JAMES CARTER FIELDS v. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY
Annotate this Case
Download PDF
RENDERED:
NOVEMBER 14, 2003; 10:00 a.m.
TO BE PUBLISHED
MODIFIED:
NOVEMBER 26, 2003; 10:00 a.m.
C ommonwealth O f K entucky
C ourt O f A ppeals
NO.
2002-CA-001565-MR
JAMES CARTER FIELDS
APPELLANT
APPEAL FROM WHITLEY CIRCUIT COURT
HONORABLE JERRY WINCHESTER, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 01-CR-00133
v.
COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY
APPELLEE
OPINION
VACATING IN PART AND REMANDING
** ** ** ** **
BEFORE:
EMBERTON, CHIEF JUDGE; JOHNSON AND KNOPF, JUDGES.
KNOPF, JUDGE:
After store hours one day in July 2001, James
Fields unlawfully entered the premises of his employer, Owens
Auto Parts in Corbin, and stole various items including a
handgun, merchandise, and tools.
A Whitley County grand jury
eventually indicted him for first-degree burglary and theft.
May 2002, Fields pled guilty to the amended charges of thirddegree burglary1 and receiving stolen property,2 in this case
1
KRS 511.040.
In
both class-D felonies.
In accordance with the plea agreement,
the Whitley Circuit Court, by amended judgment entered July 10,
2002, sentenced Fields to consecutive prison terms totaling four
years.
The court also ordered Fields to pay nearly $140,000.00
in restitution to Owens Auto Parts and to several Owens
employees whose tools Fields allegedly took.
Fields contends
that the restitution is excessive and that the trial court erred
by denying him a meaningful opportunity to challenge the amount
of the losses Owens and its employees claimed.
Because we agree
with Fields that the trial court failed to justify its
restitution award, we vacate that portion of Fields’s sentence
and remand for additional proceedings.
Prior to accepting Fields’s guilty plea, the trial
court summarized the agreement as follows:
The Court: . . . [T]he Commonwealth agrees
to a two year sentence on Count One and a
two year sentence on Count Two to run
consecutive for a four year sentence. Upon
release you will make restitution to Owens
Auto Parts. . . .
Mr. Fields: Yes, sir.
. . . .
The Court: How much restitution would it be?
Mr. Trimble [the Commonwealth’s Attorney]:
Your Honor, we are going to supply a list.
I don’t have it with me.
The Court: Alright.
Mr. Trimble: Some tools and various items.
2
KRS 514.110.
2
Apparently the Commonwealth did not supply the list of
alleged losses until shortly before Fields’s sentencing.
Whatever list it did eventually supply was not made a part of
the record.
surprise.
Fields maintains that the list took him by
Not only was the total claim far in excess of what he
had expected, but the list included Owens-employee claims,
several of them for tens of thousands of dollars, which had
never before been mentioned.
At the sentencing hearing Fields
objected to restitution in the claimed amount and requested that
he be given an opportunity to cross examine the claiming
employees.
The court denied this request.
A trial on damages,
the court opined, would defeat the purpose of Fields’s guilty
plea.
And, according to the court, it would be of little value.
As the court explained, “I don’t generally believe a thief over
a mechanic that’s working there and says my tools were taken
. . . and they were valued at $20,000.00.”
Although the court
did order the Commonwealth’s Attorney to have the employees
verify their claims in some manner, no such verifications appear
in the record.
Otherwise, the court simply rebuffed Fields’s
attempt to challenge the alleged claims of loss.
Fields objects on several grounds to the sentencing
procedure that resulted in his $140,000.00 restitution
obligation.
He first contends that the trial court denied him
the process due under the statutes providing for criminal
3
restitution.
The older of those statutes, KRS 431.200, provides
for restitution in cases of “taking, injuring, or destroying
property,” and states that if the person convicted of such a
crime
consents to the restitution or to reparation
in damages in an agreed sum, the court shall
give judgment accordingly. Otherwise a jury
shall be impaneled to try the facts and
ascertain the amount and the value of the
property, or assess the damage, as the case
may be.
Fields contends that under this statute he was entitled to have
a jury hear the claims against him for restitution.
The Commonwealth insists, however, that in seeking
restitution it was not proceeding under KRS 431.200, which
provides a restitution proceeding apart from sentencing, but
rather under the more recent KRS 532.032.
That statute, first
enacted in 1998, provides that
[r]estitution to a named victim, if there is
a named victim, shall be ordered in a manner
consistent, insofar as possible, with the
provisions of this section and KRS 439.563,
532.033, 533.020, and 533.030 in addition to
any other part of the penalty for any
offense under this chapter. The provisions
of this section shall not be subject to
suspension or nonimposition.
The mandate of this statute applies regardless of
whether the convicted defendant is to be incarcerated or
4
conditionally released.3
We agree with the Commonwealth that
under this statute restitution must now be considered during
sentencing in all appropriate cases, and therefore that the
General Assembly contemplated ordinary sentencing procedures as
the foundation for restitutionary sentences, not the jury
procedure referred to in KRS 431.200.
In the cases where KRS
431.200 applies, that statute continues to provide an
alternative procedure for a post-sentencing restitution order,
but KRS 532.032 (and the statutes incorporated therein) is now
the generally applicable criminal restitution statute.
