Opinion ID: 1638715
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: appellant's conviction for persistent felony offender first degree was improper because it was predicated on the prior offense of possession of drug paraphernalia, second-offense.

Text: Appellant first argues that the trial court's jury instruction for first-degree persistent felony offender was incorrect because it allowed the jury to convict him based on his prior conviction for possession of drug paraphernalia, second offense. KRS 532.080(8) clearly states that [n]o conviction, plea of guilty, or Alford plea to a violation of KRS 218A.500 shall bring a defendant within the purview of or be used as a conviction eligible for making a person a persistent felony offender. KRS 218A.500 deals with the crime of possession of drug paraphernalia. Appellant did not object to the jury instruction at trial. In its brief, the Commonwealth concedes that the inclusion of Appellant's prior conviction for possession of drug paraphernalia, second offense, was error. However, the Commonwealth argues that the error is harmless because evidence was presented at trial that Appellant was convicted of four other felonies, any of which would have qualified him for persistent felony offender status. Our prior case law holds that it is error to convict a defendant of a crime when the jury has not been properly instructed on the elements of the crime. See Varble v. Commonwealth, 125 S.W.3d 246 (Ky.2004) (reversing defendant's conviction for manufacturing methamphetamine because the jury had actually been instructed on the lesser offense of possession of drug paraphernalia); Harper v. Commonwealth, 43 S.W.3d 261 (Ky.2001) (reversing defendant's conviction for complicity because the jury was not instructed on the element of intent). We noted in the recent decision of Harp v. Commonwealth, 266 S.W.3d 813, 818 (Ky.2008), that an erroneous jury instruction is presumed to be prejudicial; and a party claiming such an error to be harmless bears the heavy burden of showing that no prejudice resulted from it. While setting a high standard for the proponent of harmless error, Harp does leave that possibility open. Harp , however, involves true instructional error in that the jury instructions lacked sufficient detail to permit the jury to distinguish multiple charges from one another. Although the arguments here are couched in terms of instructional error, we find the problem to be one of substantive criminal law: the legislature has expressly forbidden any conviction for persistent felony offender from using possession of drug paraphernalia as one of the underlying offenses. That is exactly what happened here. The wording of the jury instruction, on its face, is fine. The problem is that the crime of first-degree persistent felony offender cannot be established by proving a prior conviction under KRS 218A.500. The General Assembly has clearly and unequivocally decided that a persistent felony offender conviction shall not be based upon a prior violation of KRS 218A.500. The Commonwealth argues that because the evidence at trial proved four other prior felony convictions, any two of which would support a conviction for first-degree persistent felony offender, the error was harmless. Despite the apparent credibility of the evidence of prior convictions, we noted in Medley v. Commonwealth, 704 S.W.2d 190 (Ky.1985) ( quoting from Adkins v. Commonwealth, 647 S.W.2d 502, 506 (Ky.App.1982)), that in a persistent felony offender case, [a] jury is entitled to disbelieve evidence of prior convictions put on by the Commonwealth. We cannot presume, therefore, that the specific prior offenses enumerated in the instruction made no difference to the jury. Furthermore, KRS 532.080, the statute that defines the offense of persistent felony offender, expressly forbids a conviction for persistent felony offender to be based on a violation of KRS 218A.500. The conviction obtained in this case directly violates the statute that defines the crime itself and cannot stand. Because (1) the PFO conviction is improperly predicated on a crime expressly excluded from PFO considerations by statute; (2) the presumption that errors in jury instructions are prejudicial; and (3) the fact that Sanders was, in fact, convicted of being a first-degree persistent felony offender and received more than the minimum sentence for that offense, the error is palpable error, and Sanders is entitled to relief despite his lack of preservation of this issue. See RCr 10.26. So we reverse the Appellant's conviction for being a first-degree persistent felony offender and remand this matter to the Jessamine Circuit Court for a new penalty phase trial. [1]