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Independence, and that several features of the initiative were later brought to Ken tucky and used by John Breckinridge in his reform of the criminal justice system that was enacted by the General Assembly in the 1790s, soon after Kentucky became a state. Fleming writes that Kentucky’s major crim inal justice reform legislation, enacted in 1998 under Gov. Paul Patton, reflected Jefferson’s (and Patton’s) belief in second chances, and “brought balance to the jus tice and prison systems with reforms of adult and juvenile sentencing, life without parole was established for serious offenses, and diversion programs were established for nonviolent offenders. This was a com prehensive example of the modern-day application of the progressive reforms in criminal justice envisioned and written into law by Jefferson and Breckinridge two hundred years earlier.” In addition to criminal justice reform, Gov. Patton confronted several death penalty issues during his administration. As Patton’s Counsel in those years, Fleming writes that the Governor’s views on the death penalty were comparable to views expressed by Jef ferson, who Fleming says did not oppose the death penalty, but “set about limiting it in Virginia.”

Two executions were conducted at the Kentucky State Penitentiary during Pat ton’s eight years as Governor. Then, in the 2002 General Assembly, Patton supported legislation to eliminate the death penalty for juveniles. The legislation failed, but Patton later commuted the death sentence of an inmate who’d been on death row for 20 years after being convicted of crimes he committed when he was 17 years old. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court referenced Patton’s commutation in holding that the U.S. Constitution forbids imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. Thomas Jefferson and the Kentucky Consti tution provides excellent insight into the people who guided Kentucky to statehood and provided the foundational law that still resonates in courts and communi ties across the Commonwealth.

and which remain vital in Sections 27 and 28 of Kentucky’s present-day constitution: Section 27. The powers of the govern ment of the Commonwealth of Kentucky shall be divided into three distinct departments, and each of them be con fined to a separate body of magistracy, to wit: Those which are legislative, to one; those which are executive, to another; and those which are judicial, to another. Section 28. No person or collection of persons, being of one of those depart ments, shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others, except in the instances hereinafter expressly directed or permitted. Author Fleming is a Kentucky lawyer who’s had significant roles in the administrations of three Governors and a member of Con gress. His work in Thomas Jefferson and the Kentucky Constitution clearly establishes the historical foundation for more than a cen tury of Kentucky judicial opinions citing and relying on Jefferson’s guidance in decid ing critical issues arising under Sections 27 and 28. In the second part of his book, Fleming describes Jefferson’s influence on significant Kentucky cases over the last 40 years. With a particular focus on the work of former Chief Justice Robert F. Stephens, Fleming looks at the separation of powers questions involved in two cases in which Chief Jus tice Stephens wrote the majority opinion: Legislative Research Commission v. Brown , the 1984 case in which the Supreme Court struck down legislative attempts to exer cise executive power; and Rose v. Council for Better Education , the 1989 case which found the state’s public education system unconstitutional, leading to the General Assembly’s enactment of the Education Reform Act in 1990. In one of the book’s later chapters, Fleming provides interesting insights into Jeffer son’s views on criminal justice and shows that Kentucky criminal law has long been influenced by Jefferson. Fleming writes that Jefferson proposed “A Bill for Proportion ing Crimes and Punishments” in Virginia, shortly after writing the Declaration of

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Schaaf is a retired attorney and the co-au thor of “Hidden History of Kentucky Political Scandals.” The History Press, 2020.

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