Joanna Labastida and Randall L. Hodgkinson won in State v. Corbin, No. 113,585 (Kan. December 23, 2016), obtaining a new sentencing hearing in a Saline County first-degree murder prosecution. Mr. Corbin had pleaded no contest in the case, but then requested that the district court determine if he was a person with "intellectual disability" under K.S.A. 21-6622(b). If a person falls into this definition, Kansas statute allows for a mitigated sentence.
The district court refused and imposed a hard 25 sentence. After sentencing, but during the appeal, the legislature amended the definition of "intellectual disability." The KSC held that the district court should consider the amended definition:
"'[1] Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning' may be established by performance which is two or more standard deviations from the mean score on a standardized intelligence test specified by the secretary. Such standardized intelligence test shall take into account the standard error of measurement, [2] and subaverage general intellectual functioning may be established by means in addition to standardized intellectual testing. The amendments made to this subsection by this act shall be construed and applied retroactively." (Emphasis added.) L. 2016, ch. 108, sec. 1.
The state did not dispute that the amended defintion applied retroactively, but it argued that it would not make any difference. The KSC was not so sure:
Indeed, outside of the court's reference to some statements Corbin made regarding actions he might take once he was in the Department of Corrections, it exclusively relied upon the results of these two standardized intelligence tests.
The State acknowledges that the statutory amendments permit the determination of intellectual disability to be established by means in addition to standardized intellectual testing and points out that Corbin presented evidence in addition to a mean score on such tests. For example, the two reports also included information about Corbin's psychiatric and social history and the interviewing doctors' observations. But just as the original statute led the district court to focus on the results of the standardized intelligence tests, it may also have caused Corbin to feel prohibited from submitting evidence of additional means in order to establish his intellectual disability—means now permitted under the new definition.
Given our assumption that the 2016 amendments to K.S.A. 76-12b01 apply retroactively, then we must remand under these circumstances.
[Update: on remand, the district court found that Mr. Corbin was not "intellectually disabled" under the amended statute and the KSC affirmed that finding in State v. Corbin, No. 119,665 (Kan. April 17, 2020).]
No comments:
Post a Comment