Opinion ID: 1652270
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: McCurley Murder Properly Subject to an Aggravated Penalty.

Text: McCurley was murdered in 2000, and Barnes was murdered in 2002. Parker contends he should not have been subjected to an aggravated penalty for the McCurley murder based upon his having caused multiple deaths. [85] We disagree. Parker's argument runs contrary to our settled precedent. In Simmons v. Commonwealth, we held that it was permissible to use multiple deaths as an aggravator even though the defendant caused the three deaths one at a time and on different dates. [86] The defendant in Simmons argued that the multiple death aggravator found in KRS 532.025 could be used only if a defendant caused more than one death simultaneously. We disagreed, concluding that [w]ith respect to the vicious propensities of a defendant which are indicative of his danger to society, it is certainly no less compelling that on three different occasions he had committed a murder than if he had killed three people at one time. [87] So we construed the statute's reference to the act or acts of killing which result in multiple deaths to mean the deaths of more than one person, whether simultaneously or not. [88] More simply, we later held that [o]nce the jury determined that two of [Appellant's] acts of killing were intentional and resulted in multiple deaths, the multiple murder aggravating factor applied. [89] The jury in this case found, in writing, that Parker's acts of killing McCurley and Barnes were intentional and resulted in multiple deaths. We reject Parker's contention that our holding in Simmons should not apply to this case because there were other statutory aggravators present in Simmons. The jury need find only one statutory aggravator for a defendant to be subjected to an aggravated penalty; [90] and the fact that other aggravators were present in Simmons does not detract at all from our conclusion that the multiple death aggravator properly applies when a defendant causes multiple deaths, regardless of whether those multiple deaths occur on the same day or over a longer course of time. Likewise, we reject Parker's argument that Simmons should not apply to him because the murders in Simmons were so identical as to be so-called signature crimes. But the murders of Barnes and McCurley lack such commonality. Although it is true that the murders in Simmons had many common characteristics, our decision on when the multiple murder aggravator may apply was based upon the number of murders, not their commonality. Finally, we reject Parker's contention that our holding in Simmons was erroneous and should be overturned or modified. To the contrary, we believe Simmons remains an accurate interpretation of KRS 532.025.