Court Opinion

ID: 9761617
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:47:46.00355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:25.102835
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent from that portion of the Majority Opinion which affirms the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for twenty-five (25) years on the kidnapping conviction. The Majority upholds the sentence on the basis that the murder of the victim in the course of the commission of kidnapping is an aggravating circumstance “otherwise authorized by law.” The Majority so holds by quoting only a portion of the statute and despite the fact that no statutorily enumerated circumstances were found as required by KRS 532.025(2) and KRS 532.025(3).
Pursuant to KRS 509.040, kidnapping is a capital offense “when the victim is not released alive....”
KRS 532.030 provides that:
“When a person is convicted of a capital offense he shall have his punishment fixed at death, or at a term of imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence, or to a sentence of life, or to a term of not less than twenty (20) years.”
KRS 532.025(2) provides:
“In all cases of offenses for which the death penalty may be authorized the judge shall consider, or he shall include in his instructions to the jury for it to consider, any mitigating circumstances or aggravating circumstances otherwise authorized by law and any of the following statutory aggravating ... circumstances which may be supported by the evidence.” (Emphasis added)
KRS 532.025(3) provides in relevant part:
“In all cases unless at least one (1) of the statutory aggravating circumstances enumerated in subsection (2) of this section is so found, the death penalty or the sentence to imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until the defendant has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence, shall not be imposed.” (Emphasis added)
The Majority’s interpretation is strained and fails to give effect to the statute as a whole. When a kidnapping victim is not “released alive,” this fact makes kidnapping a capital offense, but there is no statute that specifies that this also, in and of itself, is an aggravating circumstance making the offender eligible for the death penalty.
Certainly, KRS 532.025(2) allows aggravating circumstances other than those specifically enumerated in that section to be taken into consideration by the jury in its deliberations, but in addition, by using the conjunctive “and,” the statute requires at least one of the enumerated statutory circumstances to be found before the death penalty or life without parole for twenty-*809five (25) years can be imposed. This is so regardless of whether the crime is murder or kidnapping or murder and kidnapping. This conclusion is inescapable because otherwise the General Assembly would have used the disjunctive “or” instead of the conjunctive “and” between the two phrases in KRS 532.025(2).
There is still another reason why logic compels this interpretation of our death penalty statute. The statute was written with an eye to complying with the then recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court stating constitutional minimums for a death penalty statute. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), rehearing denied 429 U.S. 875, 96 S.Ct. 197, 198, 50 L.Ed.2d 158 (1976), mandates “a jury’s discretion must be channeled, ... it is always circumscribed by the legislative guidelines.” The statutory interpretation in our Majority Opinion eliminates the need to specify a statutory aggravating circumstance to put the defendant in the class eligible for the death penalty as required by United States Supreme Court decisions. Our interpretation would extend to any capital case, a murder case as well as a kidnapping case where the victim is not released alive.
We have fashioned an interpretation of our death penalty statute that will fail the constitutional minimum. Our decision interprets our statutes to permit the death penalty to be imposed (as well as life without the possibility of parole for twenty-five years) without the statutory narrowing of the death eligible class required by Gregg v. Georgia, supra, Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), and their progeny. For example, see Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980), holding unconstitutional a portion of the Georgia statute allowing the death penalty when the murder was found outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman, as a statute too vague to serve as a substantive predicate.
If kidnapping is to be a statutory aggravating circumstance, in and of itself, which makes a murderer eligible for the penalty of death or life without parole for twenty-five (25) years, the General Assembly should have so enumerated in KRS 532.-025(2).
I would reverse on the aggravated punishment and remand to the trial court for resentencing in accordance with KRS 532.-030.
VANCE, J., joins this dissent.