Opinion ID: 2354297
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Concurrent/consecutive sentence recommendation.

Text: Appellant claims instruction number 12 and verdict form 12A, instructing the jury to recommend whether Appellant should serve his sentences concurrently or consecutively, denigrated the jury's responsibility in imposing the death penalty. Tamme v. Commonwealth, Ky., 759 S.W.2d 51, 53 (1988). However, the jury fixed Appellant's sentences in their other verdicts. KRS 532.055(2) specifically requires that the jury only recommend whether the sentences it has fixed should run concurrently or consecutively. Of course, a death sentence cannot run concurrently or consecutively with another sentence; thus, the recommendation would only apply to the murder convictions if the jury returned a verdict of a term of years, a circumstance that did not occur here. Although Foley v. Commonwealth, Ky., 942 S.W.2d 876 (1996), held that KRS 532.055(2) does not apply in capital cases, it did not hold, as Appellant asserts, that it is error for the trial court to give the instruction during the penalty phase of a capital trial. Foley only held that the trial court did not err in failing to give the instruction. Id. at 886. Here, the capital penalty phase was combined with the so-called truth-in-sentencing phase of the trial because Appellant was convicted not only of two capital offenses but also of two Class B felonies and two Class D felonies. In view of the sentences of death for the capital offenses, the trial court properly treated the consecutive sentence recommendation as applicable only to the sentences for the lesser offenses.