Opinion ID: 2168800
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Second-Degree Wanton Endangerment Conviction

Text: The provision under which Appellant was convicted of first-degree fleeing or evading police requires: while operating a motor vehicle with intent to elude or flee, the person knowingly or wantonly disobeys a direction to stop his or her motor vehicle, given by a person recognized to be a police officer, and ... [b]y fleeing or eluding, the person is the cause, or creates a substantial risk, of serious physical injury or death to any person or property.... KRS 520.095(1). The provision under which Appellant was convicted of second-degree wanton endangerment requires: wantonly engag[ing] in conduct which creates a substantial danger of physical injury to another person. KRS 508.070(1). First-degree fleeing or evading police contains proof of four facts that second-degree wanton endangerment does not. Specifically, first-degree fleeing or evading police requires proof that the accused was operating a motor vehicle, had intent to elude or flee, disobeyed a police officer's direction to stop, and that the risk of physical injury was serious. Second-degree wanton endangerment requires proof of none of these facts. Second-degree wanton endangerment, however, requires proof of no fact beyond first-degree fleeing or evading police. Both provisions are satisfied by proof of wantonly engaging in certain conduct which creates a substantial danger of serious physical injury to another person. For second-degree wanton endangerment, the conduct is general and open-ended; for first-degree fleeing or evading police, the conduct is specified as intentionally fleeing from police while operating a motor vehicle. It follows, therefore, that once the Commonwealth proved the specific conduct required to convict Appellant of first-degree fleeing or evading police, it necessarily proved the general conduct necessary to convict him of second-degree wanton endangerment, too. Consequently, Appellant's convictions for first-degree fleeing or evading police and second-degree wanton endangerment constitute double jeopardy. Given that first-degree fleeing or evading police is a felony and that second-degree wanton endangerment is a misdemeanor, the remedy is to vacate the lesser offenses of wanton endangerment. Clark v. Commonwealth, 267 S.W.3d 668, 678 (Ky.2008). This is because the principle of double jeopardy prohibits the Commonwealth from punish[ing] a single episode as multiple offenses, not from carv[ing] out of a single criminal episode the most serious offense. Id. (quoting Commonwealth v. Burge, 947 S.W.2d 805, 811 (Ky.1996)). Given that Appellant's second-degree wanton endangerment convictions would result in concurrently running sentences of 365 days, KRS 532.110, and that his first-degree fleeing or evading police conviction would run for two years, the more serious conviction is for the latter. It is therefore that conviction which stands. Id. Hence, Appellant's two convictions for second-degree wanton endangerment are hereby reversed and vacated.