After a brief interruption of active blogging as a result of an office move and a healthy amount of associated chaos, SCOKYBLOG’s editors are back on the job.

This afternoon’s topic is speculation as to the actual authorship of January’s unsigned, Not-to-be-Published, matter-of-right criminal appeals.

Although it’s conceivable that former Justices Graves and Wintersheimer, who occupied their seats during the December writing period, actually authored some of the matter-of-right criminal appeals rendered this month (and, in the case of former Justice Wintershimer, perhaps even likely given his demonstration, year after year for more than two decades, that he was the “workhorse” of Kentucky’s appellate courts), SCOKYBLOG’s editors had to start somewhere in this analyis, and they started with the premises that: (1) each of the January Opinions was more than likely authored by a current Justice; and (2) Justices Schroder and Cunningham did not author any of the January opinions. (Neither Justice’s term actually began until January, and “cutoff day” for the circulation of draft opinions would have been on or about January 5, 2007.)

That leaves five Justices (Chief Justice Lambert and Justices McAnulty, Minton, Noble, and Scott) as possible authors. Because Justice Noble did not take her seat until after the Secretary of State certified the results of the November 2006 election to fill the unexpired term of former Justice James E. Keller, and did not sign any December 2006 or January 2007 Opinions (Majority or Separate), SCOKYBLOG cannot make any definitive pronouncements about her writing style (e.g. footnoted citations or textual citations, indenting and subheading conventions, etc.). As to the other four Justices, writing-style preferences are ascertainable at least to some degree. Accordingly, SCOKYBLOG’s editors believe that:

Justice McAnulty authored the Opinions in Stratton v. Commonwealth and Morningstar v. Commonwealth.

Justice Minton authored the Opinions in Trowell v. Commonwealth and Turley v. Commonwealth.

The Opinion in Raney v. Commonwealth has characteristics similar to Justice Scott’s writing style, but there are some significant differences. SCOKYBLOG will withold judgment, but suspects that Justice Noble may have drafted this one.

The Opinion in Hinkle v. Commonwealth appears to challenge Premise #1, and SCOKYBLOG believes it was most likely drafted by Justice Graves prior to his leaving the bench.