Court Opinion

ID: 9635175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:40:22.094826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:20.555879
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
dissenting.
From the time that Kentucky first adopted bifurcated Truth-in-Sentencing procedures for felony criminal trials, issues began cropping up about the type and extent of parole information a jury should receive prior to making its sentencing decision. It is beyond dispute, however, that in our eighteen (18) years of experience under Truth-in-Sentencing, we have concluded that the possibility that a defendant might receive an early release from prison is a relevant factor in a jury’s sentencing determination. After all, we have permitted the introduction of evidence relating to parole eligibility,1 good time credits,2 and credit for time served3 because those matters “potentially affect the actual duration of a period of imprisonment imposed by the jury.” 4 In affirming the judgment of the Fayette Circuit Court in the case at bar, however, today’s plurality opinion merely perpetuates the inevitable “confusion and ‘half-truths’ ”5 that Justice Leib-son foreshadowed when this Court first extended comity to KRS 532.055, and continues to “allow the Commonwealth to produce vague, uncertain and incomplete evidence about existing minimum parole guidelines.”6 When this Court previously expressed its view that parole eligibility statistics were not admissible under the then-existing version of KRS 532.055(2)(b), a dissenting opinion made a persuasive case for the introduction of actual parole data as “evidence in mitigation” to rebut the prejudicial implications of parole eligibility information introduced by the Commonwealth:
These statistics were the only means available to the appellant to complete the information given by the Commonwealth, and to restore some degree of fairness and credibility to the sentencing process. The Majority Opinion shuts the door on legitimate rebuttal; it denies fundamental fairness.7
Subsequent to that opinion, however, the case for the admission of parole data became virtually unassailable when the General Assembly amended KRS 532.055(2)(b) to permit defendants to introduce a broader range of evidence in Truth-in-Sentencing proceedings, ie., “evidence in mitigation or in support of leniency.'”8 In light of this statutory change, there is no longer any serious dispute that, at KRS 532.055 Truth-in-Sentencing proceedings, criminal defendants are entitled to introduce proof that they are unlikely to be paroled at *347their initial parole eligibility hearing.9 • Accordingly, today’s plurality opinion abandons the view that KRS 532.055(2)(b) excludes proof on that topic, and instead takes issue with the form of the evidence that Appellant offered to prove the unlikelihood that he would be paroled at his minimum parole date — ie., the certified copies10 of Kentucky Parole Board records showing that only a fraction of inmates received a recommendation for parole at their initial parole eligibility hearings between fiscal years 1993-1994 and 2000-2001.11 The plurality opinion affirms the trial court’s decision to exclude Appellant’s statistical evidence because, in its estimation, the Parole Board’s records “do[ ] not indicate that Young is likely or unlikely to be paroled when he becomes eligible.”12 Because “ ‘[r]elevant evidence’ means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of a fact that is of consequence to the determination of an action more proba-
ble or less probable than it would be without the evidencef,]”13 and the concerns highlighted in the plurality opinion address themselves only to the weight that the jury should assign to such evidence, ie., to its sufficiency rather than to its admissibility, I respectfully dissent and vote to reverse Appellant’s life sentence and to remand Appellant’s Murder conviction to the trial court for a new KRS 532.055 Truth-in-Sentencing proceeding.
In the outset, I must note that the basis for the trial court’s decision to exclude this evidence was wholly unrelated to the grounds upon which today’s plurality opinion deems it inadmissible. Appellant filed a motion in limine in which he sought the trial court’s approval to introduce the Parole Board’s statistical records “to rebut the prejudicial implications of the Commonwealth’s evidence of minimum parole eligibility, should the Commonwealth intro*348duce such evidence.” On the day of trial, the Commonwealth objected to the introduction of the records on the grounds that the raw data could be misleading. The Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney hypothesized that the Parole Board might be “cooking its books” by denying parole at initial eligibility hearings but then granting parole to large numbers of inmates after short deferments and therefore argued that the raw data should not be admitted into evidence unless the defense could produce a witness, subject to cross-examination, who could explain and interpret that data. Although today’s plurality opinion’s holding is premised exclusively on a conclusion that “[t]he evidence ... does not predict his actual chances of being paroled and therefore is irrelevant and incompetent[,]”14 and the plurality opinion states that “the trial judge did not abuse her discretion in refusing to accept the proffered statistical evidence[,]”15 I would note that the trial court did not utter any of the words “probative” or “relevant” or “substantially more prejudicial than” when it excluded this evidence. Instead, after observing that the prosecuting attorney “raised a good point about deferrals” and vocalizing the possibility that the Parole Board’s data might “make them look better than they actually are,” the trial court ruled that Appellant could not introduce the Parole Board records “without having someone come in to ‘flesh out’ ” the data contained in those records. Accordingly, this is not a case where we must give deference to a trial court’s relevancy determination; this trial court made no such determination, and I would further observe that neither the plurality opinion nor the Commonwealth make any attempt to defend the trial court’s ruling on its own merits.
KRS 582.055 “embraces the idea of informed decision-making by a jury.”16 This Court granted comity to the Truth-in-Sentencing Act to permit “a better informed sentencing process” 17 free of the chief deficiencies under the prior procedure whereby “the jury [was] required to sentence in a vacuum without any knowledge of the defendant’s past criminal record or other matters that might be pertinent to consider in the assessment of an appropriate penalty.”18 This Court has described the policy behind Truth-in-Sentencing as allowing the jury access to “full and accurate information” relevant to its decision, including how much of the sentence the defendant was likely to serve:
