IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT KNOXVILLE

Assigned on Briefs August 23, 2022

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. DAVID PAUL BEETS

Appeal from the Criminal Court for Knox County

No. 112723 Scott Green, Judge

No. E2021-00773-CCA-R3-CD

The defendant, David Paul Beets, appeals his Knox County Criminal Court jury 

convictions of possession with intent to sell more than .5 grams of methamphetamine 

within 1,000 feet of a private school, simple possession of heroin, hydrocodone, and 

marijuana, and driving on a suspended license, arguing that the evidence was insufficient 

to establish that he sold drugs in a drug-free zone or that his license had been suspended. 

We affirm the drug conviction but reverse the conviction of driving on a suspended license 

and dismiss that charge.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3; Judgments of the Criminal Court Affirmed in Part; Reversed in 

Part; Dismissed in Part

JAMES CURWOOD WITT, JR., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which CAMILLE R.

MCMULLEN, and ROBERT H. MONTGOMERY, JR., JJ., joined.

Gerald L. Gulley, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellant, David Paul Beets.

Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Benjamin A. Ball, Assistant 

Attorney General; Charme P. Allen, District Attorney General; and Hector Sanchez,

Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

The Knox County Grand Jury charged the defendant with one count of the

possession with the intent to sell or deliver more than .5 grams of methamphetamine within 

1,000 feet of a private school,1 one count of simple possession of heroin, one count of 

simple possession of hydrocodone, one count of simple possession of marijuana, one count 

 

1 By agreement of the parties the phrase “or deliver” was stricken from the indictment.

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of possession of drug paraphernalia, and one count of driving on a suspended license. All 

of the offenses occurred on July 4, 2017.

At the defendant’s October 2018 trial, Knoxville Police Department (“KPD”) 

Officer Kevin Varner testified that on July 4, 2017, he responded to a call that a motorist 

was “passed out behind the wheel of a vehicle” in the “Western Avenue area, right there 

near McKamey and Palmetto, right near the Pilot.” Officer Varner found the defendant 

“passed out” behind the wheel of “a white GMC Sierra Pickup” that was idling. When 

Officer Varner approached the driver’s side window, he observed “a beige metal canister 

that’s typically carried for medication” in the truck’s center console. Officer Varner woke 

the defendant, instructed him to turn the truck off, and asked him to step out of the vehicle. 

He patted the defendant down and, after getting the defendant’s consent, searched the 

defendant’s pockets, where the officer found “some marijuana and some other drugs.” 

Officer Varner placed the defendant under arrest and continued to search his person.

As Officer Varner searched the defendant, Officer Brian Mullane arrived 

with his dog and ran the dog around the vehicle. The dog indicated by its actions that the 

defendant’s truck contained illegal drugs, so the officers searched the defendant’s truck. 

They found “a safe in the driver side floorboard area of the truck that would have been at 

his feet had he still been in the vehicle.” The defendant indicated that the safe belonged to 

him and gave the officers the key to the safe as well as his consent for them to open it. The 

officers found “some heroin[] in the vehicle, some marijuana, and some 

methamphetamine” as well as “some more drugs inside the safe.” Officer Varner qualified 

his testimony by saying that he was “not a hundred percent sure what I pulled out of his 

pocket or what I pulled out of the vehicle, it’s all in my warrant.” Ultimately, officers 

confiscated “a wax paper containing a black tar substance believed to be heroin[],” a “glass 

vile containing an off-white substance,” two “stamped baggies containing [a] substance 

believed to be methamphetamine,” several “plastic baggies containing marijuana,” and pill 

bottles “containing four pills marked as V3605.” He explained that he also found a “purple 

plastic container, a green plastic container, a prescription paper, and . . . assorted plastic 

baggies.” The “prescription paper” was for “another individual.” Officer Varner also 

described “what appears to me to be a drug ledger of some sort” of the type “that people 

typically keep on them for their sales.”

Officers also found a cellular telephone inside the defendant’s truck. The 

defendant gave the officer permission to examine the telephone and “he put the swipe 

pattern in the phone himself for us to look at it.” Officers took from the safe and the 

defendant’s person a total amount of currency that exceeded $1,000.

