Simpson v. Commonwealth

889 S.W.2d 781, 1994 Ky. LEXIS 139, 1994 WL 713089
CourtKentucky Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 22, 1994
Docket94-SC-116-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by50 cases

This text of 889 S.W.2d 781 (Simpson v. Commonwealth) 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
Simpson v. Commonwealth, 889 S.W.2d 781, 1994 Ky. LEXIS 139, 1994 WL 713089 (Ky. 1994).

Opinion

SPAIN, Justice.

A jury in the Grant Circuit Court convicted the appellant of Kidnapping, Rape in the First Degree, Sodomy in the First Degree, Wanton Endangerment in the First Degree, and Theft by Unlawful Taking of Property Valued at $300 or more. He was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment and a fine of $10,000 on both the rape and sodomy convic *782 tions, ten years and a fine of $1,000 for the kidnapping conviction, five years and a $1,000 fine on the wanton endangerment conviction, and one year and a fine of $1,000 for the theft by unlawful taking conviction. These five sentences are all to run concurrently for a total of twenty years in prison and an aggregate fine of $10,000 from which the appellant now appeals as a matter of right.

A woman, C.I., testified that the appellant raped her in his car after driving her to an isolated field in Grant County on the night of July 2, 1993. The victim was driving home early in the morning when a vehicle pulled up behind her and bumped her car three times at a high rate of speed. After both cars pulled to the side of the road, she wrote down the license plate number of the white Monte Carlo. The driver, later identified by the victim as the appellant, demanded that C.I. give him the paper with the license number. When she refused, he apparently pulled C.I. out of her ear, and shoved her into the white Monte Carlo, while threatening to kill her if she didn’t stop screaming.

Appellant drove the victim approximately 1.7 miles to a secluded field. Once there, the victim testified that appellant ordered her to take off her clothes. He forced her to perform oral sex on him and then engaged in forcible anal and vaginal intercourse upon her. Appellant admits that they had vaginal intercourse but he maintains that it was a consensual act and that there was no anal penetration. Appellant threatened the victim, “You tell the police and you’re dead.” He took two gold necklaces and $20 from her before he let her out of the car. The ordeal lasted about half an hour.

When the victim returned home, she told her daughter that she had been raped, but refused to call the police, saying that she feared appellant would kill her. C.I.’s daughter contacted the police. When an officer arrived, he observed the victim to be crying, very upset, and frightened. C.I. told him what happened, described the appellant, his car, and several items inside the car. A rape kit examination was performed which confirmed that oral, anal, and vaginal intercourse had occurred. The victim had bruises on her body and was bleeding from her rectum. A later D.N.A. analysis matched semen found on the victim’s underwear to that of the appellant.

Several hours later, a patrolman observed the appellant in his car at a Covington gas station and arrested him. Two gold chains and other objects which the victim had described were found in the white Monte Carlo. Blue paint samples obtained from the front of appellant’s car matched the paint type of the victim’s blue car. The appellant told several versions of the events, though he maintained that the sexual intercourse was consensual.

At the trial, upon hearing all the evidence, the jury found him guilty of the above-mentioned offenses. During the penalty phase, the court instructed the jury on the sentencing range of imprisonment and fines. The language in the instructions utilized the conjunction “and,” thus requiring the jury to set a prison- sentence and a fine of between $1,000 and $10,000 for each of the felonies. As stated above, appellant received a concurrently running sentence of twenty years and a $10,000 fine.

Appellant first contends that he was entitled to dismissal of the kidnapping charge, pursuant to KRS 509.050. That statute exempts a person from being convicted of kidnapping when his criminal purpose of such kidnapping is for the commission of another offense outside of K.R.S. Chapter 509. This exemption applies only when such “interference with the victim’s liberty occurs immediately with and incidental to the offense”; also, the exemption is inapplicable where the liberty interference exceeds that which is “ordinarily incident to commission” of the other offense, which in this ease was the rape and sodomy. Appellant claims that the kidnapping and transporting of the victim was necessary for committing the rape and sodomy.

The trial court properly denied appellant’s motion for a directed verdict. The interference with the victim’s liberty exceeded that which would ordinarily be incidental to the commission of rape and sodomy upon her. The trial judge contemplated that K.R.S. 509.050 might have been applicable if the *783 appellant had raped and sodomized the victim at the scene where she stopped her car and he grabbed her. However, the facts of the present case indicate that the appellant grabbed the victim from her car, drove approximately 1.7 miles to an isolated location and then raped her. She was restrained for approximately thirty minutes. The transportation of the victim for such a distance and holding her for an extended period of time clearly exceeded the restraint which is normally incident to the commission of rape. Chiffin v. Commonwealth, Ky., 576 S.W.2d 514 (1978), presented a similar factual see-, nario: a male victim was forcibly pulled from his car by three men and driven one-half block to a house where he was sodomized for one and a half hours. This Court found that the KRS 509.050 exemption would not apply since the kidnapping exceeded that which would ordinarily be required in the commission of the sodomy offense.

The case cited by appellant in support of his position, Spencer v. Commonwealth, Ky., 554 S.W.2d 355 (1977), can be distinguished. In that case, the 509.050 exemption applied when the defendant raped the victim in the victim’s car after driving it to a darker area of the parking lot. In the ease at bar, Simpson transported the victim much farther than was done in Spencer or Griffin. Such a distance was greater than was ordinarily necessary for commission of a rape. Consequently, the trial court correctly found that KRS 509.050 was inapplicable and did not commit error by denying appellant’s motion for a directed verdict on the kidnapping charge.

Appellant also argues that the trial court committed error by allowing the victim to testify regarding the lasting emotional effects of the rape. Appellant contends that allowing the victim to testify that she had recurring nightmares and of being scared of other cars’ headlights while driving at night had very little probative value and was used mainly for prejudicial effect. Considering the nature of the events, this evidence of nightmares and fear was highly probative evidence. It supported the Commonwealth’s contention that a rape and kidnapping occurred, rather than being consensual intercourse as the appellant claimed.

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Bluebook (online)
889 S.W.2d 781, 1994 Ky. LEXIS 139, 1994 WL 713089, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/simpson-v-commonwealth-ky-1994.