Even if KRS 431.200 does not apply, however, Fields
insists that he was entitled to a less summary sentencing
procedure than the trial court provided.
We agree.
The process due at sentencing is less, of course, than
that due at the culpability trial, notwithstanding the
sentencing court’s need for and use of additional information
and the significance of its decisions.4
The due-process clauses
of the federal constitution require that sentences not be
imposed on the basis of material misinformation,5 and that facts
3
Commonwealth v. O’Bryan, Ky. App., 97 S.W.3d 454 (2003).
4
Commonwealth v. Jeffries, Ky., 95 S.W.3d 60 (2002) (Justice
Johnstone, dissenting); United States v. Silverman, 976 F.2d
1502 (6th Cir. 1992).
5
Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 92 L. Ed. 1690, 68 S. Ct. 1252
(1948).
5
relied on by the sentencing court “have some minimal indicium of
reliability beyond mere allegation.”6
Specific procedures,
however, such as discovery, cross-examination of adverse
witnesses, and fact-finding by a jury, as are required at trial,
“are simply not constitutionally mandated.”7
In addition to this constitutional guarantee that
sentencing decisions will be based on facts with some minimal
assurance of reliability, KRS 532.050 and RCr 11.02 provide that
the court should ordinarily not impose sentence before having
considered a presentence investigation report (psi) by a
probation officer.
As our Supreme Court has recently noted,
both the statute and the rule require that the defendant be
given notice of the report’s factual contents and be “afforded a
meaningful opportunity to controvert the evidence against him at
his sentencing hearing.”8
What constitutes a “meaningful
opportunity to controvert,” the Court held, will vary with the
circumstances, and the provision of such an opportunity is
entrusted to the trial court’s discretion.9
6
United States v. Silverman, 976 F.2d at 1504.
7
Id. at 1508.
8
Commonwealth v. Jeffries, Ky., 95 S.W.3d at 62 (quoting KRS
532.050).
9
Id.
6
Sister courts that have considered the issue with
respect to restitution have held that the opportunity to
controvert is generally sufficient if the psi gives notice of
factual allegations establishing the property claimed to have
been lost or damaged, if it gives notice of the method employed
to value the property, and if the defendant is permitted to
challenge those allegations in a meaningful way, usually by
being permitted to introduce countervailing evidence.10
Although the trial court’s refusal to permit Fields to
cross-examine the restitution claimants was probably not an
abuse of discretion under the standards we have outlined, its
failure to give Fields adequate notice of the claims against him
and any opportunity to controvert them plainly was an abuse of
discretion.
The record reflects no factual basis but mere
allegations for the amount of restitution Fields has been
ordered to pay.
Aside from the handgun, no item allegedly
stolen has been specified, and there is no indication of how any
item was valued.
The restitution order thus fails to satisfy
even the Constitution’s minimal reliability standard.
Nor was
Fields accorded his statutory right to a meaningful sentencing
hearing.
He was not notified of any factual allegations
10
Sloan v. United States, 527 A.2d 1277 (D. C. App. 1987); Fox
v. State, 347 S.E.2d 197 (W. Va. 1986); State v. Lack, 650 P.2d
22 (N.M. App. 1982).
7
underlying the claim for restitution and thus could not possibly
have prepared to controvert those allegations.
The court’s
declared unwillingness to consider Fields’s testimony,
furthermore, would seem to dictate that Fields be given an
opportunity to develop alternative evidence, for otherwise the
hearing’s conclusion would be foregone and the hearing itself
would be meaningless.
The Court’s desire not to complicate a guilty plea at
sentencing is unpersuasive.
Simply put, even where there is a
guilty plea, the record must establish an adequate factual
predicate for a restitution order.
The plea itself and the plea
agreement might satisfy that requirement (as might the
culpability trial), but in this case the Commonwealth was not
prepared to make such a record during the plea process.
That
left the sentencing hearing, which, it would seem, will often be
the occasion for making the record as that is the point at which
the psi is addressed.
In sum, whatever type of hearing will give rise in the
circumstances to a record that satisfies the “minimal indicium
of reliability” standard and will afford the defendant a
meaningful opportunity to be heard is the type of hearing
required.
With respect to his restitution obligation, Fields’s
sentencing hearing satisfied neither of these requirements.
record establishes no factual predicate for the restitution
8
The
order whatsoever, and Fields was silenced, not heard.
Accordingly, we vacate that portion of the Whitley
Circuit Court’s July 10, 2002, judgment ordering Fields to pay
restitution and remand the matter for additional proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
On remand, as the Commonwealth
has noted, the parties may wish to address whether the Owens
employees are “named victims” entitled to restitution under KRS
532.032.
The parties may also wish to address what it means for
a restitution order under KRS 532.032 to be “consistent” with
KRS 533.030(3), which apparently establishes a maximum amount
for criminal restitution orders, at least in some circumstances.
We express no opinion on those questions, which have yet to be
addressed to the trial court.
ALL CONCUR.
BRIEFS FOR APPELLANT:
BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:
Lisa Clare
Assistant Public Advocate
Frankfort, Kentucky
Albert B. Chandler III
Attorney General of Kentucky
Frankfort, Kentucky
J. Gary Bale
Assistant Attorney General
Frankfort, Kentucky
9
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.