Court Opinion

ID: 9770959
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:26:29.054084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:21.646250
License: Public Domain

STUMBO, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from that part of the majority opinion which concerns appellant’s claim of error which arising from the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of criminal facilitation. Criminal facilitation is defined at KRS 506.080:
(1)A person is guilty of criminal facilitation when, acting with knowledge that another person is committing or intends to commit a crime, he engages in conduct which knowingly provides such person with means or opportunity for the commission of the crime and which in fact aids such person to commit the crime.
Criminal facilitation is a lesser included offense of trafficking in cocaine. Farris v. Commonwealth, Ky.App., 836 S.W.2d 451 (1992).
In Webb v. Commonwealth, Ky., 904 S.W.2d 226, 229 (1995), this Court stated:
An instruction on a lesser-included offense should be given if the evidence is such that a reasonable juror could doubt that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged, but conclude that he is guilty of the lesser-included offense. Luttrell v. Commonwealth, Ky., 554 S.W.2d 75, 78 (1977).
The decision as to whose story to believe is of course an issue for the jury to decide. The jury should have been given an opportunity to consider this criminal facilitation instruction. Refusal to allow such an instruction, when supported by the evidence presented, constitutes reversible error.
Appellant asserts that the jury could have found him guilty of criminal facilitation instead of trafficking based on the evidence presented at trial because it could have “concluded that he was guarding the cocaine for others.” Appellant told the police he had sold his cocaine the day before. The Commonwealth counters that “a facilitation instruction was unwarranted because there was absolutely no evidence introduced at trial which showed that appellant provided another person with the ‘means or opportunity’ to traffick [sic] in controlled substances.” The Commonwealth asserts that appellant presented evidence at trial which would support only one of two outcomes — either that appellant was guilty of trafficking in cocaine, or that he was not guilty of trafficking in cocaine.
The jury should have been given the opportunity to consider a criminal facilitation instruction for reasons as stated in Webb, supra. The jury here was presented with alternate theories regarding appellant’s connection to the contraband, and it was entitled to believe any of those theories or select portions of either. The facts and reasonable conclusions were too ambiguous to be so limited in outcome. In Farris v. Common*932wealth, Ky.App., 836 S.W.2d 451 (1992), a ease wherein the appellant’s conviction for trafficking was reversed for the failure to give a criminal facilitation instruction, we stated:
This case once again presents the situation where the Commonwealth objected to instructions requested by the defendant, and the trial court ruled favorably to the Commonwealth. We feel compelled to point out that many reversals such as this case could be avoided if the Commonwealth would be more reasonable in its position on instructions, and if the trial courts would allow more latitude in the giving of instructions requested by defendants.
Id., at 454.
The failure of the court to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of criminal facilitation constitutes reversible error and the judgment of the Fayette Circuit Court should be reversed and this cause remanded for retrial.
STEPHENS, C.J., joins.