WARE (BRANDON) VS. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY
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RENDERED: OCTOBER 22, 2010; 10:00 A.M.
TO BE PUBLISHED
Commonwealth of Kentucky
Court of Appeals
NO. 2009-CA-001730-MR
BRANDON WARE
v.
APPELLANT
APPEAL FROM CAMPBELL CIRCUIT COURT
HONORABLE JULIE REINHARDT WARD, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 06-CR-00298
COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY
APPELLEE
OPINION
REVERSING AND REMANDING
** ** ** ** **
BEFORE: CLAYTON, DIXON AND WINE, JUDGES.
DIXON, JUDGE: Appellant, Brandon Ware, appeals from an order of the
Campbell Circuit Court revoking his probation and ordering his five-year sentence
for first-degree trafficking to run consecutive to a one-year Ohio sentence. For the
reason set forth herein, we reverse and remand.
In September 2006, Appellant pled guilty in the Campbell Circuit
Court to one count of first-degree trafficking and was sentenced to five years’
imprisonment. However, on March 28, 2007, the trial court granted Appellant’s
motion for shock probation and his sentence was probated for a period of five
years. Thereafter, in August 2008, Appellant was convicted in Hamilton County,
Ohio, of two felony counts of trafficking cocaine. It is undisputed that the
Kentucky Department of Corrections was notified of the pending Ohio charges in
February 2008, as well as of Appellant’s conviction of such in September 2008.
Some ten months later, on July 2, 2009, Corrections filed an affidavit
in the Campbell Circuit Court seeking revocation of Appellant’s probation.
Following a hearing, the trial court revoked probation and ruled that Brewer v.
Commonwealth, 922 S.W.2d 380 (Ky. 1996) and KRS 533.060(2) mandated that
Appellant’s five-year sentence run consecutively to his Ohio sentence. This appeal
ensued.
On appeal, Appellant argues that the trial court erred in applying KRS
533.060(2) to run his sentences consecutively. Rather, Appellant contends that
under KRS 533.040(3) and KRS 532.155, his Kentucky sentence should have run
concurrently with the Ohio sentence. We must agree.
As previously noted, the trial court herein relied upon the decision in
Brewer v. Commonwealth, which discussed the interplay between KRS 533.040(3)
and KRS 533.060(2). The relevant provisions are as follows:
KRS 533.040(3) provides:
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A sentence of probation or conditional discharge shall
run concurrently with any federal or state jail, prison, or
parole term for another offense to which the defendant is
or becomes subject during the period, unless the sentence
of probation or conditional discharge is revoked. The
revocation shall take place prior to parole under or
expiration of the sentence of imprisonment or within
ninety (90) days after the grounds for revocation come to
the attention of the Department of Corrections,
whichever occurs first.
Further, KRS 533.060(2) provides:
When a person has been convicted of a felony and is
committed to a correctional facility maintained by the
bureau of corrections and released on parole or has been
released by the court on probation, shock probation, or
conditional discharge, and is convicted or enters a plea of
guilty to a felony committed while on parole, probation,
shock probation, or conditional discharge, such person
shall not be eligible for probation, shock probation, or
conditional discharge and the period of confinement for
that felony shall not run concurrently with any other
sentence.
In Brewer, the defendant pled guilty in the Warren Circuit Court of
two counts of felony theft and was sentenced in April 1992, to one year’s
imprisonment, probated for a period of five years. However, in May 1993, Brewer
pled guilty in the Barren Circuit Court to another felony. The Warren Circuit
Court thereafter revoked Brewer’s probation and ordered his Warren County
sentence to run consecutively to the Barren County sentence. On appeal, Brewer
argued that his sentences should have run concurrently because his probation was
not revoked within the 90-day time limitation of KRS 533.040(3).1
1
It was undisputed in Brewer that the Warren County Commonwealth Attorney became aware of
the Barren County proceedings in January 1993, yet did not file a motion for revocation until
May 1993.
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In rejecting Brewer’s arguments, the Supreme Court held that the
latter-enacted KRS 533.060(2) controlled:
The statute clearly and unambiguously requires
that the appellant’s second sentence, the Barren County
sentence, not run concurrently with his first sentence, the
Warren County sentence. . . .
...
