Persistent sex offender case

Cory Riddle won in State v. Allen, No. 93,940 (Kan. App. April 7, 2006), reversing an enhanced persistent sex offender sentence based on a prior aggravated incest juvenile adjudication. A divided COA held that because aggravated incest is not in the list of sexually motivated offenses and was not found to be sexually motivated at the time of the prior sentencing it could not be used to enhance the sentence in this case. As noted by the majority, it would cut Mr. Allen's sentence from 110 months to probably 100 months.

Just as an aside, there is another argument that we have been tossing around here regarding whether juvenile adjudications can be used under K.S.A. 21-4704(j) at all. It talks about a prior "conviction" and there are a lot of cases that say an adjudication is not a conviction. In fact, that was a primary basis for the KSC saying that pre-guidelines juvenile adjudications could be used in criminal history even though by statute they are not supposed to be evidence of a crime.

[Update: the state filed a petition for review on May 5, 2006. Mr. Allen filed a cross petition for review on May 8, 2006.]

[Updtae: the KSC granted the state's petition for review and Mr. Allen's cross-petition for review on September 19, 2006. This case should be argued in December 2006 or January 2007].

[Further update: the KSC affirmed on March 16, 2007. Here is my blog entry on the decision.]