Court Opinion

ID: 9668444
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:13:55.657378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:45.527348
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent from that portion of the Majority Opinion denying the appellant the right to contradict evidence of parole eligibility with statistical evidence bearing on the probability of release. The Majority Opinion permits evidence regarding minimum parole eligibility, which is inherently misleading and confusing as to *420likelihood of release, while it prohibits evidence that would rebut these half-truths.
The Majority states:
“Under KRS 532.055(2)(a), the Commonwealth, during the sentencing hearing, may offer evidence relevant to sentencing including the minimum parole eligibility.”
What possible purpose or relevance could there be in such evidence aside from influencing the jury to provide a more severe penalty as an appropriate penalty because of the probability of early release? Why should the defendant be denied the right to “negate” such evidence when KRS 532.-055(b) allows the defendant to “introduce evidence in mitigation” which negates any evidence introduced by the Commonwealth? Statistics such as those offered by Abbott fit squarely within the statute. See Huff v. Commonwealth, Ky., 763 S.W.2d 106, 110 (1989) (Leibson, J., dissenting).
There is no logical reason why, when a jury has been given evidence of minimum parole eligibility, the defendant may not mitigate the resulting prejudice by offering statistics showing that only a fraction of convicts are granted parole on their initial try. To hold otherwise misleads the jury into believing that inmates are frequently paroled when they first become eligible and to encourage jurors to impose harsher sentences than they would otherwise think appropriate. The statistics are as reliable as the Commonwealth’s evidence because minimum parole eligibility “is inherently vague and unknowable, and subject to subsequent change.” Leibson, J., in Huff supra at 111. If the jury is entitled to know that a defendant may not serve the full term it imposes, surely it is also entitled to know that the vast majority of convicts are not paroled when they first become eligible. See Huff, supra, Appendix A, at 116, for a compilation of statistics, demonstrating that between the years 1983 and 1987 there was a significant decline in the number of convicts paroled when they first became eligible — a decline from 43.6% in 1983-84 to 30.9% in 1986-87.
These statistics were the only means available to the appellant to complete the information given by the Commonwealth, and to restore some degree of fairness and credibility to the sentencing process. The Majority Opinion shuts the door on legitimate rebuttal; it denies fundamental fairness.
COMBS, J., joins this dissent.