Owens v. Commonwealth

Opinion of the Court by

Justice VENTERS.

Appellant, James Ricky Owens, was convicted by a Simpson Circuit Court jury of first-degree assault, tampering with physical evidence, and of being a first-degree persistent felony offender (PFO). For these crimes, Appellant received an enhanced sentence of thirty years’ imprisonment for the first-degree assault conviction, based on the jury’s contemporaneous finding that he was a first-degree PFO, and an enhanced sentence of ten years for the tampering with physical evidence conviction, based also on the first-degree PFO finding, with the two sentences…