Court Opinion

ID: 9748954
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:18:27.716711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:40.978878
License: Public Domain

SCOTT, J.,
dissenting opinion:
I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s adoption of a new Ineffective Assistance of Appellate Counsel Rule. I do so because of the many new complexities it will present.
Federal courts already review such allegations in federal habeas corpus proceeding and, where appropriate, grant or insure appropriate relief. See Wilson v. Parker, 515 F.3d 682, 706-08 (6th Cir. 2008). To adopt a broader rule now will necessarily open up our RCr 11.42 relief to every defendant who, years ago, failed to raise a later-validated right — raised and won by someone else years later as society’s perspective changed and evolved. Moreover, as courts tend to view new decisions as ones that should have been made years ago, we will tend more and more to open up old cases on new issues that would not have been, or were not, validated in their day, solely on the supposition that appellate counsel of the time was ineffective for not preserving the issue then, a point that, most often, will not have been true for the time. My concern is: where will this new concept of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel end?
As a case in point, I cite this Court’s continuing, decades-old evolution in regard to the Merritt/Kennedy line of cases dealing with the operability of firearms.7
Our state court system and its personnel are burdened more and more each year by increasing legislation and appellate court decisions expanding their jurisdiction and *443responsibilities while their budgets and personnel dwindle. Thus, I fear that— compared to the increases of their burdens before — this decision will be the equivalent of a jflood, the effect of which will be felt for many years. It is for this reason — and the fact that we already have a system in place to address these issues under the federal habeas corpus standards — that I must respectfully dissent to this expansion, as well as its progeny to come.

. Merritt v. Commonwealth, 386 S.W.2d 727 (Ky.1965) and Kennedy v. Commonwealth, 544 S.W.2d 219 (Ky.1976) were ultimately overruled by Wilburn v. Commonwealth, 312 S.W.3d 321 (Ky.2010).