Court Opinion

ID: 9662753
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:17:17.360555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:41.677864
License: Public Domain

CUNNINGHAM, J,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur with the majority as to the res judicata issue as to Bowling and Baze. However, I join, and add to, the dissent of Justice Scott. With all due respect, I find no logical justification for extending the holding to Appellants, Bowling and Baze.
In fact, it seems contradictory.
*493Says the majority concerning the claims of Bowling and Baze: “Res judicata bars consideration of this the second declaratory judgment action, filed by those two Appellants.”
But illogieally — -it seems to me — this Court proceeds to do just that.
The opinion goes on to say: “Finally while we understand the circuit courts conclusion that the bench trial in Baze/Bowling was an effective public hearing on the current protocol, there is no legal basis for the Court deeming it a substitute for what the General Assembly has required in our Administrative Procedures Act.”
It puzzles me as to how the barred claims of Bowling and Baze can be sua sponte piggy-backed onto the viable action of Moore.
As Justice Scott points out, the ease of Bowling and Baze cries out for closure. Almost two decades have elapsed since the Bowling crime and eighteen years since the crimes of Baze. The latter case has been to the U.S. Supreme Court and back.
For some reason, in October 2007 — over two years ago — we effectively stayed this civil action while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the totally unrelated lethal injection issue.
By requiring promulgation of the subject protocol, we are inviting more delay— maybe much more delay. We are implanting another moving part into the already lumbering apparatus of our death penalty appellate process.
We have executed 165 persons in this state without the regulation now deemed required by the majority. These include the latest execution of Marco Chapman after this action was filed. His lawyers asked that his case be stayed until a ruling was made on this very issue. It was denied, however, after Chapman himself asked that it be refused.
The promulgation process will invite further attacks upon the convictions of these men. For instance, KRS 431.220 allows Baze and Bowling up to twenty days before their scheduled executions to choose electrocution instead of lethal injection. On the twenty-first day, they can not only make that choice, but then proceed to challenge the lack of promulgated regulation of the electrocution protocol — an issue arguably not addressed by the majority opinion. The answer would seem obvious. But such reality does not preclude further filings, further briefing, further review by this Court, further delay.
There is no end to the creative mind of the condemned.
It seems to me that the majority opinion turns upon a sterile technicality. It has nothing to do with a fan- trial of Appellants. Nothing which affects the severity of the punishment or the humaneness of the method employed. These heavy issues have all been decided — one of them by the highest court of our land. Our decision here today gives the guilty more time to live. It gives the innocent families of the victims more time to suffer.
SCOTT, J., joins.