Court Opinion

ID: 9675337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:49:40.876464+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:33.442063
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in results only.
Reason and logic should not be strangers in the house of the law. Even though the statute is inartfully drawn, within the overall structure of the Penal Code murder is a Class A felony when the death penalty is not sought and should be so considered. The General Assembly’s language in KRS 507.020 should not be taken literally with disregard of the rest of the Code where to do so provides an absurd, illogical result. The General Assembly clearly intends the PFO statute to apply to a murder conviction when murder is tried subject to the penalty for a Class A felony, and we should construe the Penal Code accordingly.
Recently, in a workers’ compensation case we disregarded the literal language of the statute to deny Special Fund liability for preexisting active disability, being convinced such was not the legislative intent. See Beale v. Stratton, Ky., 779 S.W.2d 201 (1989). The rule is, as stated in Bailey v. Reeves, Ky., 662 S.W.2d 832, 834 (1984), words of a statute are afforded “literal meaning unless to do so would lead to an absurd or wholly unreasonable conclusion.” In Beale, we reached an erroneous result because to afford the statutory language a literal application did not cause an “absurd or wholly unreasonable” conclusion. But to do so in the present case causes just such an intolerable, unintended result.
However, I concur in the result in the present case because a life sentence is the longest term of years, and cannot be “enhanced” to 200 years. Thus the PFO enhancement was a contradiction in terms. It is only because of potential, unknowable parole possibilities that the Commonwealth would ever argue for enhancing a life sentence to a term of years. This potential does not make logical what is otherwise a non sequitur. This is but another example of the havoc we created when we gave our judicial blessing to the Truth-in-Sentencing law.