Mandate rule does not prevent judge from doing necessary tasks to dispose of a case

Kevin J. Zolotor and Charles A. O'Hara won in State v. Soto, No. 117,059 (Kan. July 26, 2019), obtaining a new hearing in a Sedgwick County murder prosecution. A jury convicted Mr. Soto of premeditated first-degree murder. On appeal, Mr. Soto argued that his hard-50 sentence was unconstitutional under Alleyne v. United States. The KSC vacated the hard-50 sentence and remanded for resentencing (blogged about here). Although initially indicating it would still seek a hard-50 sentence, the state eventually decided to simply settle for a hard-25 sentence.

On remand, the parties learned about a potential Brady violation and newly discovered evidence related to what a witness had said during interviews. After substantial briefing from the parties, the district court held that it was procedurally barred from considering the Brady and newly discovered evidence claims by the mandate rule. After a detailed history of appellate mandates in Kansas, the KSC disagreed:

But this court—as it turns out, in harmony with the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit—has so far resisted the impulse to make the "jurisdictional" generalization about the mandate rule and the broader doctrine of law of the case.

We continue to resist that impulse today. Our synthesis of Kansas precedent on the mandate rule is more nuanced than the State's: The rule applies to prevent district court action on remand only when an issue has already been finally settled by earlier proceedings in a case, including issuance of the appellate mandate. If a final settlement of an issue has occurred, the district judge is not free to expand upon or revise that history. The mandate rule does not, however, prevent a district judge from doing whatever else is necessary to dispose of a case. This means the district judge must not only do as the mandate directs; he or she must also do what is needed to settle other outstanding issues that must be decided to complete district court work on the case. Such issues may have been allocated for decision in the district court in the first place and then untouched by appellate proceedings. They may include issues arising from late-breaking facts.

The KSC also held that the district court had statutory authority to consider Mr. Soto's motion for new trial and so remanded for full consideration of his claims.