FACTORS FOR METH CHARGES TIGHTENED

Court Rules All Ingredients Must Be Found To Support Felony Of Manufacturing

A state Supreme Court ruling involving the manufacturing of methamphetamine
is probably going to make the difference between serving 20 years in prison
or five. A majority of the court struck down a statute that allowed police
to charge people with manufacturing when they had most of the ingredients
of meth - many of them common household items such as coffee filters,
batteries and Sudafed.

"Now police would have to catch them in the act of cooking meth to charge
them with manufacturing," Warren Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Wilson said.
"This means we are going to have to go back and review all of our pending
cases and see if they are mere ingredients cases."

The charges, however, won't be dismissed; they can be changed to attempted
manufacturing, as long as prosecutors can show intent.

The difference, Wilson said, is a Class B felony for manufacturing, which
comes with a prison term of 10 to 20 years in prison, or a Class D felony
for attempted manufacturing, accompanied by one to five years in prison.

There is a question of how frequently law enforcement will be able to make
a manufacturing charge, since it's not too common for a person to have all
of the ingredients to make meth.

"The trend is sort of like a meth cook potluck where each person brings
some of the ingredients; they put them together and then split the
product," Wilson said.

The only time all of the ingredients would be together would be when a cook
was going on, putting law enforcement in a much more dangerous position
because of the harmful fumes and volatility of the items being used, he said.

"This just makes our job a lot harder," said Tommy Loving, director of the
Bowling Green-Warren County Drug Task Force. "We already have enough road
blocks as it is."

Loving said officers will continue to try to catch criminals in the act and
may seek help from federal courts until it is clear how to handle state
charges.

He will talk with Wilson today about pending cases and plans to talk with
House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, to see what changes can be
made in law to make it easier to charge meth producers.

Loving said he expects that a review of cases will mean that some meth
producers will be back on the streets much quicker.

Thursday's ruling ordered a new trial for Ronald Kotila, who was convicted
in 1999 in Pulaski County on a meth manufacturing charge in 1999.

Kotila had possession of many of the items needed for a meth lab, but he
did not have two essential ingredients - anhydrous ammonia and muriatic
acid. The pertinent Kentucky statute specifies that a suspect must possess
"the chemicals or equipment for the manufacture of methamphetamine."

"The presence of the article 'the' is significant because, grammatically
speaking, possession of some but not all of the chemicals or equipment does
not satisfy the statutory language," the court said in an unsigned opinion.

Simpson case - pardons

In another case with local interest, the court said the governor's power to
grant pardons includes partial or conditional pardons.

The ruling was from a Simpson County criminal case in which a juror with a
felony conviction on his record had some of his civil rights restored by
Gov. Paul Patton in 1997.

The court noted that Patton's order for James Stanley specifically restored
his rights to vote and hold public office. Nothing was said about jury service.

The Court of Appeals ruled that Patton's order restored Stanley to "full
and complete rights of citizenship." The Supreme Court disagreed. The
upshot of the ruling is that Terry Anderson, convicted of assault by the
jury that included Stanley, is to get a new trial in Simpson County Circuit
Court.

- - The Associated Press contributed information for this article.