Court Opinion

ID: 9662139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:00:19.817021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:37.070037
License: Public Domain

STUMBO, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent from the majority opinion. My reasons for doing so are fully set forth in the concurring opinion of Justice Leibson. I only depart from that concurring opinion in its holding that there has been no manifest injustice here. RCr 10.26. I am fully aware of the consequences of waiver of reversible error.
In Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976), Chief Justice Burger stated:
Under our adversary system, once a defendant has the assistance of counsel the vast array of trial decisions, strategic and tactical, which must be made before and during trial rests with the accused and his attorney. Any other approach would rewrite the duties of trial judges and counsel in our legal system.
Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. at 512, 96 S.Ct. at 1697. In that opinion Chief Justice Burger was addressing the duties of defense counsel to raise constitutional questions. Our Court of Appeals in Salisbury v. Commonwealth, Ky.App., 556 S.W.2d 922, 927 (1977), cited Chief Justice Burger’s words and then observed that “[i]f a defendant’s counsel could not waive constitutional issues by failing to object during the course of a trial, the trial judge would be placed in an impossible position.”
In the Salisbury, supra, ease the issue was whether it was palpable error for the Commonwealth to use the silence of the defendant therein following his receipt of the Miranda warnings, to impeach the defendant’s credibility. Therein, the court held that because they could not determine whether defendant’s trial counsel failed to object as a matter of trial tactics, or whether he was unaware of the possible objection, there was no demonstration of a palpable error. Salisbury, at 928. In point of fact, defendant’s trial counsel not only made no objection in the Salisbury ease, he delved into the subject of his chent’s silence in cross-examining the trooper who informed the defendant of his Miranda rights.
*804That being said and considered, however, in the ease at bar, the inadmissible evidence permeated the trial. Not only did two police officers testify as to prohibited hearsay, but no less than three (3) physical exhibits containing written narratives of statements taken from the non-testifying, now deceased, victim were admitted into evidence for the jury’s consideration. As the Sixth Circuit noted in its opinion when considering defendant’s habeas petition:
Although Kentucky has offered circumstantial evidence in the form of hair and fiber samples, a button found at Lang’s house that has the same chemical composition as the buttons found on Sherley’s jacket as well as the testimony of two jailhouse informants, the sole witness to the attack was Lang herself. The prosecution substituted the hearsay testimony of respectable individuals within the local community ... in place of the sometimes inconsistent and confused recollections of an eighty-two year old woman.
Sherley v. Seabold, 929 F.2d 272, 275 (6th Cir.1991). The result of the admission of this inadmissible hearsay in this case is an eighty-year sentence. The error was substantial and, in my opinion, manifest injustice has resulted from that error. I would reverse for a new trial.
STEPHENS, C.J., joins in this dissent.