Opinion ID: 2431503
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: all hearings held pursuant to this section shall be combined with any hearing provided for by krs 532.080 (the persistent felony offender hearing.) krs 532.055(3).

Text: This scenario presents a variety of problems of insolvable complexity: (a) As set out above, limitations on evidence admissible to prove previous convictions under the PFO statute are in direct conflict with the evidence regarding these previous felonies that will be permissible under the new statute: (1) The nature of the prior conviction is not admissible in a PFO proceeding. (2) Evidence regarding parole is not permissible in a PFO proceeding. (3) The PFO statute requires a finding of fact by the jury that the proof is sufficient to establish the previous conviction(s). (4) The PFO statute contemplates that a sentence must first be set for the underlying offense before any evidence is received regarding prior offenses. (5) When a jury finds an accused guilty as a PFO but is unable to agree on the proper punishment, the judge may not impose the punishment. Commonwealth v. Crooks, Ky., 655 S.W.2d 475 (1983). As a practical matter it is impossible to follow the statutes and decisions applicable to the PFO procedure and the provisions of the new statutes in a single proceeding, because they are in direct conflict. b) The majority decision proposes that the jury in the combined bifurcated hearing could be instructed to (1) fix a penalty on the basic charge in the indictment; (2) determine then whether the defendant is guilty as a persistent felony offender, and if so; (3) fix the enhanced penalty as a persistent felony offender. The practical effect of this is inherently abusive. The jury hears, at the same time, evidence that is now permissible in setting a sentence for the underlying offense but which is improper for deciding (a) whether a person is guilty as a PFO, and (b) if so, the proper enhanced penalty as a PFO. There is no practical way that the jury can compartmentalize this information so as to avoid prejudice in all three decisions: the penalty for the underlying offense, the determination of guilt as a PFO, and the enhanced penalty. The same evidence will be used over and over again with the result that the penalty for the underlying offense will be greater, the determination of guilt as a PFO offender will be prejudiced, and the enhanced penalty as a PFO will be further increased. The multiple enhancement effect of the suggested hearing is so fraught with prejudice that it should be considered fundamentally offensive to the concept of justice. Our present system contemplates that a jury shall decide the punishment for the offense for which the defendant has been convicted on the basis of the evidence that relates to the nature of this offense. Even Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado had sufficient inherent sense of justice to demand that the punishment fit the crime. No person, however bad his past record, should receive a punishment greater than the punishment that fits the crime. Our present system contemplates that only after a jury has set a punishment that fits the crime, shall the jury hear evidence of previous offenses. The judge orders a Presentence Report providing information similar to that which will now be heard by the jury only after the jury has fixed the punishment, before imposing sentence, and then uses that Presentence Report only in deciding whether the sentence imposed should be probated or the punishment imposed should be mitigated. KRS 532.050; KRS 532.040; KRS 532.070. The report shall be prepared and presented by a probation officer and shall include an analysis of the defendant's history of delinquency or criminality, physical and mental condition, family situation and background, economic status, education, occupation, personal habits, and any other matters that the court directs to be included. KRS 532.050(2). Either the present statute is intended as a substitute for our existing procedures, or it isn't. If it is, the jury will be deprived of much of the information that is presently included in a Presentence Report, and, indeed much of that information could not be presented in a form admissible under the rules of evidence. The concept that the jury will now do something beyond setting a punishment to fit the crime, which is inherent in the new method for jury sentencing established by KRS 532.055, is simply unworkable. If the defendant cannot present other evidence that may qualify him to leniency coextensive with the range of information provided by a Presentence Report, his rights have been seriously prejudiced. On the other hand, if the defendant is permitted to present other evidence that may qualify him for leniency, the proceedings will become so lengthy and complex as to destroy the system. The problems presented here are not imaginary, they are inherent in the present statutory scheme that we have embraced by way of comity. In summary, under the new scheme the jury will use the same evidence to enhance punishment three times. 1) The extrinsic evidence of other offenses will be used by the jury in setting the original sentence, rather than, as is presently the case, limiting the evidence to that which relates to the crime for which the jury has convicted. 2) In deciding whether a defendant is guilty of being a persistent felony offender, evidence of other offenses, felonies and misdemeanors, which would not be relevant to determining guilt as a PFO, will be presented to the jury to utilize in deciding that question. 3) This evidence of other offenses not involved in the PFO charge will also be utilized in fixing the enhanced penalty as a persistent felony offender. Recently, in Musselman v. Commonwealth, Ky., 705 S.W.2d 476 (1986), a majority of our Court had the courage to invalidate on constitutional grounds a portion of the harassment statute, KRS 525.070(1)(b). We stated that, [a]s written the statute is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, and [w]e reject the argument that a criminal statute facially unconstitutional can be `authoritatively construed' by the courts to render it constitutional . . . 