Court Opinion

ID: 9748519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:04:29.406348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:36.561129
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
Concurring.
I vote to affirm the holding of the Court of Appeals because I agree with the majority opinion’s ultimate holding that the Pike Circuit Court erred when it denied Appel-lee’s motion to dismiss Count II of the indictment. I write separately, however, because I recognize that this case is solely about statutory interpretation, i.e., whether a defendant can be liable for criminal homicide under KRS Chapter 507 for the killing of an unborn child. It is black-letter law that “[i]n the construction of statutes, the primary rule is to ascertain and give effect to the intention of the Legislature.”1 And, when interpreting a statute, we must assign it a stable meaning because “intent is what the legislative body that passed the act intended when it passed the act at that point in time.”2 Accordingly, I disagree with the majority’s prospective broadening of KRS Chapter 507 criminal homicide liability through its conclusion (a/k/a “judicial fiat”) that medical advancements have changed the meaning of the word “person” in KRS Chapter 507 from what this Court previously found that the General Assembly intended it to mean when it enacted the Kentucky Penal Code three decades ago. In my view, the rules of statutory construction continue to compel the conclusion that a person who *664kills an unborn child has no criminal liability under KRS Chapter 507.
Two decades ago, the lead opinion in Hollis v. Commonwealth3 properly observed that “[t]his Court cannot presume that the legislature intended to license us to expand the class of persons who could be treated as victims of criminal homicide in our own discretion.”4 Accordingly, it turned to rules of statutory construction to determine what meaning the General Assembly intended for the word “person” in KRS Chapter 507, and it concluded that “persons” included all human beings who were born alive, but excluded the unborn, including viable fetuses.5 Nine years later, in Jones v. Commonwealth,6 a majority of this Court applied this same interpretation of “person” to a different factual situation, i.e., one where a child born alive after the defendant’s criminal conduct dies as a result of that conduct, and concluded that the defendant was liable for Second-Degree Manslaughter.7 Until today, therefore, this Court has held that, for purposes of KRS Chapter 507, a “person” must be born alive. But today, despite the widely-held view that “[a] statutory construction, once made and followed, should never be altered upon the changed view of new personnel of the court[,]”8 a majority of the Court consisting in part of new faces who were not on the Court when Hollis and Jones were decided, holds that medical advancements have made the Court’s earlier interpretation obsolete and assigns a new meaning to the word “person” without even attempting to suggest that its interpretation corresponds to the enacting Legislature’s intent.
In my view, the majority’s evolutionary notion of statutory meaning runs afoul of the canons of statutory interpretation. In particular, I submit that subsequent General Assemblies have ratified the holdings of Hollis and Jones.
When a legislature reenacts an earlier statute, the normative view is that the legislature should have known how that statute had been interpreted and applied since its original enactment. If the legislature had disagreed with those interpretations, it should have expressed that disagreement by changing the statute to prevent courts and agencies from continuing to apply the statute incorrectly. Consequently, if the legislature reenacts the statute without rejecting the interpretations of the earlier act, it probably means to approve those interpretations.9
Significantly, in the twenty-one years that have elapsed since Hollis was rendered, the General Assembly has substantially reenacted both KRS 507.020,10 the crime for which Appellee was indicted, and (twice) KRS 507.040,11 the crime to which Appellee entered his conditional guilty plea, but has failed to make any changes *665to KRS Chapter 507 that would have changed the meaning of “person” that Hollis — and later, but prior to the most recent reenactment of KRS 507.040, Jones — found applicable to Kentucky’s criminal homicide provisions.
To interpret the statutes at issue here, however, we do not have to rely upon rules of construction that merely assume the legislature “should have known” or “must have known” about this Court’s previous interpretation of “person.” The 2004 General Assembly’s “ACT relating to the protection of unborn children and declaring an emergency,” which created separate fetal homicide offenses for causing the death of an unborn child and became law when it was signed by the Governor on February 20, 2004, expressly states that the General Assembly interprets the existing provisions of the Kentucky Penal Code not to provide criminal liability for the killing of an unborn child: “Whereas current criminal law leaves unborn children outside of its coverage, and unborn children are in dire need of that coverage, an emergency is declared to exist and this Act shall take effect upon signature of the Governor or upon its otherwise becoming law.”12 Although Justice Wintersheimer, in his concurring opinion, believes the 2004 General Assembly’s fetal homicide legislation supports his conclusion that the killing of an unborn child is actionable under KRS Chapter 507, I believe the exact opposite to be true. Possible constitutional challenges to House Bill 108 notwithstanding, it is the fact that the fetal homicide legislation was enacted at all that cements my conclusion that KRS Chapter 507 criminal homicide liability is unavailable for the killing of an unborn child. This was expressly recognized by the 2004 General Assembly in enacting fetal homicide legislation. What better expression of the General Assembly’s intent is there than their own words.
Just last year, in Kotila v. Commonwealth,13 this Court held that its interpretation of Manufacturing Methamphetamine under KRS 218A.1432(l)(b) was “supported by the General Assembly’s own subsequent enactments with respect to the possession of chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.”14 In doing so, the Court recognized that the presumption against redundant enactments allows a reviewing court to interpret the General Assembly’s decision to prohibit certain conduct through its criminal laws as an indication that the conduct was not already prohibited by another, previously-enacted criminal statute.15 It defies all logic, and creates serious potential double jeopardy quandaries, for this Court to interpret “causing the death of an unborn child” as criminal homicide under KRS Chapter 507 after the most-recent General Assembly has both made a legislative declaration that the existing provisions of the Penal Code (presumably including KRS Chapter 507) do not provide criminal liability for that conduct and has defined the conduct as a different criminal offense under a different chapter of the Penal Code.
Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority because I believe Appellee was not subject to liability for criminal homicide under KRS Chapter 507 for causing the death of an unborn child. Unlike the majority, however, I maintain that no KRS Chapter 507 liability exists for any such conduct unless and until the *666General Assembly enacts legislation that would provide for such liability.
STUMBO, J., joins this concurring opinion.

. Moore v. Alsmiller, 289 Ky. 682, 160 S.W.2d 10,12 (1942).

. Ronald Benton Brown & Sharon Jacobs Brown, Statutory Interpretation: The Search For Legislative Intent, § 2.4, at 14 (NITA 2002) (emphasis added and footnote omitted) [hereinafter Brown & Brown].

. Ky., 652 S.W.2d 61 (1983).

. Id. at 63.

. Id. at 62.

. Ky., 830 S.W.2d 877 (1992).

. Id. at 880.

. 73 Am. Jur. 2d Statutes § 63 (2.001).

. Id. at § 9.3.1, 149-50 (footnote omitted). See also Commonwealth v. Vincent, Ky., 70 S.W.3d 422, 425 (2002); Falender v. Hankins, 296 Ky. 396, 177 S.W.2d 382, 383 (1944) (observing that it is a "well-settled rule of statutory construction, that when a statute or clause, or provision thereof, has been construed by the court of last resort of a state, and the statute has been substantially re-enacted, the Legislature will be deemed to have adopted such construction.”).

. See 1984 Ky. Acts. ch. 165, § 26.

. See 2000 Ky. Acts. ch. 521, § 8; 1984 Ky. Acts. ch. 165, § 27.

. 2004 Regular Session, House Bill 108, § 6 (emphasis added).

. Ky., 114 S.W.3d 226 (2003).

. Id. at 238.

. Id. at 238-39.