Court Opinion

ID: 9676864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:36:27.567527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:51.864813
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I join in the Dissent by Chief Justice Stephens addressing error in admitting evidence regarding the defendants’ lifestyle. This evidence is irrelevant to the specific offenses with which they were charged.
I write separately to address a different issue. The defendants were convicted of nine counts of “use of a minor in a sexual performance,” prohibited by KRS 531.310, which was enacted in 1986 as part of a new section on “Sexual Exploitation of Minors” (KRS 531.300-.370) added on to the Chapter in the Penal Code on “Pornography,” KRS Chapter 531. The offensive conduct for which these defendants stand convicted has no connection to the production or use of pornography, and KRS 531.310 has been misapplied. Further, even if we are to assume otherwise, the evidence to prove such offenses occurred here failed to meet statutory requirements.
The terms used to specify the elements of the offense set out in KRS 531.310 are assigned statutory definitions in KRS 531.-300. We have yet to confront what the General Assembly means by a “sexual performance.” KRS 531.300(6) defines “sexual performance” as “any performance or part thereof which includes sexual conduct by a minor.” [Emphasis added.] In turn, “sexual conduct by a minor” is defined in KRS 531.300(4) in four subparts. KRS 531.300(4)(d) covers “[t]he exposure, in an *382obscene manner, of the unclothed or apparently unclothed human male or female genitals, pubic area or buttocks, or the female breast, ... in any resulting motion picture, photograph or other visual representation,” and it contains a family exclusion: “exclusive of exposure portrayed in matter[s] of a private, family nature not intended for distribution outside the family.” The Majority Opinion has avoided the family exclusion in subpart (d) (“exposure, in an obscene manner”) by suggesting that the present situation fits instead under subpart (b), which defines “sexual conduct by a minor” as including “willful or intentional exhibition of the genitals.” This is illogical, for two reasons:
1) The phrase being defined in KRS 531.-300(4) is “sexual conduct by a minor” and the proof offered in this case to convict the appellants is that the conduct by the minors was not their “willful or intentional exhibition of the genitals,” but on the contrary was the coerced exposure of their unclothed bodies. The terms “willful or intentional” as used in the statutory definition refer to the conduct of the exploited child, not to the conduct of the criminal offender. It is the conduct of the minor which is being defined.
2) It would be irrational for the General Assembly to provide a “family exclusion” for the “exposure” of the child’s “unclothed” body but not for the child’s “willful or intentional exhibition of the genitals.” We should not interpret a statute to provide “an absurd or wholly unreasonable conclusion.” Bailey v. Reeves, Ky., 662 S.W.2d 832 (1984), and cases cited therein.
The situation presented here is a parallel to the privilege afforded to “confidential communications between” husband and wife protected by KRS 421.210(1). The General Assembly, in its wisdom, has included a “family exclusion” within the definition of a “sexual performance.” Their judgment is that, when it comes to “exposure, in an obscene manner, of the unclothed or apparently unclothed human male or female genitals,” family privacy is a more important value than debating the limits of offensive intrafamily exposure. The exercise of this value judgment is a matter of substantive law and within the General Assembly’s exclusive responsibility. We cannot, legitimately, expand the limits of what the General Assembly has defined as criminal behavior regardless of our own personal inclinations.
If there should be any doubt whether this family exclusion in the statute applies, that doubt should be resolved in favor of the defendants. The applicable rule of statutory construction is the “rule of lenity,” which directs us to interpret a penal statute, if the statute is ambiguous, in favor of the accused: “Doubts in the construction of a penal statute will be resolved in favor of lenity.” Commonwealth v. Colonial Stores, Ky., 350 S.W.2d 465, 467 (1961). It seems of late that the rule of lenity has been, by and large, honored in the breach. Nevertheless, as yet no one has openly suggested that it should he abandoned, and no opinion of this court has expressly disavowed it.
To return to first premises: what did the General Assembly intend when it added this new section, “Sexual Exploitation of Minors,” to the “Pornography” Chapter in the Penal Code? Is a private, intrafamily sexual performance within the scope of activity KRS 531.310 intends to prohibit? This new section is directed toward “sexual exploitation” in a “performance” rather than sexual abuse in other forms which is covered elsewhere in the Penal Code. “Exploitation” for personal gratification within the privacy of the family may well be a form of sexual abuse, but the way in which these children were abused does not fall under the heading of “pornography,” nor does it fit the description of the “use of a minor in a sexual performance.”
The “family exclusion” should apply equally to “exposing” breasts as it does to “exhibiting” them. We should give the statute a rational interpretation or strike it down.
COMBS, J., joins this dissent.