Summary
The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Curtis Lee Coleman Jr.'s convictions for premeditated first-degree murder and aggravated assault arising from a shooting when Coleman was 15 years old. The court upheld the constitutionality of prosecuting him as an adult under K.S.A. 38-1636(a)(2), rejected challenges concerning jury instructions and prosecutorial closing argument, and upheld the hard 40 sentencing procedure against an Apprendi challenge. The court vacated the hard 40 sentence because the trial court improperly considered nonstatutory aggravating factors and remanded for resentencing.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether K.S.A. 38-1636(a)(2), which presumes a qualifying juvenile to be an adult and places the burden on the juvenile to rebut the presumption, violates procedural due process.
- Whether the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury on self-defense.
- Whether the trial court plainly erred by failing to instruct on voluntary manslaughter.
- Whether the prosecutor's improper closing-argument remark denied Coleman a fair trial.
- Whether the hard 40 sentencing procedure violated the Sixth Amendment under Apprendi v. New Jersey.
- Whether the sentencing court improperly considered the victim's age and the victim's mental state as nonstatutory aggravating circumstances when imposing the hard 40 sentence.
Holdings
- K.S.A. 38-1636(a)(2)'s rebuttable presumption that a qualifying juvenile is an adult does not violate procedural due process because it does not shift the burden of proving any element of the charged offenses and the juvenile receives an opportunity to rebut the presumption under the statutory factors.
- The trial court properly refused to give a self-defense instruction because, even viewing the evidence favorably to Coleman, he armed himself, returned to the scene, and chose to engage in the conflict.
- The failure to give a voluntary-manslaughter instruction was not clearly erroneous because the evidence did not show extreme emotional disturbance or an honest belief that deadly force was justified.
- The prosecutor's improper remark that defense counsel knew where missing witnesses were did not require reversal because the trial court sustained the objection, admonished the jury, and the substantial evidence and circumstances did not show prejudicial denial of a fair trial.
- Under the facts of this case, imposition of the hard 40 sentence did not violate Coleman's Sixth Amendment rights.
- The sentencing court improperly considered the victim's age and the victim's mental state because K.S.A. 21-4636 limits aggravating circumstances to those specified by the legislature.
Key quotations
“The presumption in K.S.A. 38-1636(a)(2) does not violate procedural due process rights.” (at 738)
“With the two nonstatutory aggravating circumstances removed from the balance, the circumstances must be reweighed.” (at 742)
Factual background
Coleman, age 15, shot at people in the 1900 block of Tennyson in Kansas City, Kansas, after an earlier incident in which he claimed Jason Clark had chased his vehicle and fired at him. Coleman went to his brother's house, obtained a gun, returned to the area, and fired several shots. A 10-year-old girl, Shanell Cooper, was killed, and three bystanders were the subjects of aggravated-assault convictions.
Procedural history
A jury convicted Coleman, who was 15 years old at the time of the offense, of premeditated first-degree murder and three aggravated assaults. The trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole for 40 years, plus a consecutive 13-month sentence for the aggravated assaults. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the convictions, vacated the hard 40 sentence because the trial court relied on two nonstatutory aggravating circumstances, and remanded for resentencing.
Remand instructions
The trial court must vacate the hard 40 sentence and reweigh the one remaining aggravating circumstance against the mitigating circumstances without considering the victim's age or the victim's mental state. Coleman's convictions were affirmed; no issue was raised regarding the aggravated-assault sentences.