IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT JACKSON

MAY SESSION, 1997

STATE OF TENNESSEE, ) C.C.A.# W1999-02144-CCA-RM-CD

)

Appellee, ) 

) SHELBY COUNTY

)

V. ) HON. FRED AXLEY, JUDGE 

) 

COLLIER V. HARRIS, ) 

) (FIRST DEGREE MURDER IN 

Appellant. ) THE PERPETRATION OF THEFT) 

FOR THE APPELLANT: FOR THE APPELLEE:

A. C. WHARTON JOHN KNOX WALKUP 

District Public Defender Attorney General & Reporter

W. MARK WARD DEBORAH A. TULLIS

Assistant Public Defender Assistant Attorney General

147 Jefferson, Suite 900 2nd Floor, Cordell Hull Building

Memphis, TN 38103 425 Fifth Avenue North 

Nashville, TN 37243

JOHN W. PIEROTTI

District Attorney General

EDGAR PETERSON

Assistant District Attorney General

LORRAINE CRAIG

Assistant District Attorney General

201 Poplar Avenue, Ste. 301

Memphis, TN 38103

OPINION FILED ________________________

AFFIRMED 

THOMAS T. WOODALL, JUDGE

OPINION

The Defendant, CollierV. Harris, was convicted in the Shelby County

Criminal Court of first degree murder committed during the perpetration of theft,

FILED

December 29, 1999

Cecil Crowson, Jr.

Appellate Court Clerk
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in violation of Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-202(a)(2). He received

a sentence of life imprisonment. He raised ten (10) issues on appeal. In an

opinion filed on December 3, 1997, this court affirmed the conviction. Defendant

subsequently filed an application for permission to appeal to the Tennessee

Supreme Court pursuant to Rule 11 of the Tennessee Rules of Appellate

Procedure.

On September 13, 1999, the Supreme Court of Tennessee filed an

order remanding the case to this court. The order states in its entirety as follows:

Upon consideration of the application for permission to appeal and

the entire record before us, the Court is of the opinion that the

application should be, and is, hereby, granted for the sole purpose

of remanding the case to the Court of Crim inal Appeals for

reconsideration in light of the Court’s opinion in State v. Buggs, 995

S.W.2d 102 (Tenn. 1999).

PER CURIAM 

Based upon our review of Buggs, the sole issue raised by the

Defendant on appeal which would be relevant to the supreme court’s opinion in

Buggs, is the Defendant’s challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support

a conviction for “felony murder” committed during the perpetration of theft.

Our opinion previously filed in this case provides a detailed

statement of the facts proven at trial. Of course, the State is entitled to the

strongest legitimate view of the evidence and all inferences therefrom. State v.

Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978). In this light, the proof at trial

showed that Defendant entered the victim’s home after 1:00 a.m. and before 5:00

a.m. on November 29, 1992. The Defendant and victim knew each other. The

Defendant strangled the victim, struck her with a blunt object which smashed or

actually burst her liver at four (4) different sites causing it to “bleed out,” and

stabbed her at least twelve (12) times, including two (2) wounds through the

victim’s heart. When he left her home, he took her new bank ATM card to a First
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Tennessee Bank in Millington, where the victim resided, and withdrew $30.00

from her account at approximately 5:10 a.m. on November 29, 1992. The

Defendant’s activities at the ATM machine were recorded on video tape. When

Walter Blaydes, another acquaintance of the victim, left her home at

approximately 1:00 a.m. on November 29, she was fine, and the ATM card

remained on a table in her home where Blaydes had observed it earlier in the

evening. 

In State v. Buggs, supra, our supreme court held:

The law does not require that the felony necessarily precede the

murder in order to support a felony-murder conviction. The killing

may precede, coincide with, or follow the felony and still be

considered as occurring “in the perpetration of” the felony offense,

so long as there is a connection in time, place, and continuity of

action. 

Buggs, 995 S.W.2d at 106.

However, the court further held that:

Thus, in a felony-murder case, intent to commit the underlying

felony must exist prior to or concurrent with the commission of the

act causing the death of the victim. 

Proof that such intent to commit the underlying felony existed

before, or concurrent with, the act of killing is a question of fact to be

decided by the jury after consideration of all the facts and

circumstances. [citations omitted].

Id. at 107

The supreme court further overruled Mullendore v. State, 183 Tenn.

53, 191 S.W.2d 149 (1945), to the “extent that Mullendore stands for the

proposition that intent to commit a felony may be presumed from the act of

committing that felony.” Buggs, 995 S.W.2d at 108.

More significantly, however, the supreme court further noted that

Mullendore “still stands for the proposition that the jury may reasonably infer from
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a defendant’s actions immediately after a killing that the defendant had the intent

to commit the felony prior to, or concurrent with, the killing.” Id. at 108.

As the supreme court did in State v. Buggs, supra, we conclude

herein that there was ample proof from which the jury could rationally infer that

the victim’s murder was committed in the perpetration of theft, and specifically

that the Defendant had the intent to commit the theft prior to, or concurrent with,

the killing. The jury could easily rationally infer that when the Defendant left the

victim’s residence, he took the ATM card with him. The hour that it was used to

obtain the $30.00 also shows that by Defendant’s actions “immediately after the

killing,” he had the intent to commit the felony prior to or concurrent with, the

killing. See Buggs, 995 S.W.2d at 108.

We hereby affirm the conviction of Defendant for first degree murder

committed in the perpetration of theft on the issue of sufficiency of the evidence

in light of State v. Buggs, 995 S.W.2d 102 (Tenn. 1999) and in addition reaffirm

and ratify all other portions of our opinion filed in this cause on December 3,

1997.

____________________________________

THOMAS T. WOODALL, Judge

CONCUR:

___________________________________

GARY R. WADE, Judge

___________________________________

JOHN H. PEAY, Judge