[T]he policy embodied in the “truth-in-sentencing” statute, KRS 532.055 is to provide full and accurate information to the sentencing jury, and to insure that the sentencing jury is well informed about all pertinent information relating to the person on trial. The jury was entitled to know when it was deliberating Appellee’s sentence not only how much of the sentence he was likely to serve, but also how much of it he had already served.19
Today’s plurality opinion subverts those ends by depriving juries of evidence that is necessary for them to contextualize parole eligibility information and to distinguish *349between eligibility for parole consideration and the probability (or improbability) that a defendant will actually be paroled when he or she first becomes eligible. Although the Kentucky Rules of Evidence govern KRS 5B2.055 Truth-in-Sentencing proceedings before a jury,20 and the plurality opinion states repeatedly (at least three (3) times by my count) that the Parole Board’s records are not probative of whether Appellant actually will be paroled at his initial eligibility hearing, the opinion contains only one (1) passing citation to the KRE’s three (3) most important relevancy rules, but nothing that even resembles an analysis of the admissibility of such evidence under those rules. As such, it appears that the plurality opinion has defined “probative” using some independent and undefined standard that has nothing to do with the relevancy provisions of the Kentucky Rules of Evidence, which “tilt[ ] outcomes toward admission rather than exclusion.” 21
The inclusionary thrust of relevancy as a concept is assured in two ways. By using the words “any tendency” to describe relevant evidence, the rule intends to declare that an item of evidence is relevant if it possesses any probative value at all. By using the gauge “more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence,” the rule makes it clear that an item of evidence may be relevant even though it leaves the proposition toward which it is offered in great doubt.... In other words, an item of evidence is relevant under the terms of Rule ¡¡.01 if it advances the inquiry to any degree at all.22
When viewed through the proper lens of KRE 401, the parole records were relevant to prove that Appellant’s parole at the time of his initial hearing was anything but a foregone conclusion. Although the plurality opinion’s criticisms of this evidence are fair — the records from past parole proceedings, which group the entire inmate population together, do not establish conclusively that Appellant will be denied parole on this Murder sentence when he first comes before a future Parole Board23— those criticisms address themselves to the sufficiency24 of Appellant’s evidence rather than its admissibility under our Rules of Evidence. Although the plurality opinion’s concerns identify issues that the Commonwealth could bring to the jury’s attention through argument and/or independent evidence, to be relevant under the Kentucky Rules of Evidence an item of evidence “need not prove conclusively the proposi*350tion for which it is offered. It need not even make that proposition appear more probable than not.... It is enough if the item could reasonably show that a fact is slightly more probable than it would appear without the evidence. Even after the probative force of the evidence is spent, the proposition for which it is offered still can seem quite improbable.”25 ■
Perhaps Appellant could have accumulated more specific parole data that was limited to inmates convicted of Murder or produced an expert witness who could have testified to his or her opinion regarding Appellant’s prospects for parole. The possibility that Appellant might have found better evidence to prove his claim, however, does not render irrelevant the certified Parole Board records that Appellant actually sought to introduce in this case, which showed that, in any given recent year, at best one-fifth (l/5th) of inmates received a recommendation for parole at their initial parole hearings. Those records permitted a reasonable inference that Appellant’s early parole was, at best, indefinite, and the trial court erred when it excluded this evidence.
In my view, this case is a prime illustration of why criminal defendants must be permitted to introduce such evidence. In its opening statement to the jury in this sentencing-phase-only retrial, the Commonwealth explained that it would introduce parole eligibility guidelines that “tell you when a defendant is eligible to first meet the parole board to see if he’s going to be released or not.” In its summation, however, the Commonwealth’s discussion of the guidelines left a distinctly different impression. In fact, the Commonwealth omitted any use of any form of the word “eligibility” when it urged the jury to “send a message” to the defendant by giving him the maximum sentence possible and referenced the only exhibit published to the jury as follows: “I know about these parole guidelines — twelve (12) years for twenty-four (24) years and above including life.” I appreciate the fact that a defendant can explain to the jury that “eligibility is no guarantee, and the defendant may have to serve every single day of the sentence you fix.” But, in this case, Appellant’s trial counsel recognized that it may require more than argument to shake a jury of its preconceptions and thus sought to introduce documentary evidence to prove that only a small fraction of inmates receive recommendations for parole at their initial eligibility date. In my view, there is no question that the evidence excluded by the trial court would have made the argument more tangible for the jury,26 which presumably had no experience with the parole system and was thus prone to interpret parole eligibility as the near-certainty to which it was implicitly equated during the Commonwealth’s summation. Justice Leibson’s dissenting opinion in Abbott says virtually everything that needs to be said about the reasons that such evidence is relevant to a jury’s sentencing recommendation:
There is no logical reason why, when a jury has been given evidence of minimum parole eligibility, the defendant may not mitigate the resulting prejudice by offering statistics showing that only a fraction of convicts are granted parole *351on their initial try. To hold otherwise misleads the jury into believing that inmates are frequently paroled when they first become eligible and to encourage jurors to impose harsher sentences than they would otherwise think appropriate.... If the jury is entitled to know that a defendant may not serve the full term it imposes, surely it is also entitled to know that the vast majority of convicts are not paroled when they first become eligible....27
In my opinion, those words are as true today as they were when they were written twelve (12) years ago, and Appellant should have an opportunity at a new sentencing hearing to introduce this statistical information for the jury’s consideration.
LAMBERT, C.J. and STUMBO, J., join this dissenting opinion.

