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Friday, June 18, 2004

Law - Kentucky Supreme Court rules on homicide against fetus issue

"Homicide count OK for fetus: Kentucky court backs charges if unborn child is called viable," is the headline today to this story in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some quotes:

The Kentucky Supreme Court has overturned a 21-year-old decision that barred homicide charges against someone accused of killing a fetus.

In a majority opinion, the court held yesterday that murder and manslaughter charges can be brought if the fetus would have been viable outside the mother's womb — in approximately the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy.

The ruling doesn't apply to legal abortions, which are federally protected.

The state Supreme Court's decision defines a fetus as a person at the point of viability. It reverses a 17th-century legal doctrine that allowed homicide charges only if the fetus was first "born alive" and then died. * * *

The decision reverses the court's holding in a 1983 case in which the state Supreme Court found that a fetus could not be murdered, even if a man ripped it from his wife's uterus.

The ruling doesn't decide the constitutionality of the new "fetal homicide" law passed this year by the Kentucky legislature. That law allows homicide charges to be brought when a fetus is killed — regardless of whether it is viable.

Frank Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which intervened in the Supreme Court case, said he thinks the ruling indicates that the justices likely would uphold the fetal homicide law.

"It bodes well because a clear majority of the Kentucky Supreme Court recognizes the principles that would also uphold the fetal homicide statute," he said.

Cooper acknowledged that the justices' decision might be rendered moot by the new law. "Some might regard this entire exercise as a vain endeavor, since all future fetal homicides presumably will be prosecuted under new (law). However, should (House Bill) 108 not survive constitutional challenge, the decision in this case will attain future significance," Cooper wrote in a footnote.

The opinion, Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Morris, is available here.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 18, 2004 07:51 AM
Posted to General Law Related