As the encounter continued, the defendant told Officer Varner that he had 

traveled from his McKamey Road residence to the Pilot on Western Avenue. Officer 
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Varner testified that the defendant specifically told them that “[h]e traveled McKamey 

Road to Western, then took a left on Western and drove up to the Pilot.”

Given the amount of narcotics and currency and the absence of any drug 

paraphernalia on the defendant’s person or in the vehicle, Officer Varner referred the case 

to the Organized Crime Unit.

During cross-examination, Officer Varner conceded that the “prescription 

paper” was actually a prescription made by an optometrist for eyeglasses.

During redirect examination, Officer Varner testified that he charged the 

defendant with driving while his driver’s license was suspended based upon an “NCIC” 

search, which indicated that the defendant’s driver’s license had been suspended in April 

2017 for failure to pay fines and costs.

Investigator Brandon Stryker with the KPD Organized Crime Unit testified 

as an expert in the field of narcotics investigation. Investigator Stryker interviewed the 

defendant following his arrest. During that interview, the defendant confirmed that he had 

given Officers Varner and Mullane permission to examine his cellular telephone and then 

showed Investigator Stryker how to unlock the telephone. Investigator Stryker examined 

the text and Facebook messages on the telephone and discovered some 31 messages that 

he believed, based upon his training and experience, indicative of drug trafficking. Screen 

shots of those messages were exhibited to Investigator Stryker’s testimony. Investigator 

Stryker went through the messages, meticulously explaining the jargon and how it related 

to the illegal drug trade. He explained the various code words and phrases commonly used 

by those in the illegal drug trade to refer to varying amounts of heroin and 

methamphetamine as well as the common resale values for those quantities of drugs. 

Investigator Stryker testified that it was his opinion, based upon the packaging of the 

methamphetamine discovered in the defendant’s possession and the text messages, that the 

defendant “was engaged in the sale of methamphetamine.” He said that the messages 

indicated “a continued activity of over a month or approximately a month” at the time of 

his arrest.

Investigator Stryker testified that during his interview with the defendant, the 

defendant told Investigator Stryker that “he just went straight to the Pilot on Western 

Avenue from his house on McKamey.” He added, 

The route that he told me during the interview was that he took 

his road, McKamey, and I believe he took it to Ball Camp, and 

then from Ball Camp he -- I’m sure -- I think -- he would’ve 

had to hit a smaller connecting street and then hit Western 
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Avenue, and then the Pilot would’ve been on his right once he 

made a right-hand turn.

Donna Roach, the office manager/administrative technician at the Knoxville, 

Knox County, Knoxville Utilities Board Geographic Information System (“KGIS”), 

testified as an expert in geographic information systems. The State exhibited to her 

testimony maps showing that the defendant’s residence was within 1,000 feet of the “buffer 

zone” of both a daycare and the Rivers Edge Christian Academy and that the Pilot where 

the defendant was arrested was not within “a buffer zone . . . of a thousand feet” from the 

Rivers Edge Christian Academy. A stipulation provided that the private school was 

operational at the time of the defendant’s arrest.

Forensic testing established that, of the items seized from the defendant, the 

“gray substance” contained heroin, that the “orange tablet” contained hydrocodone, that 

the “crystalline substance” was methamphetamine, and that “the plant material” was 

marijuana.

Following a Momon colloquy, the defendant elected not to testify and chose 

to present no proof. The jury convicted the defendant as charged. The trial court, acting 

as 13th juror, set aside the jury’s verdict of guilty of possession of drug paraphernalia in 

Count 5 and entered a judgment of acquittal on that count.

At the sentencing hearing, the trial court imposed the agreed sentence 

reached by the parties: 15 years for the defendant’s conviction of possession with intent to 

sell methamphetamine, sentences of 11 months and 29 days for each of the defendant’s 

convictions of simple possession, and a sentence of six months for the defendant’s 

conviction of driving on a suspended license. The court aligned all of the sentences 

concurrently, for a total effective sentence of 15 years’ incarceration.

