State v. Proctor - Kansas Judicial Branch

would be grossly disproportionate to the triggering offense and to the whole of his
criminal history. This would be one of those rare instances in which the operation of the
statutory scheme would call into question the constitutionality of the resulting
punishment as cruel and unusual. In Justice Kennedy's method of analysis, that
determination requires a review of how Kansas punishes more serious crimes and how
other jurisdictions punish similar crimes.
Before turning to those considerations, we take note of State v. Baber, 44 Kan.
App. 2d 748, 753, 240 P.3d 980 (2010). This court's decision in Baber, upholding the
lifetime supervised release provision against a cruel and unusual punishment challenge,
does not control here. In that case, Baber argued only that the duration of the supervision
violated his constitutional rights. The court rejected that argument, at least in part, based
on his failure to produce sufficient evidence. 44 Kan. App. 2d at 751-52. While the
duration of the term of supervision is a component of Proctor's argument, it is only part of
that argument. Proctor also points to the unconstitutionality of imposing mandatory
imprisonment for life based on any new felony conviction. Baber asserted no such
challenge, and the court didn't presume to deal with that argument. The Baber decision,
therefore, neither addresses nor controls on that score.
2. Proctor's Sentence Compared to Sentences for Other Kansas Offenses
The current sentencing regimen in Kansas permits a reliable comparison of the
relative severity of criminal offenses and their usual punishments. To impose a degree of
uniformity in sentencing, the State's system rests on a grid constructed to measure the
severity of the crime of conviction on one axis and a defendant's criminal history on the
other, thus yielding a statutorily presumptive punishment, expressed in months of
incarceration, at their intersection. Offense severity and past convictions are directly
proportional to the presumptive term of incarceration. Thus, a defendant with an
extensive criminal history generally will receive a substantially longer sentence than a
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