Background
Murdock Jacob Dechant was on parole in January 2023, having been previously convicted of a person felony. A condition of his parole prohibited him from possessing firearms. His parole officer, Emily Underwood, received an email intercepted by El Dorado Correctional Facility containing a photograph showing Dechant with what appeared to be a firearm tucked in his waistband, posed in a romantic photograph with his girlfriend Kaley James. Officers obtained consent to search Dechant’s new residence at James’s address and found a German Sports Gun .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol inside Dechant’s duffel bag. Dechant later made statements in jail phone calls referring to “my gun” and stating he would not permit officers to take it. A jury convicted him of criminal possession of a weapon by a convicted felon under K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 21-6304(a)(2).
That statute prohibits firearm possession by a person who (A) was convicted of a person felony, (B) was not found by the convicting court to have used a firearm in that prior crime, and (C) has not yet served three years since discharge from the sentence, probation, parole, or postrelease supervision. It is the narrowest of four firearm-prohibition tiers in the statute, which otherwise impose eight-year and lifetime bans. Before trial, Dechant moved to dismiss the charge as facially unconstitutional under both the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and section 4 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights. Section 4, adopted by Kansas voters in 2010, provides: “A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state, for lawful hunting and recreational use, and for any other lawful purpose.” Dechant argued that this language is broader than the Second Amendment and that mere possession of a firearm—without evidence of present dangerousness—cannot be criminalized consistently with either provision. The district court denied the motion and sentenced him to 20 months’ imprisonment.
On appeal, Dechant also argued the district court abused its discretion by admitting the prison-intercepted photograph, contending Underwood lacked the foundational knowledge to authenticate it because she had not taken the photograph and did not know when it was made.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed both the constitutional ruling and the evidentiary ruling.
On the Second Amendment, the court applied the governing line from District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), through New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), and United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024). Heller itself cautioned that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” 554 U.S. at 626. Because K.S.A. 21-6304(a)(2) targets only convicted felons within three years of discharge—the shortest of the four prohibition tiers—it falls squarely within the historical tradition of firearm regulation that supports felon-disarmament laws. No further analysis was required under the Bruen framework.
On section 4 of the Kansas Constitution, the court acknowledged an ongoing split among Court of Appeals panels that the Kansas Supreme Court has not yet resolved. State v. Hall, 65 Kan. App. 2d 369 (2025), rev. denied 320 Kan. 864, interpreted section 4 as providing protections independent of the Second Amendment and applied strict scrutiny. State v. McKinney, 59 Kan. App. 2d 345 (2021), rev. denied 313 Kan. 1044, interpreted section 4 in lockstep with the Second Amendment. The court declined to choose between these frameworks because K.S.A. 21-6304(a)(2) survives under either. Under the lockstep approach, Heller’s categorical felon exception resolves the challenge. Under independent strict scrutiny, the statute is narrowly tailored—it covers only a defined category of recently convicted person-felons for a brief three-year window—to the compelling state interest in protecting the public from persons who have recently demonstrated a propensity for violence. The court also observed that section 4’s text itself—granting the right “for any other lawful purpose”—implicitly authorizes the Legislature to designate certain possessions unlawful, and that Kansas has prohibited felon firearm possession in substantially this form since at least 1969.
On the photograph, the court held that authentication under K.S.A. 60-464 requires only minimal foundation: evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it to be. Underwood personally identified Dechant in the photograph based on her familiarity with him as his parole supervisor, described how the prison’s email-interception system acquired the image, and testified that it was a fair and accurate representation of what the prison sent her. Circumstantial evidence placed the photograph within the parole period. Under Kansas law, the photographer need not be the authenticating witness. No abuse of discretion occurred.
Key Takeaways
- K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 21-6304(a)(2), which prohibits firearm possession for three years following discharge from sentence for a person felony, is facially constitutional under both the Second Amendment and section 4 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights; the Second Amendment’s categorical felon-disarmament exception from Heller disposes of the federal claim, and the statute also survives section 4 strict scrutiny as narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest.
- The Court of Appeals declined to resolve the unresolved split between Hall (section 4 provides independent, stricter protections) and McKinney (section 4 interpreted in lockstep with the Second Amendment); Kansas practitioners who wish to challenge firearm restrictions on state constitutional grounds should preserve the section 4 independent-analysis argument for Kansas Supreme Court review.
- Photograph authentication in Kansas requires only minimal foundation; a witness who knows the subject and can attest to the photograph’s accuracy satisfies K.S.A. 60-464 even if the witness did not take the photograph or observe the depicted events.
Why It Matters
Dechant is the latest Kansas appellate decision working through the post-Bruen landscape. For practitioners defending felon-in-possession charges, the ruling confirms that K.S.A. 21-6304(a)(2)—the three-year tier—is currently the most durable of the four prohibition tiers constitutionally. Arguments based on the longer prohibitions in subsections (a)(1) (lifetime) and (a)(3) (eight-year) may present more viable challenges, particularly where the prior conviction did not involve violent conduct, because the historical tradition rationale weakens as the connection between the predicate offense and future dangerousness grows more attenuated.
The unresolved section 4 split is the more consequential issue for Kansas practitioners. The Kansas Supreme Court has denied review in both Hall and McKinney without resolving the divergence, meaning the state constitutional question remains genuinely open. Section 4’s language differs meaningfully from the Second Amendment—it explicitly includes “defense of self, family, home and state” as a guaranteed purpose and reserves only “unlawful” purposes for restriction. Whether that textual difference compels broader protection than Heller affords is a question worth preserving at every level, as it is not foreclosed by federal precedent and remains entirely within the Kansas Supreme Court’s independent interpretive authority.