior juvenile adjudication as a person offense when determining his criminal history. Moreover, Turner has not shown that his criminal history calculation was improper under Williams.
We, therefore, affirm the district court's decision denying Turner's motion to correct an illegal sentence.
Affirmed.