A Kansas Court of Appeals panel has affirmed Lyon County District Court’s decision to revoke probation and impose a prison sentence after a plea agreement in a case last fall.
In September, John Jeremiah Rutherford was sentenced to 42 months in prison after no contest pleas to single counts of methamphetamine possession and criminal possession of a firearm. District court granted Rutherford’s motion for a dispositional departure and put him on probation for 18 months, but he had to undergo a drug court evaluation as one of the conditions.
Rutherford failed to appear at two drug court sessions, so he had to serve three and seven days in jail, respectively. Drug court also issued a bench warrant for failure to appear this past February, so prosecutors moved to revoke his probation — saying he had failed to submit three urinalysis tests and another five tested positive for meth in addition to missing the drug court sessions and not attending group sessions. On top of that, prosecutors alleged Rutherford had committed new crimes.
Rutherford said district court should have imposed an intermediate sanction that would have let him get treatment. The Court of Appeals panel sided with district court, saying district court had the authority to revoke Rutherford’s probation and his actions after sentencing would fail to persuade any reasonable person that district court was wrong to impose the underlying prison sentence.
