Court Opinion

ID: 9649312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:48:13.185332+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:01:27.476777
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
concurring.
Respectfully, I concur in the Majority Opinion except insofar as it directs the trial court to use at retrial the definition of “extreme emotional disturbance” from McClellan v. Commonwealth, Ky., 715 S.W.2d 464, 468-69 (1986). The problem with that definition is that it limits the defense of extreme emotional disturbance to proof that the defendant acted “uncontrollably.” As I stated in my Concurring Opinion in McClellan:
“The word ‘uncontrollably’ applies more suitably to the mental state associated with temporary insanity than it applies to the mental state associated with extreme emotional disturbance.” Id. at 474.
Our murder and manslaughter statutes, as codified in the Kentucky Penal Code, derive from the Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute, adopted at the 1962 Annual Meeting. An extensive discussion of the meaning intended by the ALI Model Code, and by our Kentucky Penal Code, is found in the ALI Model Penal Code and Commentaries, Part II, Section 210.3(5), pp. 53-73 (1980). The reader needs to review these twenty pages to gain a proper understanding of the term “extreme emotional disturbance.” To spare the reader I will not try to summarize the discussion in the Commentaries in this Concurring Opinion, nor will I repeat the reasons I stated in McClellan. It suffices to say that we are dealing here with a complex concept of diminished criminal responsibility that cuts across the doctrine of provocation, but is much broader than that.
As stated in some prefatory remarks at p. 49 of the ALI Code and Commentaries, supra, discussing “Innovations of the Model Code,” “the formulation in Subsection (l)(b) [of murder reduced to manslaughter when ‘committed under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance’] represents a substantial enlargement of the class of cases which would otherwise be murder but which could be reduced to manslaughter under then existing law because the homicidal act occurred in the ‘heat of passion’ upon ‘adequate provocation.’ ”
As I stated in McClellan:
“The statutory scheme does not require that extreme emotional disturbance be the sole or exclusive cause of the act, as the word ‘uncontrollably’ seemingly implies.” Id. at 474.
In my judgment a principled application of the Kentucky Penal Code, in terms of its historical source, requires us to apply the element of “extreme emotional disturbance” as it was intended, as meaning a state of mind justifying a lesser penalty because of a lesser degree of criminal intent. Instead, we have so defined it in McClellan that, taken literally, the concept applies only when there is no criminal intent. It is now empty of meaning.
LAMBERT, J., joins this concurring opinion.