Opinion ID: 1561306
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the wanton murder convictions

Text: Each of the three appellants was convicted of two counts of wanton murder under an instruction which read: NO. [ ]WANTON MURDER If you do not find the defendant, [ ], guilty under Instruction No. 1, and if you find the defendant, [ ], guilty of Trafficking in a Controlled Substance in the First Degree under Instruction No. 2, then you will find him guilty under this Instruction if, and only if, you believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt all of the following: a. That during the course of Trafficking in a Controlled Substance in the First Degree and as a consequence thereof, [ ] McDonald was killed; AND b. That by so participating in the offense of Trafficking in a Controlled Substance in the First Degree the defendant was wantonly engaging in conduct which created a grave risk of death to another and that [ ] McDonald's death was caused under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life. If you find the defendant guilty under this instruction, you shall say so by your verdict and no more. As explained above, the Commonwealth introduced insufficient evidence of defendant Thomas's complicity in the crime of trafficking in cocaine to justify the trial court's instruction of the jury as to the offense. Because the trial court should have directed a verdict against the Commonwealth as to Thomas's charge of Trafficking in a Controlled Substance in the First Degree, his wanton murder convictions must be reversed as well because the jury instructions intertwined the crimes and required criminal liability for trafficking in cocaine as a prerequisite to convictions for wanton murder. Further, the form of the wanton murder instructions under which the jury found all three appellants guilty require this Court to reverse those convictions regardless of the evidence of trafficking in cocaine. While the Commonwealth may have introduced sufficient evidence to support wanton murder instructions based on one or more of the the appellants' roles in the car chase, [1] the Commonwealth encouraged the jury to find the defendants guilty under the other wanton murder instruction premised on trafficking in cocaine, and the jury did so. Consequently, this Court's review does not focus on whether the Commonwealth introduced sufficient evidence to justify any instruction on wanton murder, but instead, we must determine whether the evidence introduced at trial justified the specific instruction given. Fugate v. Commonwealth, Ky., 445 S.W.2d 675, 677 (1969). The trial judge should never have given the second wanton murder instruction which integrated the trafficking offense because only the most tortured analysis can imagine a causal relationship between the appellants' alleged participation in the drug transaction and the deaths. The McDonalds were killed almost five miles away from the site where the alleged drug transaction was supposed to have occurred. No transaction was ongoing at that time, and the majority's attempt to describe the two offenses as inextricably intertwined is imaginative, but devoid of a meaningful factual or authoritative support. The drug transaction had ended. The car chase which followed Thomas's discovery that the cocaine had not been delivered to him cannot be melded into the prior attempt at a drug transaction by the sheer will of the Commonwealth or this majority opinion. Labeling one's own result-oriented conclusions as clear inference[s] from the evidence presented in this case does not make them so, and the majority's theory that the high speed chase and whizzing bullets were merely an attempt at completing the drug transaction exceeds even the most liberal interpretation of reasonable inferences. KRS 218A.1412 defines the boundaries of the crime of first degree trafficking in a controlled substance, and it leaves no room for the majority's expanded interpretation. The Kentucky Penal Code provision which explains causal relationships, KRS 501.060(3), notes, When wantonly ... causing a particular result is an element of an offense, the element is not established if the actual result is not within the risk of which the actor is aware.... [T]he plain intent of the statute is to have the causation issue framed in all situations in terms of whether or not the result as it occurred was either foreseen or foreseeable by the defendant as a reasonable possibility. R. Lawson and W. Fortune, Kentucky Criminal Law, Sect. 2-4(d)(3), at 74 (LEXIS 1998). The bottom line is that the trial court should have instructed the jury as to this felony wanton murder theory only if the evidence presented tended to prove beyond a reasonable doubt (1) that drug trafficking created a substantial and unjustifiable risk that fatal auto accidents would occur, and (2) that the appellants appreciated this risk and consciously disregarded. No such evidence was introduced. The Commonwealth did introduce testimony from Furman, one of the unindicted accomplices, that dealing in drugs could be very dangerous and that people can get killed over drug deals, but produced no evidence of the types of risks upon which the trial court instructed the jury. The fatal automobile accident involving two innocent parties five miles from the scene of the attempted drug transaction is beyond the scope of risks proven by the Commonwealth to be incident to drug trafficking. Without such proof, the instruction was improper and all of the wanton murder convictions must be reversed.