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Prosecutors in Kentucky can't charge people with manufacturing methamphetamine unless they actually have everything they need to do so, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled on June 12. Prosecutors there had gotten in the habit of charging people they suspected of preparing to manufacture meth with actual manufacture. Under Kentucky law, attempted meth manufacture warrants a five-year minimum sentence, while actual meth manufacture garners a minimum 10-year sentence. The ruling came in the case of Ronald Kotila, who was convicted in Pulaski County on a meth manufacturing charge in 1999. Kotila possessed many of the items needed to cook speed -- all of them commonly available and legal by themselves -- but not two essential ingredients, anhydrous ammonia and muriatic acid. Kentucky law specifies that for someone to be charged with meth manufacture, he must possess "the chemicals or equipment for the manufacture of methamphetamine."

The Supreme Court interpreted the phrase strictly. "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.

Prosecutors began to whine immediately. "We're going to have to examine all of our cases that are pending right now," Davies County prosecutor David Nall told the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer. "It's really taken away a big stick so to speak, a punishment hammer. You've basically cut the fear in half." And so did at least one Supreme Court member, Chief Justice Joseph Lambert, who wrote the minority opinion in the 4-3 decision. It will be difficult to prosecute meth manufacture cases, Lambert wrote, because a suspect "with the least amount of ingenuity will be able to prevent his conviction by merely omitting from his cache of tools and ingredients one or two of the more common, and bringing in the missing components only at the last moment. Thus to achieve a conviction... it will be necessary to catch the offender 'red-handed.'"

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