705 S.W.2d at 477-78. We cited Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983), holding that a loitering statute was unconstitutionally vague on its face within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 705 S.W.2d at 478. See also Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980), holding that a statute allowing the death penalty upon proof that the murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman, was void for vagueness. However, I need not, and do not, rest the case against the present statute as unconstitutionally and impermissibly vague on these federal cases. The Bill of Rights in our Kentucky constitution, § 2, guarantees citizens of the State of Kentucky procedural due process, stating: Absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority. A statute calling for, nay demanding: (1) evidence speculating on the possibility of parole; (2) evidence regarding stale and archaic (and therefore irrelevant) prior convictions for felonies and misdemeanors and the nature thereof; and (3) a single combined sentencing hearing to consider both the initial sentence and the PFO phase, is an obvious and flagrant violation of our Bill of Rights, § 2. It is an exercise of arbitrary power and a denial of due process and it should have been struck down as such, much less enacted into law by our grant of comity when the General Assembly is admittedly powerless to mandate such judicial procedures. We have legitimized the exercise of arbitrary power over the lives and liberty of freemen, which is expressly forbidden by § 2 of our Kentucky Constitution. As recently as Kentucky Milk Marketing v. Kroger Co., Ky., 691 S.W.2d 893 (1985), our Court reaffirmed the power of Section 2 of our Constitution in these words: Section 2 is broad enough to embrace the traditional concepts of both due process of law and equal protection of the law. Id. at 899. In that case we held that the Kentucky Milk Marketing law, on its face, and in its enforcement by the Commission . . . is violative of Section 2 of the Kentucky Constitution. Id. I continue to subscribe to the rationale of the decision in the Kentucky Milk Marketing case, and I urge its application in the present circumstances. Finally, the appellee, Reneer makes a sound argument to the effect that, in any event, the application of the new sentencing procedure to him would violate prohibitions against ex post facto laws found in Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution and in Section 19 of the Kentucky Constitution. Reneer's alleged offense was committed before the effective date of the new statute. The new statute calls for important new evidence bearing on the question of sentencing, relating both to prior offenses (felonies and misdemeanors) and the subject of parole, all of which will be introduced by the prosecutor solely for the purpose of obtaining a more severe sentence, which evidence could not have been utilized against him before. The question which is critical in determining whether there is an ex post facto violation is whether the statute will aggravate any crime heretofore committed or provide a greater punishment therefor than was prescribed at the time of its commission. Hopt v. Utah, 110 U.S. 574, 589, 4 S.Ct. 202, 28 L.Ed. 262 (1884). There can be no question but that the evidence of past offenses that would have been introduced against Reneer under the new law would have adversely affected the assessment of punishment which Reneer would have received for the underlying offense, had it been applied. [2] In Miller v. Florida, 482 U.S. ___, 107 S.Ct. 2446, 96 L.Ed.2d 351 (1987), Florida's newly enacted statutory sentencing guidelines were held unconstitutionally applied to an offense committed before the statute's effective date, in violation of the expost facto clause of Article I of the Federal Constitution. The United States Supreme Court held that the revised guidelines law was more onerous than the law in effect at the time of the petitioner's crimes. Miller v. Florida cites an earlier United States Supreme Court decision in Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 101 S.Ct. 960, 67 L.Ed.2d 17 (1981) to the effect that [a] law is retrospective if it `changes the legal consequences of acts completed before its effective date.' Miller, 482 U.S. at ___, 107 S.Ct. at 2451, 96 L.Ed.2d at 360. That is specifically the intended result if and when the new sentencing procedure, and the new evidence that will be utilized under it, are applied in trial of crimes committed before the effective date of our new law. The majority opinion cites Murphy v. Commonwealth, Ky., 652 S.W.2d 69 (1983) as authority against application of the expost facto principle. However, the Murphy case is inapposite. The Murphy case did not involve introducing additional evidence adverse to the accused. The sole issue was whether the defendant was entitled to an instruction to the effect that he could not be convicted on the testimony of an accomplice unless supported by other substantial evidence tending to connect him to the commission of the offense. The record reflected substantial circumstantial evidence, albeit conflicting, that corroborated the accomplice's testimony which implicated Murphy. Unlike present circumstances, the Murphy case did not turn on the utilization of additional evidence, but on the strength of the evidence necessary to convict. The change abolishing the requirement of a so-called accomplice instruction was held merely procedural, and not subject to protection against ex post facto rules. The law is that if the change effected is merely procedural and does not affect any substantial right the ex post facto clause is not implicated. Kring v. Missouri, 107 U.S. 221, 232, 2 S.Ct. 443, 452, 27 L.Ed. 506 (1883). In my judgment no one can justly say that the present law is merely procedural and without substantive effect. In People v. Ramos, 37 Cal.3d 136, 207 Cal.Rptr. 800, 689 P.2d 430 (1984), at issue was a law requiring the trial court to instruct the jury in a capital murder case that one of the sentencing options, a sentence of life without possibility of parole, is subject to the Governor's power of commutation. In resolving the issue against constitutionality, based solely on state constitutional guarantees, the court states that the statute is a classic example of a misleading `half-truth.' 689 P.2d at 440. Viewed realistically and in context, the instruction provides the jury with seriously misleading information. Id. The statute presently under consideration, KRS 532.055, presents problems far more serious than the problem in the Ramos case. It involves a piling up and a piling on of evidence of half-truths. It invites the use of evidence that will necessarily be misleading and confusing. It invites the use of archaic convictions for both felonies and misdemeanors which are no longer relevant if they ever were. It introduces a new system combining in one sentencing hearing both initial sentencing for the underlying offense and conviction and sentence as a persistent felony offender, a system that will necessarily involve the improper and prejudicial overlapping multiple use of the same evidence for what should be separate purposes. The new statute is surely one that qualifies as a cure worse than the disease. LAMBERT, J., joins in this dissent.