Court Opinion

ID: 9771149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:33:59.242773+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:26.013258
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The bottom line in the Majority Opinion is that we need not be concerned whether evidence offered by the Commonwealth in the penalty phase of a criminal case qualifies as competent under the rules of evidence. We seem to grow increasingly impatient with any obstacle to extracting the maximum sentence from the jury.
The Majority opines that in the truth-in-sentencing statute, KRS 532.055(2)(a), the word “evidence” means no more than “background information” from whatever source. The Majority acknowledges that the purpose of such “background information [is] to assist the jury in its penalty-fixing responsibility,” yet opines that “strict proof requirements ... are neither warranted nor required.”
In Kentucky, the penalty phase of a criminal trial is now, as it always has been, as much a part of a criminal trial as the guilt phase. I am shocked to learn inadmissible evidence is appropriate to prove anything in a jury trial. Nor do I believe the General Assembly contemplated that the word “evidence” in KRS 532.055(2)(a) (where the statute states that certain specified “[ejvidence may be offered by the Commonwealth relevant to sentencing”), would or could mean anything less than evidence competent under the rules of evidence.
The Majority’s analogy to a trial court’s post-trial use of a presentence investigation (PSI) report prepared as per KRS 532.-050(2) is both seriously flawed and an alarming disregard for what is required by due process for a trial to be conducted according to law. A PSI report is by statutory definition full of hearsay, rumor, speculation and opinion. It is simply a probation officer’s “analysis of the defendant’s history,” and its contemplated use is only after a sentence has already been fixed, either by a jury in its verdict or by agreement in a plea negotiated between the defendant and the Commonwealth. It is simply a tool so the trial judge can consider whether to mitigate the sentence or reject the negotiated plea. Upon its use, if the plea is rejected the defendant is permitted to withdraw his plea and stand trial, rather than submit to an enhanced sentence. RCr 8.10.
As the Majority Opinion concedes, we have already held in Commonwealth v. Willis, Ky., 719 S.W.2d 440 (1986), that where the Commonwealth offers proof of prior convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol at a trial of a subsequent DUI offense, proof must be by competent evidence; and in Hobbs v. Commonwealth, Ky., 655 S.W.2d 472 (1983), where the Commonwealth offers proof of previous offenses in the persistent felony offender phase of a criminal trial, proof must be by competent evidence. Where is the distinction? If one is to be made, it must be artificially contrived.
When the General Assembly used the word “evidence” in structuring KRS 532.-055(2)(a), it must be conclusively presumed that it meant evidence admissible in a court of law. If the statute had been worded in terms of “background information” which need not be reliable in the same sense as evidence admissible in conformity with the rules of evidence, I doubt this Court would countenance the statute’s shortcomings.
Yet, obviously the Majority realizes the shortcomings inherent in the Opinion, because, after dispensing with the requirements for admissibility found in the rules of evidence, the Majority then attempts a flawed explanation of (1) why the best evidence rule should not apply here and (2) why the business records exception to the hearsay rule should apply here. The flaws in such reasoning should be too obvious to warrant serious discussion, but I will address them briefly.
A judgment of conviction is nothing more than or different from any other court order, and the best evidence rule surely applies to a court order. As with the Department of Transportation printout in Willis, the probation officer’s records in Hobbs, and the Corrections Cabinet’s records in *232Gamer v. Commonwealth, Ky., 645 S.W.2d 705 (1983), the records used here to prove prior convictions were inadmissible hearsay: not matters within the personal knowledge of the witness and not a judgment of conviction qualifying under the best evidence rule as proof of its existence and contents.
It is even more a certainty that these matters do not qualify under the business records exception to the hearsay rule. It may well be that “we have a certified copy of the printout kept in the ordinary course of business by the state police,” as the Majority Opinion says. But to qualify as admissible under the business record exception this state police printout must first be a “record ... made at or near the time [of the ‘event’] by, or from information transmitted by, a person with [first hand] knowledge.” Federal Rules of Evidence, 803(6). See also Lawson, The Kentucky Evidence Law Handbook, § 8.65 III(C) (2nd Ed.1984), and cases cited therein. The evidence on this state police printout was not just hearsay, but hearsay on hearsay, gathered from unidentified sources. It is little more than a FBI rap sheet, and probably shares the same degree of reliability.
Nor is it an acceptable response to suggest that it matters not the lack of quality of the evidence because “the defendant is given the opportunity to suggest any corrections deemed necessary.” Have we regressed so badly that we will now permit a witness to repeat unsubstantiated hearsay because the defendant will be permitted to take the stand and respond?
I am reminded of a paragraph from a treatise by J. Grossman and R. Wells, Constitutional Law and Judicial Policy Making, p. 11 (3rd Ed.1988):
“The difference [‘between law and politics’] can be appreciated best as a distinction in the justification of legal and political decisions. The primary and proper justification of legal decisions ... is one of procedure and method, of means and not ends. The strength, and ultimately the legitimacy, of law and the courts lies in the establishment and application of fair, predictable procedures, not in producing any particular result.... It is only when judges objectively apply ‘neutral’ principles that... decisions are entitled to legitimacy and respect.”
I share with my colleagues their concern with the seeming inability of the legal system to deal with the ever-increasing crime problem, but surely it will not benefit the system to abandon the judicial process. The means used here do not justify the ends.
STEPHENS, C.J., and COMBS, J., join this dissent.