State v. Ferguson

The opinion of the court was delivered by These three consolidated appeals are by three defendants who were convicted of various charges of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sodomy, rape and aggravated robbery arising from a single sordid escapade in which all three defendants participated. It occurred on September 28, 1978, at a floral shop in Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas. Two women and one man had remained at the shop after hours that evening to prepare flower arrangements for a wedding which was scheduled the next day. Four black males entered the premises and ordered the three victims to lie on the floor of the back room of the flower shop. Money was taken from all three victims. Guns were used by the robbers. This formed the basis for the three aggravated robbery charges. One of the women in the shop was fondled by one of the robbers, and then a flower shears was inserted in her vagina. The robbers continued to mistreat and beat her until she became unconscious. She was dragged from the back of the shop into a private parking lot. The second woman was forcibly pulled out through the back door of the shop into the same private parking lot. She saw a naked black male astride the first woman's hip section and observed his pumping action as he pressed against the body of the unconscious woman. A gun was placed against the eye socket of the second woman as she lay in the parking lot. Her clothes were torn from her lower body. Then while two men took turns and raped her, the third man while holding the gun to her head forced her to take his penis in her mouth.