Court Opinion

ID: 9772185
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:09:43.828797+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:42.487007
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent from two sections of the Majority Opinion:
Section VI, failure to instruct on extreme emotional disturbance (EED) and Manslaughter I in the guilt phase; and
*183Section IX, failure to instruct on statutory mitigating circumstances (EED, mental disease or defect, and intoxication) in the penalty phase.
Under the evidence adduced at trial, there was no question about whether the appellant was guilty of criminal homicides. The issue presented by the evidence was whether there was sufficient proof that, when he killed, it was an act of sudden, uncontrolled rage to reduce the degree of the offenses from Murder to Manslaughter I at the guilt phase, or to mitigate against the death penalty at the penalty phase. The jury was never instructed on these diminished capacity issues. The judgment should be reversed and remanded for a new trial before a properly instructed jury.
The Majority Opinion fails to address the evidence presented on these critical issues. From this evidence the jury could have reasonably concluded that the appellant was already suffering from some significant degree of mental illness, diagnosed as severe depression and paranoia, and that he killed two strangers whom he happened upon purely by chance. His mother and sister testified to his bizarre behavior, suicidal comments, and depression (“Dottie Sue done left him again”) leading up to the killings. There was evidence these mental problems had been exacerbated by drugs and alcohol.
"Whether the motor vehicle collision which preceded the shooting was intentional or accidental is beside the point. Either way, a properly instructed jury could have reasonably believed the collision triggered the appellant into a sudden, irrational, uncontrollable rage that caused the shooting response, thus explaining killings that are otherwise without motive.
The Majority Opinion assumes “Bowling’s auto crashed into the driver’s side of the Earleys’ vehicle” which was stopped in the parking lot, and this, rather than a collision on the street, triggered Bowling’s rage. The only evidence to support this conclusion is photographs showing debris presumably from the wreck. This evidence of debris was not conclusive. If the collision occurred in the parking lot, why did the witnesses who heard the shooting not hear the collision as well? And more significantly, if the appellant’s original intent, even before the collision, was to shoot the Earleys, why would he first damage his own vehicle by intentionally ramming into the Earleys’ parked vehicle? If before he was under the influence of EED he had wanted to shoot the Earleys, he would simply get out of his car, go over to the Earleys’ parked car, and shoot them; or, if intending only to kill Eddie Earley, he would simply wait until Earley started into his store and follow him in. There was no reasonable explanation for why the appellant, if not in a state of uncontrolled rage, would want to ram his car into the Earley parked car, thus doing considerable damage to his own in the process, before opening fire. Surely, at the least, the appellant was entitled to an instruction under which the jury could consider whether the shooting was a spontaneous reaction to uncontrolled rage from the motor vehicle collision, a reaction which would not have occurred otherwise, and then (if they so find) convict the defendant of the lesser charge of Manslaughter I, as they should do unless convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the two events were unrelated.
Our Court has severely and unduly limited the effect of EED as evidence of diminished mental capacity at the guilt phase by our decision in McClellan v. Commonwealth, Ky., 715 S.W.2d 464 (1986) (Leibson, J., dissenting). We limit EED more than the Penal Code ever intended by requiring proof that the defendant acted “uncontrollably from the impelling force of the extreme emotional disturbance rather than from evil or malicious purposes” (Id. at 468-69). Emphasis added. The Penal Code does not require that EED must be the sole cause, or the exclusive reason, for the homicide before it applies, but the McClellan decision so requires. Actually, if EED must be the sole reason for the act, with no other “evil or malicious purposes” involved, EED does not differ materially from temporary insanity. To be found “under the influence” of EED- we should require, only a finding “it contributes to cause the act, rather than limiting its application to where it is an exclusive cause of the *184criminal act.” McClellan, swpra at 474, Leibson, J., dissenting.
Nevertheless, even taking it as a given that EED must be the sole cause or the exclusive reason for the act at the guilt phase, statutory law plainly states that the penalty phase instruction requires a lesser degree of EED. The death penalty statute specifically defines what is required as a statutory circumstance mitigating against the death penalty in KRS 532.025(2)(b)(2), as follows:
“The capital offense was committed while the defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance even though the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance is not sufficient to constitute a defense to the crime[J”
Moreover, the statute prescribing the procedure orders the trial judge to “include [this] in his instructions to the jury for it to consider.” KRS 532.025(2). Even if my colleagues do not recognize that here there was prejudicial error in failing to instruct on EED in the guilt phase, surely they must do so in the penalty phase.
This defendant has been convicted of a senseless, unexplained and motiveless murder. If a sudden, compelling rage was not the only possible explanation, it was certainly a reasonable one, which suffices to submit the issue to the jury at the penalty phase when the death penalty is the issue. Yet this issue raised by the evidence was never presented by instructions to the jury.
Likewise, the penalty phase instructions erroneously omitted other statutory mitigating factors which are set out in KRS 532.-025(2)(b)(7) as follows:
“At the time of the capital offense, the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of his conduct to the requirements of law was impaired1 as a result of mental illness or retardation or intoxication even though the impairment of the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of law is insufficient to constitute a defense to the crime[.]”
Here, again, the statute requires there be evidence only that the defendant “was impaired.” It does not require exclusive causation. Medical testimony regarding Bowling’s mental illness and the degree of it, and lay testimony regarding his bizarre behavior and his excessive use of intoxicating substances, drugs and alcohol in the period leading up to the shooting, surely justified an instruction putting these mitigating factors in issue before the jury.
The prosecutor acknowledged these issues existed, stating in closing argument:
“T.C. Bowling is not mentally ill. T.C. Bowling is mean. T.C. Bowling is one of those people. In my business I am aware of that because I prosecute people like that and not everyone recognizes it.”
This argument not only recognizes the existence of the issues upon which the judge failed to instruct, it compounded the error by supplementing the evidence with the prosecutor’s personal experience and opinion, which is obviously improper.
The Majority Opinion opines “[t]he jury instructions [on ‘mitigating circumstances’] fully complied with what is constitutionally required,” citing Smith v. Commonwealth, Ky., 599 S.W.2d 900 (1980).
Smith is inapposite. Unlike this case, in Smith the trial court specifically instructed on statutory mitigating circumstances at the penalty phase, providing instructions covering both “under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance” and “impaired as a result of mental disease or defect or intoxication” even though not impaired sufficiently “to constitute a defense to the crime.” Id. at 911. The very same instructions which this appellant complains were not given, were given in Smith. Furthermore, the death penalty judgment in Smith was *185reversed, because of an error in instructions, rather than affirmed, albeit it was reversed for a guilt phase error not presently involved.
As to the remaining issues in this ease, I agree with the Majority Opinion that no prejudicial error occurred. However, I concur in results only because, with due respect, in my opinion the Majority Opinion insufficiently articulates the nature of the appellant’s complaints, and fails to address them responsively.
KATHRYN BURKE, Special Justice, joins this dissent in part.

. This is an obvious error in syntax originating in the L.R.C.'s original version in The Kentucky Acts and repeated when the statute was officially codified. The phrase no doubt intended is: "... to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of law was impaired....” I have underlined the words erroneously deleted. The incomplete phrase is repeated in a complete form later on in the same sentence.