State v. Boatman

NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

No. 113,890

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

STATE OF KANSAS,
Appellee,

v.

MART BOATMAN,
Appellant.


MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; WARREN M. WILBERT, judge. Opinion filed June 17, 2016.
Affirmed.

Carl F.A. Maughan and Sean M.A. Hatfield, of Maughan Law Group LC, of Wichita, for
appellant.

Julie A. Koon, assistant district attorney, Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt,
attorney general, for appellee.

Before MALONE, C.J., LEBEN, J., and JOHNSON, S.J.

LEBEN, J.: In 2006, a jury found Mart Boatman guilty of intentional second-degree
murder. The court found that his criminal-history score was B and sentenced him to 586
months in prison. In 2014, Boatman filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence, arguing
that according to State v. Murdock, 299 Kan. 312, 323 P.3d 846 (2014), modified by
Supreme Court order September 19, 2014, overruled by State v. Keel, 302 Kan. 560, 357
P.3d 251 (2015), cert. denied 136 S. Ct. 865 (2016), his criminal-history score was
incorrect because it included two prior convictions that should have been classified as
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nonperson felonies rather than person felonies. The district court denied Boatman's
motion, and we affirm because Murdock has been overruled and is no longer good law.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In 2006, the State charged Boatman with first-degree murder. After a 5-day trial,
the jury found Boatman guilty of intentional second-degree murder. At sentencing, the
district court found that Boatman had a criminal-history score of B, based in part on a
1984 Kansas conviction for aggravated indecent liberties with a child and a 1971 Arizona
conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a child. The court classified both
convictions as person felonies and sentenced Boatman to the mid-range sentence, 586
months in prison with 36 months of postrelease supervision.

Boatman appealed his conviction and sentence, and our court affirmed in
September 2008. State v. Boatman, No. 97,797, 2008 WL 4291472 (Kan. App. 2008)
(unpublished opinion), rev. denied 288 Kan. 833 (2009). Boatman then filed a habeas
motion under K.S.A. 60-1507, claiming that his trial counsel had been ineffective; the
district court held a hearing and denied the motion, and our court again affirmed.
Boatman v. State, No. 103,724, 2011 WL 2555428 (Kan. App.) (unpublished opinion),
rev. denied 293 Kan. 1105 (2011).

Three years later, in December 2014, Boatman filed a motion to correct an illegal
sentence, arguing, based on Murdock, that his criminal-history score was incorrectly
calculated. The district court denied Boatman's motion without a hearing, finding that
Murdock and another case dealing with how to calculate a defendant's criminal-history
score, State v. Dickey, 301 Kan. 1018, 350 P.3d 1054 (2015), didn't apply to Boatman's
case and that Murdock didn't apply retroactively to collateral actions—like this motion to
correct an illegal sentence—that are brought after the conviction and sentence have
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become final. In Boatman's case, of course, his sentence and conviction became final
when his direct appeal ended unsuccessfully in 2008.

Boatman has appealed to this court.

ANALYSIS

Boatman argues that his sentence is illegal because the district court, under
Murdock, should have classified two of his prior convictions as nonperson rather than
person felonies, which would have resulted in a lower criminal-history score and a
shorter sentence. Whether a prior conviction was correctly classified as a person or
nonperson crime for criminal-history purposes is a question of law over which we have
unlimited review. Dickey, 301 Kan. at 1034.

Murdock, a 2014 Kansas Supreme Court opinion, interpreted the Kansas
Sentencing Guidelines Act and held that a defendant's pre-1993 out-of-state convictions
had to be scored as nonperson offenses for criminal-history purposes. 299 Kan. at 318-19.
Under that ruling, at least one of Boatman's prior felonies—a 1971 Arizona conviction
for contributing to the delinquency of a child through indecent exposure—should have
been classified as nonperson. But Murdock came out 6 years after Boatman's conviction
and sentence became final. In addition, as Boatman concedes, while Boatman's motion to
correct illegal sentence has remained pending, the Kansas Supreme Court overruled
Murdock in Keel, 302 Kan. at 589-90. As such, Murdock provides no basis for
reclassifying any of Boatman's prior convictions. See State v. Hammitt, No. 113,489,
2016 WL 1079463, at *6 (Kan. App.) (unpublished opinion) (after Keel, Murdock didn't
provide a basis for reclassifying a 1980 Kansas misdemeanor battery conviction), petition
for rev. filed April 21, 2016.

