Court Opinion

ID: 9669647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:02:45.794852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:59.013791
License: Public Domain

Opinion by
Justice COOPER,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that this case must be reversed because of introduction of evidence in vio*487lation of the marital privilege and concur in the majority opinion in that respect. However, I dissent from the majority opinion insofar as it permits the use of Appellant’s 1991 convictions to support the aggravating circumstance defined in KRS 532.025(2)(a)(1) for the same reasons set forth in my dissenting opinion in St. Clair v. Commonwealth, 140 S.W.3d 510, 574-75 (Ky.2004) (“St. Clair I”). Specifically, in Thompson v. Commonwealth, 862 S.W.2d 871 (Ky.1993), superseded on other grounds by RCr 9.38, we held that a prior conviction of a capital offense that was not final because it was still on appeal at the time the subsequent capital offense was committed could not be used to prove the aggravating circumstance defined in KRS 532.025(2)(a)(l). Id. at 877. In St. Clair I, the majority of this Court overruled Thompson and held that a “conviction” occurs upon “a plea of guilty accepted by the trial court or a jury’s or judge’s verdict [sic] of guilty.” 140 S.W.3d at 570. I agreed that Thompson was wrongly decided and should be overruled. Id. at 574. However, the majority opinion went further and retroactively applied the overruling of Thompson to St. Clair, whose offenses occurred after Thompson was decided and (of course) before Thompson was overruled. Id. at 571.
The “fair warning” aspect of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the retroactive application of an unforeseeable change in the construction of a statute to subject a person to criminal liability or increased punishment for past conduct. Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354-55, 84 S.Ct. 1697,1703,12 L.Ed.2d 894 (1964); Dale v. Haeberlin, 878 F.2d 930, 934 (6th Cir.1989) (“We hold that the constitutional due process protections, like ex post facto protections, do extend to proscribe judicially enforced changes in interpretations of the law that unforeseeably expand the punishment accompanying a conviction beyond that which an actor could have anticipated at the time of committing a criminal act.”). See also St. Clair I, 140 S.W.3d at 575 (Cooper, J., dissenting) (citing other federal cases on this issue). The overruling of Thompson was a change in our interpretation of KRS 532.025(2)(a)(l) that unforeseeably expanded the punishment accompanying St. Clam’s conviction, i.e., made applicable to St. Clair an aggravating circumstance authorizing imposition of capital punishment, which otherwise would have been precluded by Thompson.
Accordingly, I dissent.