Opinion ID: 2276127
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the reenactment doctrine.

Text: Justice Keller correctly notes the validity of the reenactment doctrine in his concurring opinion, post. `It is a generally recognized rule of statutory construction that when a statute has been construed by a court of last resort and the statute is subsequently reenacted, the Legislature may be regarded as adopting such construction.' Hughes v. Commonwealth, Ky., 87 S.W.3d 850, 855-56 (2002) (quoting Commonwealth v. Trousdale, 297 Ky. 724, 181 S.W.2d 254, 256 (1944)). However, the so-called reenactment doctrine does not require continued application of the born alive rule to our homicide statutes. First, the lead opinion in Hollis was a plurality opinion joined by only three members of the Court. Two members concurred in result only and the remaining two members dissented. The two concurring members based their concurrence on the premise that Jackson v. Commonwealth, supra , had not been overruled when the act was committed [and the defendant] was entitled to rely upon the decisions of this court which had not been repudiated. Hollis, 652 S.W.2d at 65 (Vance, J., concurring). Obviously, the two separately concurring members concluded that the adoption of the penal code had not abrogated the common law holding in Jackson that proof of the corpus delicti of a homicide required proof that the victim was born alive. They did not join the plurality opinion's analysis of legislative intent with respect to the definition of person in KRS 507.020. Id. (I do not believe it is necessary or proper to extend the opinion of this court to the other issues discussed in the [plurality] opinion, and for that reason I concur in the result only.). Thus, the Hollis plurality's construction of the word person in KRS 507.020 was not a holding of the Court to which the legislature would be deemed to have implicitly acquiesced when it subsequently amended and/or reenacted KRS 507.020 and KRS 507.040 without redefining the word person. Of course, our subsequent decision in Jones v. Commonwealth, supra , was a majority opinion. However, the holding in Jones was that a child who was born alive and subsequently died from injuries inflicted in utero was a person within the meaning of KRS 507.040. 830 S.W.2d at 878-79. That holding is not inconsistent with our holding in this case. Furthermore, since the General Assembly had already twice defined person as a human being for purposes of the penal code and the homicide statutes in KRS 500.080(12) and KRS 507.010, and the Hollis plurality did not attempt to construe either of those statutes, the Hollis plurality opinion arguably did not affect the statutory definition of person in any respect. Compare Blauner's Inc. v. City of Phila., 198 A. 889, 893, 330 Pa. 340 (1938) (common law definitions irrelevant where statute contains its own definition); Kohn v. City of Phila., 151 Pa.Super. 635, 30 A.2d 672, 675 (1943) (None of these cases [reciting common law definitions of `sale'] has any relevancy here where `sale' is defined by the ordinance.). Thus, the reenactment doctrine does not affect our decision to overrule Hollis .