While the specific conflict between KRS 533.060(2) and
KRS 533.040(3) has not been addressed previously, prior
cases, such as Devore v. Commonwealth, Ky., 662
S.W.2d 829 (1984) and Riley v. Parke, Ky., 740 S.W.2d
934 (1987), have noted the General Assembly’s clear
intention in enacting KRS 533.060(2) to provide stiff
penalties in the form of consecutive sentences to those
who, after having been awarded parole or probation,
violate that trust by the commission of subsequent
felonies.
Brewer, 922 S.W.2d at 381-82.
In ruling that Brewer controlled the case herein, the trial court noted
in its revocation order,
Defendant received a new felony conviction in
Hamilton County, Ohio, on August 5, 2008, while
he was serving his sentence of five (5) years probation
that this Court imposed when granting the Defendant
shock probation. . . . The Department of Corrections did
not meet the 90-day time limit of K.R.S. § 533.040(3)
after receiving notice of the Defendant’s new conviction
in September 2008. However, under Brewer, K.R.S. §
533.060(2) controls over K.R.S. § 533.040(3) and the
Court may not run a sentence imposed after probation
revocation concurrently with a sentence for the new
felony conviction the defendant received while on shock
probation.
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Unfortunately, the trial court’s reliance on Brewer is misplaced. Interestingly, and
likely contributing to the courts’ confusion in the instant case, is the fact that the
Kentucky Supreme Court’s holding in Brewer cannot be reconciled with the facts
therein. In Brewer, the Court specifically stated that KRS 533.060(2) clearly and
unambiguously required that the appellant’s second sentence, the Barren County
sentence, not run concurrently with his first sentence, the Warren County sentence.
922 S.W.2d at 381. Yet, the appeal in Brewer was from the Warren Circuit
Court’s order running its reinstated sentence consecutively to the Barren Circuit
Court’s sentence. In other words, Brewer’s first sentence was reinstated and ran
consecutively to the second sentence.
Brewer has been a source of confusion. For example, in Peyton v.
Commonwealth, 253 S.W.3d 504, 510 (Ky. 2008), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 129
S.Ct. 604, 172 L.Ed.2d 463 (2008), the Supreme Court quoted from Brewer,
observing that it held that “KRS 533.060(2) unambiguously required that
Appellant’s second sentence could not run concurrently with the reinstated
sentence that he was on parole for.” Id. at 510. Unfortunately, as previously
discussed, it is obvious from the facts that it was the first reinstated sentence and
not the second sentence that was at issue in Brewer. This is clearly not what is
contemplated by KRS 533.060(2).
In Peyton, the Supreme Court noted,
[W]e now hold that the logic espoused by Justice Leibson
in his dissent [in Devore v. Commonwealth, 662 S.W.2d
829 (Ky. 1984)] provides an inherently more practical
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understanding of [KRS 533.060]. “A reasonable
interpretation of the phrase ‘with any other sentence,’
(KRS 533.060(2)) is that ‘any other sentence’ means only
the unserved portion of the sentence for the felony for
which probation or parole should be revoked.” Devore,
662 S.W.2d at 831 (Leibson, J., dissenting). This
viewpoint interprets the language, “shall not run
concurrently with any other sentence,” in KRS
533.060(2) as meaning any other sentence previously
imposed. (Emphasis added).
Thus, it becomes quite clear in the context of KRS
533.060(2), that the language, “the period of confinement
for that felony shall not run concurrently with any other
sentence,” should be construed as meaning that
subsequent felony offense(s) committed while on
probation or parole may not be run concurrently with the
sentence for which the individual is on probation or
parole.
Peyton, 253 S.W.3d at 511. Based upon Peyton, we must conclude that KRS
533.060(2) governs the actions of the court with jurisdiction over the second
subsequent offense, not the original court that granted conditional discharge,
probation or parole. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the facts behind Brewer
stand in opposition to this conclusion. As such, we would urge our Supreme Court
to revisit Brewer and clarify the proper application of the statute.
Returning to the case at hand, we agree with Appellant that the facts
herein are more analogous to those presented in Gavel v. Commonwealth, 674
S.W.2d 953 (Ky. 1984). Therein, the defendant was convicted of a felony in the
federal court while on probation in the state court. The trial court, upon learning of
the federal court sentence, revoked the defendant’s probation and ordered that his
three-year state sentence was required to run consecutively to the federal sentence
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pursuant to KRS 533.060(2). A panel of this Court affirmed the trial court on
appeal. However, on discretionary review, our Supreme Court held:
[T]he trial court may run the state sentence concurrently
or consecutively with the federal sentence because KRS
533.060(2) is not applicable to the facts in the present
case. The conviction referred to in that section is the
subsequent one, not the first. That section provides that
when a person while on probation is “convicted or enters
a plea of guilty to a felony, ... the period of confinement
for that felony shall not run concurrently with any other
sentence.” In the present case “that” felony would be the
federal conviction, which the state court has no control
over. (Emphasis in original).
