Commonwealth, Crime Victims Compensation Board v. Miller

The stated purpose of the Crime Victims Compensation Act is to give financial relief to needy innocent victims of crime. KRS 346.010. Given this purpose, I feel that the court’s interpretation of this statute is unnecessarily restrictive. When a statute has a clearly stated purpose, it should be liberally construed to give effect to that purpose. Department of Revenue v. Derringer, Ky., 399 S.W.2d 482 (1966).

The Board argued in its brief that larger sums would have been appropriated under the Crime Victims Compensation Act if the legislature had intended to compensate victims whose injuries…