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Boatman also argues that classifying prior convictions as person crimes always
violates Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490-91, 120 S. Ct. 2348, 147 L. Ed. 2d
435 (2000), because it requires the district court to make a factual finding—namely, that
the prior conviction was a person crime—that increases a defendant's sentence. Apprendi
held that "[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for
a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved
beyond a reasonable doubt." 530 U.S. at 490. Kansas courts have consistently held that
including the fact of a prior conviction in sentencing doesn't violate Apprendi. State v.
Overman, 301 Kan. 704, 716-17, 348 P.3d 516 (2015) (citing State v. Ivory, 273 Kan. 44,
41 P.3d 781 [2002]). And since the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines became effective in
1993, most Kansas statutes expressly state whether a crime is a person or nonperson
crime. See Keel, 302 Kan. at 574-75. So for crimes committed in Kansas after the 1993
amendments, the person classification doesn't require any factfinding because the statute
underlying the prior conviction expressly states whether it's a person or nonperson crime.
See 302 Kan. at 574-75.

But for pre-1993 and out-of-state convictions, the district court must compare the
prior-conviction statute to the statute in effect in Kansas at the time that the current crime
was committed to make the person or nonperson classification—this is the holding of
Keel. 302 Kan. at 581; see K.S.A. 2015 Supp. 21-6811(d) and (e) (both sections expressly
require the district court to make additional findings to classify pre-1993 and out-of-state
convictions). Boatman argues that this process always violates Apprendi, but he is
incorrect. As the Kansas Supreme Court recently demonstrated in Dickey, it's possible to
compare the relevant statutes and make the person/nonperson classification without
violating Apprendi by looking only at statutory elements, not at facts underlying the prior
conviction, and using the categorical or modified-categorical approaches as outlined by
the United States Supreme Court in Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct.
2276, 186 L. Ed. 2d 438 (2013). See State v. King, No. 113,514, 2016 WL 1399013, at *2
(Kan. App. 2016) (unpublished opinion) (holding that using criminal history to increase a
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sentence doesn't violate Apprendi even when the court compares prior-conviction statutes
to comparable Kansas statutes to make the person/nonperson classification), petition for
rev. filed May 9, 2016.

Boatman also argues that House Bill 2053, which amended the Kansas Sentencing
Guidelines Act in response to Murdock, violates the United States Constitution's Ex Post
Facto Clause, which prohibits increasing a sentence for a crime after that crime has been
committed. But we don't have to consider this argument because we aren't applying that
statutory amendment in this case—we are applying the rule from Keel, which says that
we classify prior convictions based on the Kansas classification in effect when the current
crime was committed. 302 Kan. at 590-91; State v. Friesen, No. 113,495, 2016 WL
1546178, at *2 (Kan. App. 2016) (unpublished opinion) (choosing not to respond to a
similar argument because Keel applied, not House Bill 2053); Hammitt, 2016 WL
1079463, at *6 ("We are able to independently decide the issue under Keel and do not
need to retroactively apply [the statute]."). And the Keel rule complies with the Ex Post
Facto Clause because using prior convictions to increase the sentence for the current
crime only punishes the current offense—it doesn't increase the penalty for those prior
convictions. 302 Kan. at 590.

Finally, Boatman argues that the district court should have held a hearing before
denying his motion. K.S.A. 22-3504(1) states that a court may correct an illegal sentence
at any time and that "[t]he defendant shall have a right to a hearing . . . [and] to be
personally present . . . in any proceeding for the correction of an illegal sentence." But as
Boatman concedes, Kansas courts have long held that before taking any other action,
district courts should conduct an initial examination of a motion to correct an illegal
sentence. Makthepharak v. State, 298 Kan. 573, 576, 314 P.3d 876 (2013). Based on that
initial examination, the district court can dismiss the motion without holding a hearing or
appointing counsel if the case file conclusively shows that the defendant is not entitled to
relief. 298 Kan. at 576. Kansas courts have consistently rejected Boatman's argument that
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the plain language of K.S.A. 22-3504(1) requires a substantive hearing in all cases, and
we do the same here. See 298 Kan. at 576 (citing State v. Heronemus, 294 Kan. 933, 935-
36, 281 P.3d 172 [2012]).

Because Murdock has been overruled and none of Boatman's other arguments
have merit, we affirm the district court's judgment, which denied Boatman's motion to
correct an illegal sentence.