Gavel, 674 S.W.2d at 954. Accordingly, the Court ruled that KRS 533.040(3) and
KRS 532.1152 controlled. Id.
Similarly, for purposes of revoking Appellant’s probation, we also
conclude that KRS 533.040(3) and KRS 532.115 respectively, are controlling.
Certainly, this case is distinguishable from Gavel in that Appellant’s subsequent
felony was not a federal conviction. Nonetheless, we discern no true distinction, as
this state had no more jurisdiction over the Ohio conviction than it would have had
over a federal conviction.
2
KRS 532.115 provides: “The court in sentencing a person convicted of a felony, shall be
authorized to run the sentence concurrent with any federal sentence received by that defendant
for a federal crime and any sentence received by that defendant in another state for a felony
offense. The time spent in federal custody and the time spent in custody in another state under
the concurrent sentencing shall count as time spent in state custody; but the federal custody and
custody in another state shall not include time spent on probation or parole or constraint
incidental to release on bail. If the court does not specify that its sentence is to run concurrent
with a specific federal sentence or sentence of another state, the sentence shall not run concurrent
with any federal sentence or sentence of another state.”
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Because we have determined that KRS 533.040(3) rather than KRS
533.060(2) applies to the instant case, the trial court’s authority to run Appellant’s
sentences concurrently or consecutively was conditioned, as it was in Gavel,
upon a determination of whether the revocation occurred “within ninety (90) days
after the grounds for revocation [came] to the attention of the Department of
Corrections . . . .” KRS 533.040(3). However, here the trial court made a specific
finding that the Commonwealth did not comply with the 90-day time requirement.
In fact, the affidavit seeking revocation of Appellant’s probation was not filed in
the trial court until nearly ten months after the Department of Corrections first
learned of Appellant’s Ohio convictions. Further, an officer with the Kentucky
Division of Probation and Parole testified at the revocation hearing that
Appellant’s Ohio sentence was scheduled to expire on July 20, 2009, nearly one
month prior to the revocation hearing.
It is apparent from the Commentary to KRS 533.040(3), that it was
enacted to prevent precisely what occurred in this case; i.e., authorities waiting
until the expiration of a defendant’s subsequent sentence to initiate revocation
proceedings on the first offense.
Subsection (3) is designed to eliminate a problem that
could exist with probation or conditional discharge
sentences which are followed by a subsequent conviction
for a separate offense. When this situation arises,
authorities could wait until the defendant has served his
prison sentence for the subsequent offense and then seek
revocation of his prior sentence of probation or
conditional discharge and reinstate his prior sentence of
imprisonment. It is the purpose of this subsection, which
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is borrowed from the proposed Michigan Revised
Criminal Code, § 1330, and the proposed Federal
Criminal Code, § 3104, to prohibit such a practice unless
the authorities act to revoke the prior sentence of
probation or conditional discharge before the defendant
has completed his imprisonment under the subsequent
sentence. This provision would seem to be especially
important in the event of a release of the defendant from
prison on parole. Such a release contemplates a
rehabilitation of the defendant or at least a chance to live
a non-deviant existence. It also contemplates supervision
of the defendant by the Department of Corrections. With
such a release, a clean slate for the offender should serve
a useful rehabilitative function. Subsection (3), like the
preceding ones, is new to Kentucky law.
Commentary to KRS 533.040. As such, we believe our decision herein comports
with the intent of KRS 533.040(3). Because it is undisputed that the revocation
herein did not occur “prior to parole under or expiration of the sentence of
imprisonment or within ninety (90) days after the grounds for revocation come to
the attention of the Department of Corrections,” the trial court was prohibited from
ordering Appellant’s sentences to run consecutively.
For the reasons set forth herein, the order of the Campbell Circuit
Court is reversed and this matter is remanded with directions that the circuit court
order Appellant’s five-year state sentence to run concurrently with the Ohio
sentence of imprisonment.
ALL CONCUR.
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BRIEFS FOR APPELLANT:
BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:
Brandon Neil Jewell
Assistant Public Advocate
Frankfort, Kentucky
Jack Conway
Attorney General of Kentucky
David W. Barr
Assistant Attorney General
Frankfort, Kentucky
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