SYG - KS District 5

From: John Houston
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 10:51 AM
To: <mailto:requests@muckrock.com>
requests@muckrock.com
Subject: Re: Requests for "Stand Your Ground" motions

Mike Spies

Via email at <mailto:requests@muckrock.com>
requests@muckrock.com

Dear Mr. Spies:

I am a staff attorney with the Kansas Supreme Court Office
of Judicial Administration. Please consider this a response to your request
for "All Stand Your Ground motions that have been filed by defendants . . .
since January 1, 2006." Please note that the particular request before me
was addressed to the "Kansas District Attorney – 28th Judicial District."
However, please consider this a response to all similar requests made and
sent to judicial districts throughout the State of Kansas.

As I have previously informed you, not all judicial
districts in Kansas have a position called a district attorney. A district
attorney is the chief prosecutor in a judicial district containing only one
county, such as Third Judicial District (Shawnee County). Multi-county
judicial districts have a chief prosecutor in each county which is known as
a county attorney. District/county attorneys are not employees or officials
of the district court or the judicial branch of the State of Kansas.

In addition, your correspondence has been sent to the
district courts. The district courts are not the records custodians for
district/county attorneys in the State of Kansas. As a result, any records
requests addressed to district/county attorneys received by any of the 105
district courts in the State of Kansas are hereby denied because they do not
have any documents that satisfy your requests.

Your most recent correspondence has included a request
pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. Please note that the Freedom of
Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq., applies to federal agencies and not
state agencies. The district courts are considered to be state agencies for
purposes of FOIA. See Lathrop v. Juneau & Associates, 220 F.R.D. 322, 327
(S.D. Ill. 2004). Therefore all your requests pursuant to FOIA are hereby
denied.

To summarize, all requests received to date for "Stand Your
Ground" motions under the Kansas Opens Records Act and/or the Freedom of
Information Act that you have sent to any district court in the State of
Kansas since May 1, 2017 are hereby denied.

Should you decide to amend your requests and seek "Stand Your Ground"
motions that have been filed with the district courts, those requests will
also be denied. The Kansas Open Records Act requires disclosure of
information that is part of the public record, which is defined to mean any
recorded information, regardless of form, characteristics or location, which
is made, maintained or kept by or is in the possession of any public agency,
or any officer or employee of a public agency, if it relates to their
official duties. K.S.A. 45-217(g)(1). KORA does not require release of
records that are prohibited or restricted from disclosure under federal law,
state statute or rule of the Kansas Supreme Court. K.S.A. 45-221(a)(1).

A district court does not make, maintain or keep a single record containing
the information you request. To the extent this information is available in
the public record, providing a response to your request would require
gathering of information from various records on individual cases that are
maintained and kept by the court. This compiling of information is not
permitted under applicable Kansas Supreme Court rules and orders.

First, I call your attention to Kansas Supreme Court Rule 196 dealing with
public access to district court electronic case records. Two provisions of
Rule 196 have particular application to such a request. First, Rule
196(d)(1) provides that public access to electronic case records or
information contained in electronic records “must be available on a
case-by-case basis only[.]” Rule 196(a)(2) defines “Case-by-Case Access” to
mean “that each electronic case record is available only individually and
that when a search for an individual electronic case record returns multiple
results, each result may be viewed only individually.” Second, Rule 196(e)
provides, “Compiled information and bulk distribution will not be
available.” In Rule 196(a)(1), “Bulk distribution” is defined as “the
distribution of all or a significant subset of the information in court case
records in electronic form, as is, and without modification or compilation.”
Rule 196(a)(3) defines “Compiled information” to be “information that is
derived from the selection, aggregation, or reformulation of all or a subset
of all the information from more than one individual court case record in
electronic form." This means cases must be researched individually. The
clerk’s office will not compile reports or provide information in bulk.

To the extent that your request seeks information that has not been
converted to a digital form in order to be considered an electronic case
record, you should refer to Supreme Court Administrative Order 189. “[A]
request for all court records of a certain type or a significant subset of
such records, as opposed to a request for an individual case record, is a
bulk request.” Kan.Sup.Ct. AO 189. The Order further states that all bulk
requests are denied.

In summary, any request to the district courts in the future for all "Stand
Your Ground" motions will be denied. "Stand Your Ground" motions are not a
type of motion that is readily identifiable in our court files. The court
clerks would have to individually review each motion within each case file
and make a legal determination regarding whether the motion qualifies as a
"Stand Your Ground" motion. Our court employees are not permitted to
undertake such an endeavor.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

John T. Houston

Staff Attorney

Office of Judicial Administration

301 SW 10th Street

Topeka, KS 66612

(785) 296-2019 (direct)

(785) 296-2256 (main)

(785) 296-7076 (fax)

From: requests@muckrock.com
[mailto:requests@muckrock.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2017 4:03 AM
To: csclerk@5thjd.org
Subject: RE: Kansas Open Records Act Request: SYG - KS District 5

May 9, 2017
Kansas District Attorney, 5th judicial district (Chase County)
300 Pearl PO Box 529
Cottonwood Falls, KS 66845

This is a follow up to a previous request:

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request,
copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2017. Please let me know
when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is
needed.

Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

---

On May 3, 2017:
To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request,
copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2017. Please let me know
when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is
needed.

Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

---

On April 29, 2017:
To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Kansas Open Records Act (K.S.A. 45-215), I hereby request
the following records:

All Stand Your Ground motions that have been filed by defendants in judicial
district 5 since January 1, 2006.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and
this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me
of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the
request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM
if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look
forward to receiving your response to this request within 3 business days,
as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Mike Spies

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Filed via MuckRock.com
E-mail (Preferred): requests@muckrock.com

For mailed responses, please address (see note):
MuckRock
DEPT MR 36301
411A Highland Ave
Somerville, MA 02144-2516

PLEASE NOTE: This request is not filed by a MuckRock staff member, but is
being sent through MuckRock by the above in order to better track, share,
and manage public records requests. Also note that improperly addressed
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