Court Opinion

ID: 9677101
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:43:27.955128+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:52.392470
License: Public Domain

OPINION OF THE COURT
On August 31, 1988, appellant entered conditional pleas of guilty to the charges of trafficking in a controlled substance/subsequent offender (KRS 218A.140 and 218A.990 respectively) and of being a persistent felony offender in the first degree (KRS 532.080(3), hereafter PFO 1). The issues preserved for our review pursuant to RCr 8.09 are framed as follows:
I. The trial court should have sustained the appellant’s motion to dismiss the PFO 1 charge because his prior conviction pursuant to a 1978 indictment is constitutionally invalid, and
II. It was impermissible for the Commonwealth to use one count of a 1983 conviction to establish the offense of subsequent offender and use the remaining counts of said indictment to establish PFO 1 status.
A clear understanding of the chronology of appellant’s criminal record is necessary for this opinion and follows:
1980 — Appellant pled guilty to charges of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the first degree and criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree. Probated sentence.
1983 — Appellant pled guilty to charges of illegal possession of a controlled substance, criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon and PFO in the second degree. Five year sentence.
1988 — Appellant pled guilty to charges of trafficking in a controlled sub*889stance/subsequent to offender and of being a PFO 1. Twenty year sentence.
In Alvey v. Commonwealth, Ky., 648 S.W.2d 858 (1983), we adopted the Court of Appeals’ language and stated:
In situations such as this, where a defendant has been convicted of one or more felonies and is subsequently tried and convicted as a persistent felon based on the earlier convictions, this jurisdiction requires him to raise any issues about the validity of those earlier convictions at the time he is tried as a persistent felon. If he does not, he is precluded from contesting the validity of the earlier convictions in subsequent post-conviction proceedings. [Citations omitted.]
Id. at 859.
The charge of being a PFO in the second degree to which appellant pled guilty was predicated upon his 1980 convictions. Had he considered the earlier convictions to be infirm the time to attack them was in 1983 when the challenge was a live issue. Once he acquiesced to this charge, the validity of his conviction as a PFO in the second degree became final and cannot now be resurrected. This is the essence of our holding in Alvey, supra.
Appellant’s second issue tacks along the following line. He pled guilty in 1983 to one misdemeanor and two felonies. The sentences were made to run concurrently. The 1988 PFO 1 charge was partly based upon the 1983 felony convictions, while the 1988 subsequent offender charge was based upon the 1983 drug misdemeanor conviction, the charge of which was contained in the same indictment as the 1983 felony charges.
Appellant makes use of KRS 532.080(4) which provides:
For the purpose of determining whether a person has two (2) or more convictions of crime for which that person served concurrent or uninterrupted consecutive terms of imprisonment shall be deemed to be only one conviction, unless one (1) of the convictions was for an offense committed while that person was imprisoned.
Relying upon this statute he argues that since the sentences were run concurrently, all of his 1983 convictions merged for PFO purposes, and could not later be “split” by the Commonwealth to obtain both PFO 1 and subsequent offender convictions. He attempts to buttress his argument with KRS 532.110(l)(a) which provides that “[a] definite and an indeterminate term shall run concurrently and both sentences shall be satisfied by service of the indeterminate term.” Appellant points out that considering the effect of these two statutes, along with the fact that the two felonies and one misdemeanor to which he pled guilty stemmed from the same indictment, the Commonwealth could not later split what has been merged and use the felonies to obtain a PFO 1 conviction and the misdemeanor to obtain, a subsequent offender conviction.
We believe the appellant is, proverbially speaking, comparing apples to oranges. The 1983 sentences merged, but the 1983 convictions, except the felonies for PFO purposes, did not. Appellant was convicted of a felony in 1980 and, in 1983, after being convicted of two felonies whose sentences were run concurrently, for purposes of being adjudicated a PFO 1, was convicted of one more felony. Those two felony convictions, along with the 1988 felony conviction, gave him the minimum number of felonies (three) to be convicted as a PFO 1. The 1983 felony convictions were merged for purposes of the PFO statute. The 1983 drug misdemeanor conviction, on the other hand, never merged with the 1983 felony convictions for any purpose, always stood alone, and was independently used to obtain the subsequent offender conviction.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
STEPHENS, C.J., and COMBS, GANT and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., concur.
VANCE, J., dissents by separate opinion, in which LAMBERT and LEIBSON, JJ., join.