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Juvenile adjudication doesn't trigger persistent sex offender penalty [NOT FINAL]

Lydia Krebs won in State v. Boyer, No. 98,763 (Kan. App. Sept. 5, 2008), reversing a Sedgwick county enhanced persistent sex offender sentence. The COA reviewed the statutory scheme and concluded that it only applies to convictions, not juvenile adjudications:

K.S.A. 21-4710(a) has no explicit application to anything but figuring the criminal-history score, a separate endeavor from classifying a person as a persistent sex offender. In K.S.A. 21-4710(a), the legislature certainly has carefully defined which past convictions and adjudications count in calculating a criminal-history score. But the past cases we have cited note how carefully the statutes for criminal sentencing have been constructed. For the reasons we have explained, we cannot add language to K.S.A. 21-4704(j) that is not present there--and the statute simply makes no reference at all to juvenile adjudications or, for that matter, to K.S.A. 21-4710(a).

The COA acknowledged that this result was different than a previous unpublished COA case, but was persuaded by the clear statutory language.

Full post as published by Kansas Defenders on September 13, 2008 (boomark / email).