photo by: Mugshot courtesy of the Kansas Department of Corrections

Raymond Paul Stilley is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A Eudora man’s 18-year armed robbery sentence was reduced by more than half on Wednesday in Douglas County District Court after he successfully argued that his criminal history score had been calculated incorrectly.

In 2021, Raymond Paul Stilley, 34, pleaded no contest to two counts of aggravated robbery and was sentenced to 18 years in prison by Judge Sally Pokorny, as the Journal-World previously reported. At Stilley’s preliminary hearing in February 2021, two of Stilley’s senior relatives testified that on July 12, 2020, Stilley woke them up and demanded money and bank cards from them before taking them as “hostages” and driving them around for several hours in their car. Stilley had also originally been charged with two counts of kidnapping, mistreatment of a dependent adult or an elderly person and criminal threat, but those charges were dismissed as part of his plea agreement.

When Pokorny sentenced Stilley in 2021, she did so in accordance with Kansas’ sentencing guidelines based on Stilley’s criminal history. But Stilley appealed the sentence, arguing that one conviction in his criminal history was incorrectly defined as a person felony, which is the most serious type of felony.

The crime in question was a count of felony conspiracy, which he was convicted of in Mississippi in 2008. When Stilley was sentenced in 2021, the court considered that charge a person felony. But the Kansas Court of Appeals determined in January 2023 that the charge was not a person felony, and that Stilley’s criminal history score should be lowered.

On Wednesday, Pokorny sentenced Stilley to 102 months, or 8.5 years, in prison, which is the standard sentence in the guidelines for Stilley’s new criminal history score. After the hearing, Stilley was returned to the custody of the Kansas Department of Corrections.