Justia Kentucky Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

After a bench trial, Defendant was convicted of driving under the influence, first offense. Before Defendant was arrested, a police officer administered a preliminary breath test (PBT) but did not record the numerical level. The circuit court reversed the conviction and remanded the case for a new trial, concluding that the officer’s failure to preserve the PBT level was a Brady violation. The Court of Appeals affirmed the circuit court’s finding of a Brady violation. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the circuit court’s finding of bad faith was erroneous because it was not supported by the record, and therefore, the circuit court and the Court of Appeals erred when they found a Brady violation. View "Commonwealth v. Parrish" on Justia Law

Appellant was convicted of murder and intimidating a participant in the legal process for shooting and killing Troya Sheckles. Appellant was sentenced to fifty-five years’ imprisonment. The Supreme Court affirmed the murder conviction but reversed the conviction for intimidating a participant in the legal process, holding (1) the evidence of Sheckles’s intentional murder did not support conviction on the intimidation-of-a-witness charge; but (2) Defendant’s argument that delayed disclosures of discovery material by the Commonwealth constituted unconstitutional arbitrary state action warranting dismissal of the charges against him was without merit. View "Pettway v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

Appellant’s two-year-old son died when she left him in the car overnight and into the afternoon. Appellant was convicted of wanton murder, second-degree criminal abuse, and first-degree wanton endangerment. The Supreme Court vacated Appellant’s conviction for wanton murder, reversed her conviction for first-degree wanton endangerment, and affirmed her conviction for second-degree criminal abuse, holding (1) while Appellant’s conduct historically would have supported a conviction for wanton murder, it cannot support such a conviction now, as the General Assembly, in 2000, amended the homicide statutory scheme to create a new type of second-degree manslaughter applicable to circumstances such as these; and (2) the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction for first-degree wanton endangerment. Remanded for a new trial on the homicide charge, conviction for which is capped at second-degree manslaughter. View "Shouse v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of five counts of trafficking in prescription blanks and being a first-degree persistent felony offender for securing and selling five forged prescriptions for a controlled substance. The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions, holding that the trial court (1) did not err in denying Appellant’s motion for a directed verdict, as the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions; and (2) did not violate the bar on double jeopardy, as the separate trafficking convictions for each forged prescription did not violate Defendant’s double jeopardy rights. View "Early v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

Osie Goodgame, Jr., a Kentucky resident, worked for Consol of Kentucky, Inc. in both Kentucky and Virginia. After Goodgame resigned, he filed an injury claim alleging that, while employed by Consol, he suffered cumulative trauma injuries to his extremities and spine. An administrative law judge (ALJ) dismissed Goodgame’s claim, finding that Goodgame had not filed it within the applicable statute of limitations and that Kentucky had no jurisdiction over any injury Goodgame may have suffered in Virginia. The Workers’ Compensation Board affirmed the ALJ’s finding regarding jurisdiction but vacated the ALJ’s finding regarding the statute of limitations, concluding that the ALJ had not conducted the proper analysis in determining Goodgame’s date of injury for statute of limitations purposes. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed in part, holding (1) Kentucky does not have extraterritorial jurisdiction over any claim arising from a Virginia injury; but (2) this claim must be remanded to the ALJ so she can determine when Goodgame was advised that he suffers from a work-related cumulative trauma injury and then determine if Goodgame filed his claim within two years of that date. View "Consol of Kentucky, Inc. v. Goodgame" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted for first-degree possession of a controlled substance. Defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence collected from the search of the bedroom of a residence that police officers entered while executing a valid police warrant. The trial court denied the motion. Defendant subsequently entered a conditional guilty plea to the charge. The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Defendant’s motion to suppress. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) police may enter a suspect’s residence with a valid arrest warrant when they have reason to believe that the suspect lives in the residence and can currently be found inside; and (2) the officers in this case did not exceed the scope of a lawful search under Payton v. New York. View "Barrett v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

When a mentally disabled man who had been in the care of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services died, the Council on Developmental Disabilities, Inc. filed a request with the Cabinet under the Kentucky Open Records Act seeking information about the man’s death. The Cabinet denied the Council’s request on the grounds that the records were confidential under Ky. Rev. Stat. 209.140 and that the Council, a nonprofit corporation that advocates generally for “children and adults with mental retardation and their families and other interested persons in the community,” did not qualify as an organization exempt from the confidentiality restrictions in that statute. The Council filed suit in circuit court seeking an order requiring the Cabinet to disclose the requested records. The trial court denied the request, concluding that the Council had failed to demonstrate that it had a legitimate interest in the records sought. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the Council was not entitled to the information requested under the Act or section 209.140(3). View "Council on Dev. Disabilities, Inc. v. Cabinet for Health & Family Servs." on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of first-degree stalking, violation of a protective order, and being a first-degree persistent felony offender. Relying upon post-trial comments attributed to jurors implying that the jury had not agreed unanimously on all of the statutory elements of the crime of first-degree stalking, Defendant filed a motion for judgment of acquittal notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial. The trial court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the record in this case did not warrant departure from the historic rule prohibiting the use of post-trial juror statements to impeach a facially valid verdict. View "Maras v. Commonwealth" on Justia Law

Ronnie Lee Bowling, who is currently on Kentucky’s death row for two murder convictions obtained in 1992, was also convicted in 1996 of attempted murder. Bowling was sentenced to a twenty year term for the attempted murder conviction, to be served concurrently with the earlier sentence. The 1996 judgment failed to award Bowling his entitled jail-time credit that would mean he had served out that sentence in 2009. The Department of Corrections (DOC), however, treated the twenty-year sentence as though it had been served out at that time. In 2012, Bowling filed a petition for habeas corpus in a federal district court challenging his 1996 conviction. Before the federal court could exercise jurisdiction, it had to determine whether Bowling was “in custody” under the challenged conviction. The Supreme Court accepted certified questions from the federal court regarding the issue and answered (1) the DOC may award an inmate jail-time credit that was mistakenly left off the judgment of conviction and sentence entered when the trial court was statutorily commanded to award appropriate credit; and (2) whether the DOC properly did so in this case required fact-finding to be done by the district court. View "Bowling v. White" on Justia Law

Each of these three cases originated with actions asserting claims against nursing homes for personal injuries suffered by nursing home residents and for wrongful death of the residents. In each case, an attorney-in-fact for the resident executed a written document upon the resident’s admission to the nursing home providing that claims or disputes would be submitted to arbitration rather than adjudication in the courts. In each case, the defendant nursing home facility filed a motion to dismiss the action and compel the parties to submit the claims to a formal arbitration proceeding. The circuit court denied the motions on the grounds that the arbitration agreements were not validly formed between the respective nursing home facility and the resident whose interests were thereby affected. By way of motions for interlocutory relief, several nursing home entities sought relief from orders refusing to compel arbitration of the disputes. The Supreme Court denied the motions for interlocutory relief, holding that because the power-of-attorney instruments involved in these cases provided no manifestation of the principal’s intent to delegate to his agent the power to waive a trial by jury, the principal’s assent to the waiver was never validly obtained. View "Extendicare Homes, Inc. v. Whisman" on Justia Law