Request By:
Mr. Robert Case
Mason County Sheriff
P.O. Box 502
Maysville, Kentucky 41056
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You request the opinion of this office on questions relating to jail prisoners.
First, you ask whether you have any duties as a security guard of a prisoner after he has been admitted to the hospital by the county jailer?
KRS 70.130 requries the sheriff or a deputy to convey all persons to the penitentiary condemned to confinement therein. However, we find nothing in KRS Chapter 70 requiring the sheriff to be a security guard for jail prisoners taken to the hospital.
KRS 441.500, as amended in 1982, deals with transporting prisoners to and from detention facilities. It does, not cover the furnishing of security guards for a prisoner after admission to a hospital.
The second question:
"Is it our duty to transport prisoners to the doctor and guard them for long periods of time while they wait to see the doctor? "
Here again we find no statute requiring the sheriff to transport jail prisoners to the doctor and stand guard.
In order to impose a duty on a public officer, it is necessary that the legislature impose a positive duty on such officer by an appropriate statute. The court held in Conner v. Nunn, Ky., 455 S.W.2d 554 (1970) 555, that "In the absence of a legal duty which an officer is required to perform, or a right to have such duty performed, an officer cannot be compelled to act." (Emphasis added).
The responsibility for taking such prisoners to the hospital or to the doctor and guarding them is placed upon the jailer and his staff. See KRS 441.005(5), (H.B. 440, 1982), 71.020, as amended in 1982, 441.010, as amended in 1982, 441.500, as amended in 1982.