Registration exception applies if any manufacture for personal use

Lydia Krebs won in State v. Mishmash, No. 103,158 (Kan. Dec. 7, 2012), vacating the offender registration requirement in this Crawford County manufacture prosecution.  The question in the case was whether Mr. Mishmash had to register as a drug offender.  The statute required persons convicted of manufacture to register unless the district court found that the manufacture was for personal use.  The record showed that Mr. Mishmash manufactured for personal use but also gave some to another person.  The state argued that this distribution showed that Mr. Mishmash had not manufactured solely for personal use.  Mr. Mishmash argued that the word solely isn't in the statute and that the record clearly showed that he did manufacture for personal use.  The KSC agreed that it should not put words in the statute:

Under the State's reading of the phrase "personal use," a business that provides computers to its employees and informs them that they may use the computers for personal use would be denying the employees the opportunity to utilize the computers in a professional capacity. A company that provides a car to a traveling salesperson with the explanation that the car may be put to personal use would deny the salesperson the use of the car for sales purposes. Farmers who have marketing agreements to sell part of their crop and retain part of that crop for personal use would not be permitted to feed their families with the retained portion. These situational absurdities illustrate that the words "solely" or "exclusively" are not implicit in the phrase "personal use."

As a result, the KSC vacated the registration requirement.

And, as Carl has noted, another important part of this decision for upcoming KORA/Ex Post Facto Clause cases is the KSC's own description of the registration requirement:

The district court used this finding to deny him the statutory exemption from offender registration. In doing so, the district court improperly added language to the statute that the legislature elected to omit. We therefore vacate that portion of the sentence requiring Mishmash to register as a drug offender.

If the registration requirement is a portion of the sentence, the state should not be able to impose it in other cases retroactively.