Court Opinion

ID: 9779322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:46:14.383024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:25.251116
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
concurring opinion.
For reasons that will be stated, I concur in the result. However, Blake v. Commonwealth, Ky., 607 S.W.2d 422 (1980), correctly analyzes the legislative will as expressed by KRS 503.120(1); and Blake should not be overruled.
The plain meaning of the statute is that when an accused offers evidence of a “reckless” subjective belief in the need for self-protection as “justification under KRS 503.050 (self-defense),” he may then be convicted “for an offense for which ... recklessness ... suffices to establish culpability.” KRS 503.120(1).
The majority opinion states that there “seems little doubt that the drafters of the commentary” considered that a reckless belief in the need for self-defense reduces murder to reckless homicide, but concludes that the statutory definition of reckless homicide is not broad enough to include reckless conduct in self-protection. Respectfully, I disagree.
The Commentary is based upon Commentary accompanying the November 1971 Final Draft of the Kentucky Penal Code. The same people authored both the statutes in question and the explanation that we followed in Blake, and now reject. Criminal Law of Kentucky, Banks-Baldwin, p. 589 (1982 Ed.).
KRS 507.050(1) specifies that “a person is guilty of reckless homicide when, with recklessness he causes the death of another person.” (Emphasis added.) Recklessness here is used to define conduct.
While it is true that the term “recklessly” as defined in KRS 501.030(4), General Principles of Liability, is stated in terms of failure to perceive “the result,” the apparent conflict between this statute and KRS 507.050 is resolved by recognizing that “recklessness” in KRS 507.050 addresses conduct, not result. This is the common sense meaning of the statute. An accused is entitled to an instruction on reckless homicide if he offers evidence sufficient to indicate a subjective belief, however unreasonable, that self-defense was necessary. The statutes express that a subjective belief, recklessly held, qualifies as self-defense but constitutes reckless homicide. There was no need to enact KRS 503.120 at all if the legislature did not mean to set up the crime of reckless homicide for this situation.
If the evidence here had been sufficient to justify an instruction on self-defense, the accused would have been entitled to an instruction on the lesser included offense of reckless homicide. People v. Lockett, 82 Ill.2d 546, 45 Ill.Dec. 900, 413 N.E.2d 378 (1980). But there was no evidence to justify such an instruction. The accused went to the bar with a loaded gun, sought out his victim and shot her repeatedly in the back. When considered as a whole one could not infer from his evidence that he believed that shooting the victim rather than leaving the bar was necessary at that time for his self-protection. If anything, the accused was delusional, but self-protection depends on a belief, reasonable or unreasonable, that self-protection is necessary at the time, and the appellant’s delusions (if any) were not with regard to the need for immediate self-protection but with *881regard to future self-protection. Therefore the accused was not entitled under the facts of this case to an instruction on self-protection, nor to an instruction on reckless homicide in the event the jury believed he acted in self-protection, but recklessly.
AKER, J., joins in this concurring opinion.