The defendant appeals, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to establish 

that he possessed methamphetamine with the intent to sell it within 1,000 feet of a private 

school and that the evidence was insufficient to establish that his driver’s license was 

suspended at the time of the offenses. The State asserts that sufficient evidence supports 

each of the defendant’s convictions.

Sufficient evidence exists to support a conviction if, after considering the 

evidence—both direct and circumstantial—in the light most favorable to the prosecution, 

any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a 

reasonable doubt. Tenn. R. App. P. 13(e); Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979); 

State v. Dorantes, 331 S.W.3d 370, 379 (Tenn. 2011). This court will neither re-weigh the 

evidence nor substitute its inferences for those drawn by the trier of fact. Dorantes, 331 
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S.W.3d at 379. The verdict of the trier-of-fact resolves any questions concerning the 

credibility of the witnesses, the weight and value of the evidence, and the factual issues 

raised by the evidence. State v. Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978). 

Significantly, this court must afford the State the strongest legitimate view of the evidence 

contained in the record as well as all reasonable and legitimate inferences which may be 

drawn from the evidence. Id. In a bench trial, the trial judge’s verdict carries the same 

weight as a jury verdict. State v. Hatchett, 560 S.W.2d 627, 630 (Tenn. 1978).

Drug Possession

“It is an offense for a defendant to knowingly . . . [p]ossess a controlled 

substance with intent to manufacture, deliver or sell the controlled substance.” T.C.A. § 

39-17-417(a)(4). A violation of Code section 39-17-417(a)(4) is a Class B felony when 

the controlled substance involved is .5 grams or more of cocaine or methamphetamine. At 

the time of the offenses in this case, a violation of Code section 39-17-417 taking place 

“within one thousand feet (1,000′) of the real property that comprises a public or private 

elementary school, middle school, secondary school” was required to be “punished one (1) 

classification higher than is provided in § 39-17-417(b)-(i) for such violation.”

The defendant asserts that although the evidence established that he 

possessed methamphetamine at the time of his arrest at the Pilot on Western Avenue, no 

evidence established that he possessed methamphetamine “during the time that he may 

have been within the 1,000 [foot] buffer zone around the Rivers Edge Academy.” To the 

contrary, however, both Officer Varner and Investigator Stryker testified that the defendant 

gave a detailed description of the route he took as he traveled directly from his home to the 

Pilot on Western Avenue without making any stops, which route was within 1,000 feet of 

Rivers Edge Christian Academy as established by KGIS. Our supreme court has explicitly 

rejected the “argument that simply traveling through a school zone is not enough to apply 

the provisions of the Drug-Free School Zone Act.” State v. Vasques, 221 S.W.3d 514, 523 

(Tenn. 2007). In our view, the State presented sufficient evidence from which the jury 

could infer that the defendant possessed the methamphetamine ultimately found inside his 

vehicle at the Pilot when he traveled from his house to the Pilot, which route took him 

through a drug-free school zone.

Driving on Suspended License

“A person who drives a motor vehicle within the entire width between the 

boundary lines of every way publicly maintained . . . at a time when the person’s privilege 

to do so is . . . suspended . . . commits a Class B misdemeanor.” T.C.A. § 55-50-504(a)(1).
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The defendant argues that Officer Varner’s testimony that a check of the 

“NCIC” showed that the defendant’s driver’s license had been suspended in April 2017 

was insufficient to support his conviction of driving on a suspended license. We agree. To 

support a conviction for driving on a suspended license, the State must establish beyond a 

reasonable doubt that the defendant’s license was suspended at the time he was driving. 

This is easily done by submitting a certified copy of the defendant’s driving record. The 

State did not make even this most rudimentary effort to establish the status of the 

defendant’s license. Without some showing that the “NCIC” records reviewed by Officer 

Varner were, in fact, an accurate reflection of the status of the defendant’s driver’s license, 

his testimony about the “NCIC” records cannot, standing alone, support the defendant’s 

conviction.

Accordingly, we reverse the defendant’s conviction for driving on a 

suspended license and dismiss that charge but affirm the judgments of the trial court in all 

other respects.

_________________________________

JAMES CURWOOD WITT, JR., JUDGE