Justia Kentucky Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Laul Deng (“Aker”) sued his former employer, Norton Healthcare, Inc., for racial discrimination in terminating his employment. Specifically, Aker alleged that Norton’s failure to reinstate him after termination of his employment was retaliation for filing a pro se discrimination complaint. The trial court granted Norton summary judgment on all of Aker’s claims. Despite acknowledging that Aker never applied for any position with Norton, the court of appeals reversed, concluding that the futile-gesture doctrine excused the requirement that Aker show that he applied for a position in order to establish a prima facie claim for employment discrimination. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) the court of appeals erred in invoking the futile-doctrine theory sua sponte; and (2) the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment to Norton as a matter of law. View "Norton Healthcare, Inc. v. Deng" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of two counts of murder for intentionally killing his parents and one count of tampering with physical evidence. Defendant was sentenced to a total of forty-five years’ imprisonment. At issue on appeal was whether the trial court erred in failing to suppress Defendant’s confession made during protracted interrogation by sheriff’s detectives. The Supreme Court reversed Defendant’s convictions, holding (1) Defendant’s confession was involuntarily extracted through interrogation techniques employed by law enforcement that were constitutionally unjustifiable; and (2) the trial court improperly excluded Defendant’s alternate perpetrator evidence at trial. View "Gray v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with first-degree trafficking in a controlled substance and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Defendant was tried and convicted on the handgun charge. After his trial on this charge, Defendant filed a motion to suppress, his second such motion. The trial court denied the motion, and Defendant was subsequently tried on the trafficking charge. During trial, the Commonwealth elicited testimony from a police officer about Defendant’s testimony at the second suppression hearing. Defendant did not object to this testimony but elected not to testify in his own defense. Defendant was subsequently convicted on the trafficking charge. The court of appeals reversed the trafficking conviction, concluding that the use of Defendant’s suppression-hearing testimony violated his right not to incriminate himself and that the error was palpable. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the requirement of an objection is a substantive aspect of the constitutional rule that bars palpable error review, and therefore, the court of appeals erred in resorting to that review. View "Commonwealth v. Taylor" on Justia Law

Appellant pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, second-degree manslaughter, and other crimes. Before final sentencing, Appellant moved to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that he was provided ineffective assistance of counsel and that he relied on erroneous legal advice regarding time served when he entered his guilty plea. After holding an evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied the motion. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that Appellant may have received inaccurate advice from his trial counsel about jail-time credit but that Appellant was not prejudiced by counsel’s mistake. View "Greene v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

Appellant was convicted of driving a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol (DUI) after being stopped at a police roadblock conducted by the Kentucky State Police (KSP) at a highway intersection. The court of appeals reversed, concluding that the evidence leading to Appellant’s conviction was unconstitutionally obtained because the procedures the KSP employed to set up the roadblock failed to comply with the procedures necessary to implement a suspicionless traffic stop. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the KSP did not comply with the factors set forth in Commonwealth v. Buchanon substantially enough to render this roadblock a reasonable seizure performed in the absence of a warrant or individualized suspicion. View "Commonwealth v. Cox" on Justia Law

Each of these three consolidated cases originated with the filing of an action in the circuit court asserting claims against nursing home facilities for personal injuries suffered by a nursing home resident, violations of Ky. Rev. Stat. 216.510 et seq., and for wrongful death of the resident. At the time of each resident’s admission to the nursing home, the resident’s attorney-in-fact executed a written document providing that disputes arising out of the relationship between the resident and the nursing home would be submitted to arbitration. When each case was commenced, the defendant nursing home moved the circuit court to compel the parties to submit the claims to a formal arbitration proceeding. The circuit court denied the motion in each case, concluding that the respective power-of-attorney instruments did not authorize the resident’s attorney-in-fact to waive the resident’s right to access to the courts. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) without a clear and convincing manifestation of the principal’s intention to do so, delegation to an agent of the authority to waive a trial by jury is not authorized, and the principal’s assent to the waiver is not validly obtained; and (2) the arbitration agreements in these cases were never validly formed. View "Extendicare Homes, Inc. v. Whisman" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Appellant was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree sodomy. Appellant was sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years. The two jury instructions under which Appellant was convicted directed the jury not to consider a specific event but broadly referred to a five-month period. The Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded for a new trial, holding that, upon application of Johnson v. Commonwealth, Appellant’s constitutional right to a unanimous verdict was violated because (1) at trial, the instructions given to the jury contained no distinguishing descriptions that would fairly apprise the jury of exactly which criminal episode it was charged to consider; and (2) the error was jurisprudentially intolerable. View "Ruiz v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

Appellant was convicted of possession of a handgun by a convicted felon and of being a second-degree persistent felony offender. Appellant was sentenced to twenty years in prison. On appeal, Appellant argued that that his incriminating utterance to police during his arrest should have been suppressed as the fruit of an unlawful search, seizure, and arrest because the policy unlawfully located and identified him during the course of a protective sweep at a Louisville residence, which led to his unlawful arrest and incriminating statement. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that suppression of Appellant’s spontaneous utterance was not required because the police officers’ initial entry into the residence was consensual, the scope of the protective sweep was reasonable, the seizure of Appellant was lawful, and Appellant’s incriminating statement was spontaneous and not the product of custodial interrogation. View "Simpson v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

In 2013, the Campbell County Fiscal Court adopted an ordinance replacing a monthly subscriber fee per landline telephone to fund the emergency 911 service in the County with an annual service fee levied upon each occupied individual residential and commercial unit within the county. Plaintiff, an apartment association, filed a declaratory action alleging that the ordinance was an unconstitutional and invalid exercise of the County’s authority. The trial court affirmed the ordinance. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the fee imposed by the County to fund the emergency 911 service was a constitutional and statutorily valid exercise of its authority. View "Greater Cincinnati/N. Ky. Apartment Ass’n, Inc v. Campbell County Fiscal Court" on Justia Law

In a joint trial, Defendants Jared Futrell and Kayla Lord were each convicted of wanton murder for having participated in the killing of Lord’s seventeen-month-old son. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) in both cases, the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to remove two unqualified jurors for cause, and in accord with Gabbard v. Commonwealth, at least one of the trial court’s two erroneous failures to remove for cause was prejudicial; (2) the jury instructions raised certain unanimous verdict concerns; (3) the trial court erred by allowing Defendants too few peremptory juror challenges; and (4) the trial court erred by disallowing diversion-agreement impeachment cross-examination. Remanded for further proceedings. View "Futrell v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law