Court Opinion

ID: 9771148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:33:59.23801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:26.011015
License: Public Domain

*229SPAIN, Justice.
Ronnie Hall appeals his conviction by a jury in the Floyd Circuit Court of first-degree (armed) robbery, for which he was sentenced to confinement for fifteen (15) years. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment and we now do likewise, having granted discretionary review.
The first issue presented is whether the trial judge erred in not admonishing the jury sua sponte that the defendant’s admission of a prior felony could only be considered as it might affect his credibility as a witness. Inherent in the statement of the issue is the fact that the defendant did not request such an admonition, as required by RCr 9.22.
Notwithstanding the lack of such a request, the defendant argues that under Commonwealth v. Richardson, Ky., 674 S.W.2d 515 (1984) the trial court must give the admonition sua sponte. The Court of Appeals correctly ruled otherwise. Defense counsel should be free to make as little of the admission by defendant of a prior felony conviction as possible. As a matter of trial strategy, it may be decided that the admonition would only serve to emphasize the conviction, and hence no admonition may be requested. If, on the other hand, a limiting admonition is desired, it need only be requested. Here there is an excellent indication that such trial strategy was employed, since it was the defendant’s own attorney who elicited from him the fact of his prior felony. Apparently, this was done to "soften the blow,” rather than having the prosecutor extract the disclosure. We agree there was no error on the part of the trial judge.
We recognize that the language used in Richardson is mandatory and does not expressly impose upon the defendant a duty to request an admonition. We are persuaded, however, that the omission of such a requirement in Richardson was inadvertent and that, consistent with general law and in particular the requirements of RCr 9.22, a defendant who wants the court to admonish the jury must ask for such relief; otherwise, his failure to request it will be treated as a waiver or as an element of trial strategy. The rule in Richardson is modified accordingly.
The only remaining issue is whether it was error for the trial court, during the punishment phase of the bifurcated trial, to admit testimony of the defendant’s prior convictions based upon a certified Kentucky State Police computer printout. The Court of Appeals found no error, holding that the defendant’s reliance upon our opinion in Commonwealth v. Willis, Ky., 719 S.W.2d 440 (1986) was misplaced. Again, we agree.
In Willis we held that a certified copy of a “Driving History Record” maintained by the Division of Driver Licensing of the Transportation Cabinet was not sufficient evidence of prior convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol at a trial of a subsequent D.U.I. offense. In so holding, a parallel was drawn with the decision in Hobbs v. Commonwealth, Ky., 655 S.W.2d 472 (1983), wherein a certified copy of the judgment of conviction was held necessary to prove either the date of or fact of previous offenses in Persistent Felony Offender proceedings.
Both these cases are distinguishable from the case at hand by the fact that there the proof of prior convictions was necessary to establish guilt; i.e., the fact of such convictions was an essential element of the crime charged. As such, proof beyond a reasonable doubt was required of the Commonwealth. Here, however, we are concerned only with the punishment or sentencing phase of the trial mandated by KRS 532.055 involving background information to assist the jury in its penalty-fixing responsibility. The statute authorizing the procedure does not specify a method for proving such prior convictions and we are of the opinion that the strict proof requirements of Hobbs and Willis are neither warranted nor required. The evidence of prior convictions introduced by the Commonwealth through the testimony of a probation and parole officer in the present case is the same type of information routinely incorporated in presentence investigation reports required under KRS 532.050 *230to be furnished to the trial judge prior to sentencing. In a sentencing hearing, the defendant is given the opportunity to suggest any corrections deemed necessary in the report. Similarly, here the defendant had an opportunity during the penalty phase of his trial to suggest any appropriate corrections to the KSP printout.
The holding under the Hobbs and Willis cases results from a strict application of the “best evidence” rule which requires that “if you would prove the contents of a writing, you must produce the writing itself.” McCormick, Law of Evidence § 229 (2d ed. 1972). Justice Leibson observed in Willis at p. 441:
The fact that a conviction has occurred is contained in the contents of a judgment. Thus the best evidence of the fact of conviction is the judgment setting out the conviction....
While we have no quarrel whatever with the correctness of the above-quoted statement, we nevertheless question a like application in the present case. Professor Lawson in his Kentucky Evidence Law Handbook, § 7.15 (2d ed. 1984) cites the following language from Catlin v. Justice, 288 Ky. 270, 276, 156 S.W.2d 107, 110 (1941), as one of the best descriptions of the “best evidence” rule in Kentucky law:
[I]n modern practice [the Rule] is generally confined to the substitution of oral testimony in proof of an existing document. If the content of the written document is in issue or if the very existence of the document itself is in controversy, the document must be produced or its absence accounted for. But the rule has never been extended to require evidence of facts that may as well be established by oral testimony; that is to say, oral testimony of a fact in issue may be primary evidence of the fact, although there be in existence written evidence of the same fact, and, where the essential fact to be proved is neither the existence nor the contents of the writing, but some independent fact to which the writing is merely incidental, the writing need not be produced but the proof may be adduced by oral testimony.
Lawson continues with the following additional comments:
Two important characteristics of the best evidence rule are identified by this quotation. One is that the rule is limited in its application to documentary evidence. The other is that even with respect to documentary evidence the rule is applicable only to proof of the contents of a writing. Wigmore’s description of this limitation cannot be improved upon: “[T]he rule applies to exclude testimony designed to establish the terms of the document, and requires the document’s production instead, but does not apply to exclude testimony which concerns the document without aiming to establish its terms.” (Emphasis in the original. Footnotes omitted.)
We think it is critical to remember that the rule is only necessary to guarantee the trustworthiness of the evidence when the “content of the written document is in issue or if the very existence of the document itself is in controversy.... (Emphasis added.) Examples which rush to mind include the contents or terms of a deed, a lease, or a will.
In the present case, there is no dispute whatever as to the defendant’s prior convictions; no issue, if you will, as to the contents of a writing. The judgment itself is but a memorandum of the fact that the defendant was tried by a jury or judge who returned a finding of guilt and fixed a certain punishment.
Furthermore, as was pointed out by the prosecutor in a colloquy which accompanied the introduction of the KSP printout:
We have a certified copy of the printout kept in the ordinary course of business by the state police, which makes an exception to the hearsay rule because it is kept as a business document and a certified copy is adequate. (TE 204.)
In view of all of the above, the judgment of the Floyd Circuit Court is affirmed.
LAMBERT, REYNOLDS and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., concur.
*231LEIBSON, J., dissents by separate opinion in which STEPHENS, C.J., and COMBS, J., join.