Powell v. Graham

185 S.W.3d 624, 2006 Ky. LEXIS 46, 2006 WL 435396
CourtKentucky Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 23, 2006
Docket2005-SC-625-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 185 S.W.3d 624 (Powell v. Graham) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Kentucky Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Powell v. Graham, 185 S.W.3d 624, 2006 Ky. LEXIS 46, 2006 WL 435396 (Ky. 2006).

Opinion

ROACH, Justice.

Appellant, Robert Powell, sought a writ of prohibition against the enforcement of a trial court order requiring him to submit to a separate mental health examination by the prosecutor’s expert witness. The Court of Appeals denied the writ, opining that the trial court’s order was appropriate because Appellant had placed his mental health in issue. While we hold that the trial court had the authority to compel Appellant to undergo the mental examination, because the trial court’s order failed to prospectively provide appropriate protections for Appellant’s Fifth Amendment rights, a writ should have issued. Therefore, we reverse.

I. Background

On June 3, 2004, Appellant took an early lunch break from work, supposedly to take his wife to a doctor’s appointment. When he got home, he found his wife unresponsive and cold to the touch, and he called 911. Emergency medical personnel soon arrived and found Appellant’s wife dead. She had suffered for many years from lupus, depression, and fibromyalgia, the symptoms of which include chronic severe pain. She took a variety of medications, including morphine and methadone. A postmortem examination revealed that the concentration of morphine in her blood significantly exceeded the therapeutic level, and the Medical Examiner concluded *626 that she had died from “acute opiate intoxication.”

Appellant began to exhibit mental and emotional problems soon after his wife’s death. Early in the morning of June 30, 2004, while drinking alcoholic beverages, Appellant was observed putting fingernail polish remover in his mouth. He was taken to the Frankfort Regional Medical Center and released about seven hours later. Later that day while speaking with his father-in-law, Appellant allegedly confessed to having assaulted and slowly poisoned his wife with rat poison and drain cleaner over the weeks leading up to her death. Appellant then began putting shoe polish in his mouth.

The Kentucky State Police were contacted, and Appellant was taken to the Medical Center again. While there, he was diagnosed as suffering from acute psychosis, and arrangements were made to transfer him to the psychiatric unit at Samaritan Hospital in Lexington. While still at the Medical Center, KSP Detective Dennis Stockton and a Frankfort police officer advised Appellant of his Miranda rights and questioned him regarding his incriminating statements. Appellant again confessed to killing his wife, claiming that he had slowly poisoned her because they had not been sexually intimate for approximately four years. The Franklin County Sheriffs Office then transported Appellant to Samaritan Hospital, where he was to be kept and observed pursuant to a 72-hour commitment order. While at Samaritan, Appellant allegedly claimed to have smothered his wife and prayed, “Please, God, don’t let them find out how I did this.”

On July 2, 2004, Detective Stockton and another KSP Detective, Greg Wolf, went to Samaritan Hospital to question Appellant a second time. After being read his Miranda rights again, Appellant stated that he had not poisoned his wife but instead had smothered her with a pillow. Appellant claimed that he had sought a way of killing his wife that would make her death appear to have been the result of natural causes. He also claimed to have killed her to put her out of her (and his) misery.

Based on his statements to the detectives, Appellant was indicted by a Franklin County Grand Jury for murdering his wife. Appellant’s case was set to be tried in January 2005. On November 12, 2004, Appellant’s lawyer filed a motion requesting a continuance for the approaching trial. The motion indicated that the lawyer was in the process of investigating Appellant’s apparent mental debilitation at the time he made the statements to the KSP detectives. The lawyer also stated that he anticipated seeking suppression of the statements based, at least in part, on Appellant’s mental state at the time the statements were made. The prosecutor in the case filed a motion requesting that the trial court order Appellant to undergo a mental examination pursuant to RCr 7.24(3)(B)(ii) on grounds that Appellant had placed his mental condition in issue by announcing his intent to seek suppression of his statements based on his mental state.

On March 3, 2005, the trial court entered an order granting the prosecutor’s motion. The trial court’s order, however, relied on CR 35.01, which provides:

When the mental ... condition of a party... is in controversy, the court in which the action is pending may order the party to submit to a ... mental examination by a physician ... or appropriate health care expert .... The order may be made only on motion for good cause shown and upon notice to the person to be examined and to all parties and shall specify the time, place, manner, conditions, and scope of the exami *627 nation and the person or persons by whom it is to be made.

In ordering the mental examination, the trial court expressly found that “[s]uch ‘good cause’ exists under the circumstances of this case.... ”

Appellant promptly sought relief from the Court of Appeals by filing a petition for a writ of prohibition against the trial court. The Court of Appeals denied the writ, claiming that Appellant’s mental health status at the time he made his incriminating statements “directly bears upon the issue of [his] guilt.” Thus, the court noted, RCr 7.24(3)(B)(ii) allowed the trial court to order Appellant to submit to a mental examination.

Appellant subsequently appealed to this Court as a matter of right. Ky. Const. § 115.

II. Analysis

A. Availability of the Writ

We find ourselves once again faced with the task of addressing whether a party is entitled to a writ of prohibition. It was something of an understatement when we recently noted that “[e]xtraordi-nary writs are disfavored....” Buckley v. Wilson, 177 S.W.3d 778, 780 (Ky.2005).

Relief by way of prohibition or mandamus is an extraordinary remedy and we have always been cautious and conservative both in entertaining petitions for and in granting such relief. This careful approach is necessary to prevent short-circuiting normal appeal procedure and to limit so far as possible interference with the proper and efficient operation of our circuit and other courts. If this avenue of relief were open to all who considered themselves aggrieved by an interlocutory court order, we would face an impossible burden of nonappellate matters.

Bender v. Eaton, 343 S.W.2d 799, 800 (Ky.1961). A petitioner must make a significant showing for a writ even to be available in a given case because extraordinary writs inherently intrude into the workings of the lower courts and bypass the normal appellate process. Even in those rare cases when a writ is available as a remedy, the court originally hearing the petition retains its discretion to grant or deny the writ after examining the merits. Ultimately, the higher courts’ power over the extraordinary writs “has no limits except ...

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Bluebook (online)
185 S.W.3d 624, 2006 Ky. LEXIS 46, 2006 WL 435396, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/powell-v-graham-ky-2006.