The Kansas Supreme Court today upheld a first-degree murder conviction and an arson conviction against Mark T. Salary.
The court also vacated Salary’s hard-50 life sentence and remanded the case to Wyandotte County District Court for resentencing. The Kansas Supreme Court found that the hard-50 life sentence is unconstitutional under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alleyne v. United States and the Kansas Supreme Court’s State v. Soto decisions.
In March 2008, Salary shot and killed his uncle, Valray “Joe” Estell, in Estell’s home in the 400 block of South 79th Street in Kansas City, Kan., and then set fire to the home, according to court documents. His uncle had 10 gunshot wounds.
Chief Justice Lawton Nuss wrote a unanimous opinion with four main parts:
• Salary was not entitled to a jury instruction on self-defense;
• Any error by the district court in failing to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of voluntary manslaughter based on an imperfect theory of self-defense was harmless;
• The district court’s error in admitting Salary’s recorded confession was harmless; and
• Salary’s hard-50 life sentence was unconstitutional under the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The Wyandotte County district attorney’s office stated that after the Hard 50 sentence had been imposed on Salary, the Supreme Court found the method of imposing that sentence in Kansas unconstitutional. A new sentencing hearing will be set in district court, according to the district attorney’s office.