. Boone v. Commonwealth, Ky., 780 S.W.2d 615 (1989). See also Offutt v. Commonwealth, Ky., 799 S.W.2d 815, 817 (1990).

. Comelison v. Commonwealth, Ky., 990 S.W.2d 609 (1999).

. Commonwealth v. Higgs, Ky., 59 S.W.3d 886, 893-94 (2001).

. Comelison, 990 S.W.2d at 611.

. Commonwealth v. Reneer, Ky., 734 S.W.2d 794, 800 (1987) (Leibson, J., dissenting).

. Huff v. Commonwealth, Ky., 763 S.W.2d 106, 112 (1988) (Leibson, J., dissenting).

. Abbott v. Commonwealth, Ky., 822 S.W.2d 417, 420 (1992) (citations omitted) (Leibson, J., dissenting).

. 1998 Ky. Acts. ch. 606, § 111 (effective July 15, 1998) (emphasis added).

.I would observe that the Commonwealth essentially conceded as much in the trial court when it admitted that Abbott "was somewhat altered by the change of the statute.” And, in its brief to this Court, the Commonwealth's only retort to Appellant's argument that the amendment to KRS 532.055(2)(b) authorizes "parole probability evidence” is a statement in a footnote that reads "[t]he amendment ... does not define or explain the scope or purpose of the change in the statutory language.”

.See KRE 803(8); KRE 901(b)(7); KRE 902(4).

.The Parole Board’s statistics demonstrated that at initial parole eligibility hearings: (1) parole was actually recommended for between only nine percent (9%) and twenty percent (20%) of inmates; and (2) the Parole Board typically orders “serve outs” for more than twice the number of inmates that it recommends parole:
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. Young v. Commonwealth, Ky., 129 S.W.3d 343, 345 (2004) (emphasis added).

. KRE 401. See also KRE 402 (“All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Kentucky, by acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, by these rules, or by other rules adopted by the Supreme Court of Kentucky.”).

. Young, 129 S.W.3d at 345 (citing KRE 401-403).

. Id. at 345.

. Turfway Park Racing Ass’n v. Griffin, Ky., 834 S.W.2d 667, 673 (1992). See also Mabe v. Commonwealth, Ky., 884 S.W.2d 668, 672-3 (1994).

. Reneer, 734 S.W.2d at 797.

. Id.

. Higgs, 59 S.W.3d at 894 (citations omitted and emphasis added).

. KRE 1101(b) ("These rules apply generally to ... criminal proceedings!)]’' )■ Cf. McGuire v. Commonwealth, Ky., 885 S.W.2d 931, 938 (1994) (applying KRE 403 to eviden-tiary rulings in Truth-in-Sentencing proceeding).

. ROBERT G. LAWSON, THE KENTUCKY EVIDENCE LAW HANDBOOK § 2.05[3], at 79-80 (4th ed.2003).

. Evidence Rules Study Committee, Kentucky Rules of Evidence, Final Draft 21 (Nov. 1989).

. I would dispute, however, the plurality opinion's statement that “[t]he statistics presented for the years 1993 to 2001 cover only the actions of the current parole board[,]” Young, 129 S.W.3d at 345, see KRS 439.320 (describing the procedures for the appointment of Parole Board Members and the length of their terms), and I would observe that the records that Appellant sought to introduce reflected parole decisions made by Parole Boards appointed by both Governor Brereton Jones (1991-1995) and Governor Paul Patton (1995-2003).

.LAWSON, supra note 21 at § 2.05[3], at 80 ("Lack of appreciation of the leniency of this requirement and of the law’s powerful tilt toward admission over exclusion can result from inadequate awareness of the difference between the concepts of 'relevancy' and ‘sufficiency.’ ”).

. Evidence Rules Study Committee, Kentucky Rules of Evidence, Final Draft 21 (Nov. 1989) (quoting CLEARY, MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE 542-43 (3d ed.1984)).

. See Jenia Lontcheva, Jury Sentencing as Democratic Practice, 89 VA. L.REV. 311, 370 (2003) ("Providing Jurors with information about parole ... practices would not only serve the goal of consistency and the fair administration of justice, but would also promote the transparency and accountability of the justice system.”).

. Abbott, 822 S.W.2d at 420 (citations omitted) (Leibson, J., dissenting).