Kentucky Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers

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Momentum Growing to Reform Kentucky's Penal Code

In 1998, House Bill 455 called upon the Kentucky General Assembly to reform the Penal Code. The bill created the Criminal Justice Council, which in turn established a Penal Code Committee to work on penal code reform.  This committee included law professors from all three of our Kentucky law schools and was staffed by Professor Paul Robinson, one of the nation's leading experts on the Model Penal Code. This distinguished group produced a draft of a reformed Kentucky Penal Code.  Unfortunately, during the work of the committee, the Commonwealth's Attorneys Association and the County Attorneys Association pulled out and were not involved in most of the project. Although the Committee's draft was published by the Justice Cabinet, it was never proposed to the General Assembly.

In the meantime, the number of Kentucky citizens incarcerated in our jails and prisons has increased, the Penal Code has become increasingly bloated and inconsistent, and many legislators have come to agree that penal code reform is a necessity. KACDL believes that the Criminal Justice Council Penal Code Draft would be an excellent starting point to begin another effort at reform. However, our membership needs to examine the draft in order to understand it and to be in a position to endorse it. 

The Criminal Justice Council Penal Code Draft

The Penal Code Committee's draft is presented here for download in two volumes:

Volume One                    Volume Two

Department of Public Advocacy:
The Case for Reform

"Decisive steps must be taken to control the costs of an increasing prison population while providing for the safety and protection of our communities..."

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Kentucky Chamber:
Skyrocketing Inmate Costs Hurt School Funding

"The current rate of growth of putting people in prison in Kentucky is not sustainable."

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Professor Robert G. Lawson:
On Penal Code Reform

"The public needs a better understanding of what is going on. What we're doing does not make any sense, whether you're talking about the way you treat people or crime control."

"[Legislators] haven't found a harsh law in 30 years they didn't love."

"For example, there's a crime, trafficking in drugs within 1,000 yards of a school. When that law got enacted, they visualized guys out here peddling drugs to school children.

"I spent a whole summer in the Fayette Circuit Clerk's office going through a year's worth of these cases. What I found in every single one was either a car was stopped within 1,000 yards of a school and had drugs in it, or somebody had drugs in their house and lived within 1,000 yards of a school. There wasn't one of those cases that involved peddling drugs to school children."

"When we embarked on this tough-on-crime philosophy, our corrections budget was about $10 million, in the '70s.  Next year, the proposal is for $454 million.
And this does not include construction costs."

All quotes from the Feb. 18, 2008 Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky

The Critical Need for Meaningful Law Reform in Kentucky
and the Criminal Defense Bar's Role in Making It Happen

is the subject of Professor Lawson's address at the 23rd Annual KACDL Conference and Criminal Defense Seminar, Friday, November 13th.

Website Used to Create False Evidence

From Cathleen Bennett, Committee for Public Counsel Services, Boston, MA

I am sure that some of you are already aware of a website called "spoofcard.com."
What a nightmare in a criminal context. We just had another case where the
spoofcard site was used in an attempt to frame another client.

Cathleen related the details of a rape case in which the complainant used spoofcard to send herself text messages allegedly from the defendant threatening her "not to tell anyone" or he'd "kill her" and he didn't want to go to jail.

From the Spoofcard site:

Caller ID Spoofing
"Call someone from  your phone and the person's Caller ID
displays the number that you intend them to see."

Disguise Your Voice
"Change the tone of your voice to the point that you'll be unrecognizable
even to your closest friends and family."

"All I can do at this point is apologize to you on behalf of the criminal justice system. You are a free man."

Kentucky citizen Edwin Chandler learned that his conviction had been set aside
after spending nine years in jail for a crime he did not commit.

Chandler confessed to the crime after his interrogator told him his sister and girlfriend would be charged with harboring a fugitive if he didn't tell the "truth."

Marguerite Thomas, director of the Kentucky Innocence Project, which took up Chandler's case, said, "It was so incredibly shocking that he was convicted at all."

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