Kansas Supreme Court orders that convicted robber be re-sentenced

A woman imprisoned on an aggravated robbery conviction will get a new sentence after the Kansas Supreme Court found a prosecutor broke a promise made in her plea agreement.

The high court in a split decision on Friday ordered Tiffany A. Jones’ case be remanded to Sedgwick County District Court for re-sentencing after ruling the prosecutor failed to fulfill the terms of her plea deal by not specifically recommending the agreed-upon sentence of probation when he addressed the judge at her sentencing hearing.

Jones, 31, pleaded guilty in a September 2008 aggravated robbery and expected to avoid prison time after the state promised to join her request for a lesser sentence. But after Jones’ defense attorney cited agreed-upon reasons for wanting a probation sentence in open court, the prosecutor did not specifically “join in” the request, as set forth in the plea deal.

The prosecutor then disagreed with statements made by Jones’ attorney about the extent of the robbery victim’s injuries and told the judge that despite this, the state was “sort of bound by the plea agreement” to follow its terms.

Rather than ordering probation, the judge sentenced Jones to 59 months in prison.

She later appealed the sentence, arguing that the state’s comments at the hearing “only paid lip service” to the plea deal.

In the Supreme Court’s decision, Justice Dan Biles wrote that the state’s breach was “one of omission – a failure to ensure the sentencing court was aware of the probation recommendation the State obligated itself to make.”

“During the sentencing hearing, the prosecutor acknowledged that the parties had a deal … but he did not confirm that the State was actually recommending probation or recite the agreed-upon bases” for it, Biles wrote.

“The prosecutor’s conduct … more closely resembles what we would expect of a prosecutor who agreed to stand silent,” he continued.

“The failure to openly express the State’s agreed-to recommendation or direct the sentencing judge to the plea agreement’s specific provisions … and ensure it was in the court’s possession is the tipping point.”

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Carol Beier wrote that, asked for input, the prosecutor referred the judge to the plea agreement, which “I am certain that the judge had … before him.” About the prosecutor’s disagreement over the extent of the victim’s injuries, she said the state has a right to “set the record straight” when a defense attorney “may have left an inaccurate impression” of the facts.

Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justice Marla Luckert joined in the dissent.

“Under these circumstances, the defendant got what she bargained for,” Beier wrote. “The State did not commit a sin of omission. It committed no sin, not even a venial one, and it should not be required to participate in the penitential rite of a new sentencing in exchange for this court’s absolution.”

The Supreme Court’s opinion reverses a decision by the state’s appeals court, which twice held the prosecutor did not breach the plea agreement.

The date of Jones’ new sentencing hearing was not immediately available Friday. According to Kansas Department of Corrections’ online records, her earliest possible release date under the newly vacated sentence is July 5.

This story was originally published June 14, 2015 at 9:54 PM with the headline "Kansas Supreme Court orders that convicted robber be re-sentenced."