Wyandotte County District Judge Constance Alvey is scheduled to sit with the Kansas Supreme Court on Sept. 12.
Judge Alvey was appointed to hear one case on the court’s Sept. 12 summary calendar, according to a news release from the Kansas courts. She will join the Supreme Court justices in their decision drafting.
“I am pleased that District Judge Alvey is taking time from her duties in the 29th Judicial District to sit with the Supreme Court,” Chief Justice Lawton Nuss said. “It’s a great help to our court, and we look forward to her contributions in deliberating and eventually deciding this case.”
Alvey was elected a judge in 2008 in the 29th Judicial District, which is composed of Wyandotte County.
“I am honored to be asked to sit with the Supreme Court,” Alvey said. “I am looking forward to seeing how another level of the law is conducted, since I have been working in some aspect of the law since I was 15 years old and have never tired of my love for the law and learning more.”
Alvey was in high school when she started working as a filing clerk in a law office. She became a district court file clerk and legal secretary, then studied to become a court reporter. She was a certified court reporter for Wyandotte County District Court.
Alvey said she then decided to return to college. She received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Rockhurst University and a law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law while working as a freelance court reporter. She then worked as a lawyer in the 29th Judicial District’s court trustee’s office and later as a prosecutor in Kansas and Missouri.
“My path to becoming a judge was because of my love for the law,” Alvey said.
When a case does not present a new question of law, and oral argument is deemed neither helpful to the court nor essential to a fair hearing of the appeal, it is placed on the summary calendar. These cases are deemed submitted without oral argument.
The case Alvey will deliberate is State vs. Aaron Robert Brown, a petition for review from Cowley County. A jury convicted Brown of involuntary manslaughter although jurors were not instructed on that crime. The district judge changed the verdict to voluntary manslaughter and sentenced Brown. Brown appealed the conviction. The Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that the district court’s revision was a reversible error and remanded for a new trial on attempted voluntary manslaughter. The Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions for criminal possession of a firearm and aggravated assault. The state then asked the Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals finding on revising the verdict. Brown is representing himself in the case, where the question is now whether the district court properly entered a conviction against Brown for attempted voluntary manslaughter.