State V Stanley Case Study

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In State v. Stanley, the Kansas Court of Appeals held that a defendant’s previous Missouri conviction for driving while intoxicated (“DWI”) would “not qualify as a prior conviction under K.S.A. 2012 Supp. 8-1567(i),” the Kansas DUI statute, representing an important development in the law. The court compared the relevant Kansas and Missouri statutes and relevant case law to determine if the statutes were “equivalent.” The court determined the Kansas statute criminalizes both “operating or attempting to operate a vehicle with a blood- or breath-alcohol level in excess of .08 or more; and . . . operating or attempting to operate a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs to a degree that renders the person incapable of safely driving the vehicle.” In comparison, the Missouri statute, Mo. Rev. Stat. 557.010, criminalizes “operat[ing] a motor vehicle while in an intoxicated or drugged condition.” Thus, the court reasoned, “[t]he Missouri statute, on its face, is too broad to count as a prior conviction under” the Kansas statute because it criminalized “a wider range of activity” than the Kansas DUI statute by focusing on “the fact . . . of intoxication,” not on the degree of intoxication as the Kansas statute …show more content…

The court ultimately concluded that “it is clearly conceivable that an act that would be considered a DWI in Missouri would not be DUI in Kansas,” and the defendant’s prior Missouri DWI should not count as a prior conviction under the Kansas DUI

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