Opinion ID: 1518773
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: should the trial court have directed a verdict on the aggravating circumstance, substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions?

Text: Appellant's jury was instructed on the aggravating circumstance substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions as to each of the four murders of which he had been convicted and found the circumstance to exist as to each. Appellant contends that there was insufficient evidence to support the aggravating circumstance and that the death sentence must be vacated for that reason. The testimony in support of the aggravating circumstance came from Josh Nye, a probation and parole officer. Nye testified that Appellant had been convicted of a murder in Harlan County in 1977 and of the murders of Rodney and Harry Vaughn in Laurel Circuit Court in 1993. The jury was not advised of the sentences received in connection with each conviction; nor were the judgments introduced into evidence so that the jury could review the actual documentation. Those steps were taken at the motion of the Commonwealth and over the objection of the defense. Appellant argues that the evidence of the Harlan County conviction was insufficient because the lack of a final judgment reflecting the conviction rendered it inadmissible. The only written evidence of the conviction made part of the record was a certified copy of a document styled MURDER ETC JURY TRIAL CONTINUED, which reflects that a jury found Appellant guilty of three counts and fixed his sentence on each count, and that the Appellant was remanded to jail. Appellant also contends that the evidence of the Laurel Circuit Court convictions could not be introduced because they were not final at the time of their introduction. As previously noted in this opinion, Appellant's Laurel County convictions recently have been affirmed by this Court. Foley, supra . We begin by noting that this issue is not preserved. Among its other responses, the Commonwealth correctly, and we think compellingly, argues that any error in the submission of this aggravating circumstance is rendered harmless by two factors. The first is that this Court has affirmed the Laurel County convictions and that affirmation has become final. See Melson v. Commonwealth, Ky., 772 S.W.2d 631, 633 (1989) (harmless error to admit non-final convictions, subsequently affirmed, as a basis for a persistent felony offender instruction; a remand for resentencing would be an exercise in futility). Additionally, the jury found two aggravating circumstances to support the imposition of the death penalty: a previous history of serious assaultive criminal convictions, and that the defendant's act or acts of killing the victims were intentional and resulted in multiple deaths. Nowhere in his voluminous brief does Appellant attack the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the finding of the latter aggravating circumstance. Even were we to hold that the evidence as to the Harlan County conviction was inadmissible, the evidence of the Laurel County conviction was sufficient to support the jury's finding as to the first aggravator, along with the second aggravator. There is no reversible error here.