A divided Kansas Supreme Court issued an opinion Friday overturning a 2013 decision by the state's highest court to judicially expand eligibility for post-conviction DNA testing based on a person's term of imprisonment.

A 4-3 majority of Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Dan Biles, Eric Rosen and Caleb Stegall narrowed the scope of convictions eligible for DNA testing under a state law addressing post-conviction appeals. The Kansas Legislature allowed the testing for first-degree murder and rape cases, but the Supreme Court had interpreted the law to include a second-degree murder case.

"The Legislature has authority to grant a limited right to access post-conviction DNA testing procedures without violating equal protection principles," Biles said in the opinion.

The case resulting in the Supreme Court's reversal involved a Roeland Park man found guilty of using a sawed-off shotgun in the robbery of a Payless shoe store in 2000, a crime that netted him $1,000 stuffed into a shopping bag.

Jack LaPointe, a 49-year-old inmate at Hutchinson Correctional Facility, was convicted by a jury of aggravated robbery and aggravated assault. Years later, he argued he was entitled to post-conviction DNA analysis of biological material linked to the Payless robbery because his 20-year prison sentence at that time was comparable to the punishment for first-degree murder and longer than sentences for rape.

A Johnson County District Court judge agreed with LaPointe and ordered DNA testing, despite objections from county prosecutors. The judge later concluded the results — one hair from a bandana didn't belong to LaPointe, while examination of a hair from a glove was inclusive — wouldn't have changed the jury's verdict. The judge refused to vacate LaPointe's conviction and denied him a new trial.

The Kansas Court of Appeals in 2016 agreed with the district court. In the follow-up decision by the Supreme Court, the justices unanimously rejected LaPointe's appeal for retrial. However, a four-justice majority went further by declaring the request for testing wasn't covered by state law opening the door to post-conviction DNA testing of murder and rape evidence.

In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled itself in State v. Cheeks, the 2013 ruling that expanded post-conviction DNA testing to a second-degree murder defendant to avoid perceived equal protection issues. Cheeks had been convicted in the 1992 murder of his wife, who died in a brutal assault with a hammer in Kansas City, Kan.

"Applying that analysis to LaPointe," Biles said in the majority opinion, "his crimes are distinguishable from first-degree murder and rape for the obvious reason they involved neither a killing nor sexual intercourse."

Supreme Court Justice Carol Beier said in the dissent joined by Justices Marla Lucker and Lee Johnson the LaPointe case could have been resolved without overruling the court's 2013 decision. Beier's dissent said LaPointe was ineligible to file a motion for DNA testing under the statute written by legislators, but the majority's justification for spiking State v. Cheeks was flawed.

In the dissenting opinion, Beier said LaPointe's lengthy prison sentence was "largely attributable to his extensive criminal history, not to the severity level and long sentences assigned to his crimes in this case." LaPointe had been convicted of a series of offenses in Sedgwick County.