Court Opinion

ID: 9747853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:38:54.417808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:27.934357
License: Public Domain

LAMBERT, Chief Justice,
dissenting in part.
In Part III and Part IV A., with respect to KRS 218A.1432, the majority opinion is excessively technical and unduly restrictive. KRS 218A.1432 provides as follows: “(1) A person is guilty of manufacturing methamphetamine when he knowingly and unlawfully: (a) manufactures methamphetamine; or (b) possesses the chemicals or equipment for the manufacture of methamphetamine with the intent to manufacture methamphetamine.”(emphasis added) The majority construes the words “the chemicals or equipment” to mean “all” chemicals or equipment. As a result, the burden on the prosecution in methamphetamine manufacturing cases will be greatly enhanced, and an offender with the least amount of ingenuity will be able to prevent his conviction by merely omitting from his cache of tools and ingredients one or two of the more common, and bringing in the missing components only at the last moment. Thus, to achieve a conviction under the majority interpretation, it will be necessary to catch the offender “red-handed.”
There is no need to give the statute such a technical construction. The phrase “the chemicals or equipment” need not be interpreted as “all chemicals or equipment”. It could as easily be interpreted as the essential, primary, substantially necessary chemicals or equipment, or words to that effect, and thereby prevent such a draconian application of the law.
Our responsibility is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the General Assembly in our interpretation of statutes.1 It strains credulity to believe the General Assembly intended to require possession of all of the chemicals or equipment for one to be adjudged guilty of methamphetamine manufacture. If the General Assembly had so intended, it would surely have used the word “all” rather than the more general “the.” Moreover, the element of intent to manufacture methamphetamine in KRS 218A.1432 prevents the possibility of wrongful conviction for possession of such chemicals or equipment for innocent purposes.
The majority interpretation is also inconsistent with the statute when it is read in its entirety. Under the majority’s interpretation, a defendant would have to be virtually in the act of manufacturing methamphetamine to be guilty. This interpretation is illogical because KRS 218A.1432(l)(a) separately proscribes manufacturing methamphetamine. If the possession provision is to have meaning, it must differ from the manufacturing provision, but under the majority interpretation, KRS 218A.1432(l)(a) and (b) have little or no difference. Possession has been virtually written out of the law.
WINTERSHEIMER, J., joins this opinion dissenting in part.

. KRS 446.080.