Court Opinion

ID: 9769791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:02:23.788927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:08.075817
License: Public Domain

LAMBERT, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with most of what Justice Stumbo has said in her dissenting opinion. In particular, I concur with her view that the majority opinion herein is insufficiently deferential to stare decisis and far too ready to overrule settled precedent.
In my view, existing law prior to the majority opinion was not incompatible with a determination that no double jeopardy bar exists in these cases. I concurred with the original majority opinion and my view of the result has not changed. What has changed is the substance of the majority opinion with the introduction of an inflexibility into our law which will produce inappropriate multiple charges and multiple punishments. Our decisions in Ingram v. Commonwealth, Ky., 801 S.W.2d 321 (1990), and Walden v. Commonwealth, Ky., 805 S.W.2d 102 (1991), amounted to a Kentucky gloss, by means of Section 13 of our Constitution, upon the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. We were entirely within our rights to so interpret the Constitution of Kentucky (Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 43 L.Ed.2d 570 (1975)), and inasmuch as it has been so interpreted, should be, for a time, let alone.
The majority opinion does not reveal some heretofore unrecognized theory of double jeopardy analysis nor does it identify any untoward results arising out of the current state of the law. We should remember that judges, lawyers and the people of Kentucky must live with the decisions we make and refrain from changing the law for less than compelling reasons.
For the reasons stated herein, I concur only in result.