Opinion ID: 1633874
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Instruction Voyeurism

Text: Williams asserts that he was entitled to have the jury instructed on the lesser-included offense of voyeurism. We disagree. In 2002, the Kentucky legislature enacted a new statute, KRS 531.090, for the offense of voyeurism. It had an effective date of July 15, 2002, which was approximately 16 months after the commission of the offenses by Williams on or about January 22, 2001. Defense counsel, at the conclusion of the defense case, mentioned a request for a lesser-included offense of voyeurism under the new statute. The trial judge noted that the statute was not the law in existence at the time of the offense and that an ex post facto problem would be generated because the defendant could potentially be found guilty of something that was not an offense at the time of the violation. The trial judge denied the request. KRS 446.080(3) provides that [n]o statute shall be construed to be retroactive unless expressly so declared. There is no retroactivity statement in the new law, KRS 531.090, and it could not be applied in this matter. Reliance on Commonwealth v. Phon, 17 S.W.3d 106 (Ky.2000), is misplaced because that case is factually distinguishable from the one presented here. In Phon, supra , there was a change in the penalty range of the existing homicide statute to include the possibility of life without parole. Here, an existing statute was not amended, but rather an entirely new offense was created by the enactment of KRS 531.090. There was no error in denying the requested instruction.