Court Opinion

ID: 9677610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:56:14.734108+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:57.090715
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
Concurring.
Although I agree completely with the majority opinion’s bottom-line conclusion that, while “[t]he pat down of Wfiiitmore and the seizure of the crack cocaine from his pocket did not violate either the federal or state constitution,”1 Appellant’s conviction must be reversed and remanded for a new trial because “the trafficking instruction violates the unanimity requirement,”2 *82I write separately because I do not believe the majority opinion adequately describes the instructional errors in this case that permitted the jury to return a non-unanimous verdict, and I believe that a more complete analysis of those errors will be of benefit to the bench and bar.
In this case, Instruction No. 1 set forth the trial court’s jury instruction on the offense of FirsiADegree Trafficking in a Controlled Substance:
You will find the Defendant, Raymond Whitmore, guilty under this Instruction if, and only if, you believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt all of the following:
A. That in Jefferson County, Kentucky, on or about the 22nd day of April, 1998, the Defendant had in his possession a quantity of Cocaine;
B. That in so doing, the Defendant knew the substance was Cocaine;
AND
C. That he had the Cocaine in his possession with the intent to distribute, dispense, sell or transfer it to another person.3
Standing alone, this instruction violated Appellant’s right to a unanimous verdict because there was no evidence introduced at trial to support the theory that Appellant possessed cocaine with the intent to “dispense” it as Kentucky’s Controlled Substances Act defines that term.4 The majority opinion in this case, however, correctly observes that the trial court’s instructions permitted the jury to return a non-unanimous verdict for yet another reason — they erroneously “included the element[] of manufacturing”5 and no evidence was introduced at trial to support a conclusion that Appellant possessed cocaine with the intent to “manufacture”6 it. Of course, an examination of instruction No. 1 will reveal that the trial court’s substantive instruction as to FirsF-Degree Trafficking in a Controlled Substance does not contain the word “manufacture” or any derivation of it. The question left unanswered by the majority opinion, therefore, is “how did the instructions erroneously present the ‘manufacture’ theory?” And, because I believe that an answer to that question may help Kentucky trial courts avoid similar errors in the future, I write separately in the hopes of answering it.
Although Instruction No. 1, standing alone, improperly permitted the jury to return a non-unanimous verdict under the “dispense” theory, Instruction No. 1 unfortunately did not stand alone. Instead, the trial court’s Instruction No. 3 included a separate definition of the term “trafficking” that mirrored the definition of that term in KRS 218A.010(28) and presented the “manufacture” theory unsupported in the evidence:
“Trafficking” — Means to manufacture, distribute, dispense, sell, transfer or possess with the intent to manufacture, *83distribute, dispense, or sell a controlled substance.
In the past, this Court has observed that jury instructions purporting to “define” criminal offenses separately from substantive jury instructions are “surplusage, since the substantive instructions em-bod[y] the essentials of the definition.”7 And I have previously expressed my fear that a separate, abstract definition of a criminal offense, especially when it differs from the jury instruction that sets forth the elements of that offense in a particular case, “risks jury confusion and invites error.”8 That fear has apparently come home to roost, as the instructions in this case, when viewed in their totality, risked a non-unanimous verdict not only because Instruction No. 1 presented a “dispense” theory unsupported by the evidence, but also because the misleading definition of “trafficking” contained in Instruction No. 3 presented a “manufacture” theory unsupported by the evidence. When, as here, the same set of instructions contains two different definitions of the same crime, we cannot with any degree of confidence assert that, in deliberating the defendant’s guilt, the jury considered only one of the two definitions. Accordingly, I again “caution the trial courts of the Commonwealth of the risks of abstractly defining an offense separately within the jury instructions.” 9

. Majority Opinion at 92 S.W.3d at 80 (2002).

. Id. at 81.

. In addition to the unanimous verdict concerns identified elsewhere this instruction erroneously permitted the jury to find appellant guilty of first-degree trafficking if it believed that he possessed cocaine with the intent to "transfer” it. The general assembly has not defined "possession with the intent to transfer” as trafficking. See KRS 218A.010(28).

. See KRS 218A.010(7) (" 'Dispense' means to deliver a controlled substance to an ultimate user or research subject by or pursuant to the lawful order of a practitioner, including the packaging, labeling, or compounding necessary to prepare the substance for that delivery.”).

. Majority Opinion, supra note at 81.

. See KRS 218A.010(13).

. Tharp v. Commonwealth, 40 S.W.3d 356, 364 (2001).

. Id. at 370 (Keller, J., concurring).

. Id. at 369 (Keller, J., concurring).