Court Opinion

ID: 9483211
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:14:23.210511+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:02.237914
License: Public Domain

TIMBERS, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I regret that I cannot join in the majority’s innovative opinion. I cannot do so because it ignores the fundamental precept of federal constitutional law that a “court cannot permit a defendant to be tried on charges that are not made in the indictment. ...” Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 217 (1960). And yet that is precisely what the majority has condoned here.
In a case that appears to be one of first impression in this Court, the majority has departed from the law of this Circuit and of the Supreme Court. Moreover, it has turned on its head the Kentucky statute under which the defendant was prosecuted.
Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 510.040 (1990) provides that first degree rape may be committed in sexual intercourse with another person by “forcible compulsion ” or in sexual intercourse with another person who is “physically helpless”, (emphasis added). The majority acknowledges that the trial court instructed the jury that it could convict if it found that the victim was incapable of consent because of physical helplessness, although not charged in the indictment. It further acknowledges that the indictment charged only rape by forcible compulsion.
Thus the lines are squarely drawn. The majority holds that the acknowledged discrepancy between the charge in the indictment and the jury instruction is a mere variance subject to harmless error. I would hold that it is a constructive amendment which is prejudicial per se.
It is the settled law of this Circuit that “A constructive amendment occurs when the terms of an indictment are in effect altered by the presentation of evidence and jury instructions which so modify essential elements of the offense charged that there is a substantial likelihood that the defendant may have been convicted of an offense other than that charged in the indictment.”
United States v. Hathaway, 798 F.2d 902, 910 (6 Cir.1986); see also United States v. Ford, 872 F.2d 1231, 1235-37 (6 Cir.1989), cert. denied, 111 S.Ct. 124 (1990). With the law so clearly settled in this Circuit, I see no need to reach out for support from decisions of state courts as the majority does to support its novel holding.
I am particularly unpersuaded by the majority’s attempted end-run to circumvent the settled law of this Circuit, i.e. by characterizing the Kentucky rape statute as providing “only one offense of rape with two different methods of commission.” Such analysis could be invoked to avoid reversal of convictions under many other statutes that provide alternative grounds for prosecution of criminal conduct. The majority’s analysis strikes me as establishing a dangerous precedent.
I would affirm the district court’s order granting a writ of habeas corpus conditioned on the Commonwealth’s right to retry appellee and I would vacate the stay pending appeal which was entered more than a year ago. From the majority’s refusal to do so, I respectfully but emphatically dissent.