Request By:
Mr. Robert W. Miller
Carter County Attorney
Courthouse
Grayson, Kentucky 41143-1296
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
In your letter you refer to OAG 84-330, relating to transporting jail prisoners in Carter County. You raise, by way of requested clarification, additional questions. They read:
"In a case in which the Kentucky State Police arrest an individual and bring the individual to the Carter County jail and place said individual in the custody of the jailer and the jailer then determines he does not have space for the individual and makes arrangements for the prisoner to be housed in another facility, who is responsible for transporting the prisoner to the facility in which the prisoner is to be confined? Would KRS 441.510(c), or other applicable law, require the sheriff to perform this duty?
"Would the sheriff not be required to transport said prisoner pursuant to KRS 441.510(c) since a technical reading of that statute would indicate a difference if the prisoner was not at that time actually 'confined' in a detention facility? "
We have been informed that although the Carter County jail is fully operational, Carter Fiscal Court has a contract with Greenup Fiscal Court whereby the Greenup jail will take Carter prisoners where there is no available space in the Carter County jail. Informal arrangements have been made for other county jails to take temporarily such excess prisoners (excess of available space in Carter County jail) .
Since Carter County has a fully operational jail, it follows that KRS 441.510(1)(c) applies here. Under that subsection the sheriff of Carter County has the responsibility of transporting such excess Carter prisoners to the county jail available. Unfortunately KRS 441.510 makes no special provisions for the factual circumstances you are dealing with.
As you say, KRS 441.510 begins with the premise that an accused is confined in a detention facility. Here the Carter County prisoner (answerable to charges in the Carter County Court system) is first detained in the Carter County jail, though he may not have been assigned to a specific room or cell. The state police turned over the custody of the arrested prisoner to the Carter County jailer in the Carter County jail. Thus the prisoner was at that point confined in a detention facility until he was transported to another. We must accord to the pertinent words of KRS 441.510 their literal meaning.