Merryfield v. State

Leben, J.:

For more than a decade, Dustin Merryfield has been confined at the Lamed State Hospital under the Kansas Sexually Violent Predator Act, K.S.A. 59-29a01 etseq. He has filed a habeascorpus petition under K.S.A. 60-1501 raising claims that go to the core of the Kansas treatment program for sexual predators: Merryfield claims that the program is run so poorly that it doesn’t offer a realistic opportunity to cure or improve the mental abnormality for which he has been involuntarily confined. We must reverse the district court summary dismissal of Merryfield’s petition because it raises…