114 Kan. 799 - State v. Ballard

How this case has been cited

Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably State v. Brown (1992), Dunlap v. State (2004)

34 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

HUNTLEY, Justice,

¶1dissenting.

¶2I dissent from the majority opinion on the basis that, despite the unusual circumstances of this case, the State should nevertheless be required to keep its word in the bargain it struck. Ballard entered a guilty plea based upon an agreement by the State that it would limit its sentence recommendation to no more than an indeterminate ten-year sentence concurrent with an indeterminate three-year sentence in another matter.

¶3Despite the subsequent wrongful acts of Ballard, the State is not entitled to retain the guilty plea unless it wishes to abide by the obligations it undertook in the plea bargain.

¶4The appropriate remedy is to allow the withdrawal of the plea and set the case for immediate trial, which would undoubtedly result in the State obtaining a conviction while retaining its honor.