IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT JACKSON

Assigned on Briefs May 8, 2001

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JOYCE ANN RICE

Direct Appeal from the Circuit Court for Madison County

No. 98-883 Roger A. Page, Judge

No. W2000-01766-CCA-R3-CD - Filed June 26, 2001

The defendant, a construction company payroll clerk, was convicted of fourteen counts of forgery,

Class E felonies, and one count of theft of property over $1000, a Class D felony, for utilizing her

position at the company to write and cash invalid checks on her employer’s account. She was

sentenced as a Range II, multiple offender to three years on each forgery conviction, and six years

on the theft conviction, to be served concurrently for an effective sentence of six years. In this

appeal as of right, the defendant argues that the trial court erred in allowing evidence of her prior

crimes to be admitted at trial, and that the evidence was not sufficient to support her convictions. 

After a careful review, we conclude that the trial court did not err in allowing the State to impeach

the defendant’s credibility by questioning her about her prior convictions, and that the evidence was

sufficient to support the jury’s verdict. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed

ALAN E. GLENN,J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which L. TERRY LAFFERTY, SR.J., joined.

DAVID H. WELLES, J., Not Participating.

Clifford K. McGown, Jr., Waverly, Tennessee (on appeal); George Morton Googe, District Public

Defender; and Vanessa D. King, Assistant District Public Defender, Jackson, Tennessee (at trial and

on appeal), for the appellant, Joyce Ann Rice.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General and Reporter; Mark E. Davidson, Assistant Attorney General;

James G. Woodall, District Attorney General; and Shaun A. Brown, Assistant District Attorney

General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

FACTS

The defendant, Joyce Ann Rice, is a former payroll clerk at Thomson & Thomson,

Incorporated, a bridge construction company in Jackson, Tennessee. Thomson & Thomson
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accountant David Wyman testified at trial that the defendant was the primary employee responsible

for preparing and printing the payroll checks for the company’s employees. According to Wyman,

company procedure called for a supervisor to periodically review the payroll checks prepared by the

defendant to ensure that they were being written to current employees. However, when Wyman

asked the defendant on September 3, 1998, how the process was working, she told him that the

supervisor had quit reviewing the checks. Wyman therefore requested that the defendant bring the

checks to him. In his review, he noted a payroll check made out to “Noe Garza.” The next day, he

noticed that the check made out to Garza was missing. When asked, the defendant denied any

knowledge of its whereabouts, and told Wyman that it had been with the other payroll checks when

she left work the preceding day. 

Upon investigating, Wyman discovered that Noe Garza had only briefly worked for the

company, from April 15, 1998, until May 6, 1998. From May 29 through August 28, 1998, however,

time sheets had been prepared for him, and fourteen payroll checks made out to him had been issued

on the company’s payroll account. Wyman stated that the defendant had been responsible for issuing

each of these fourteen checks, and that she had not been authorized to issue checks to an employee

who was no longer on the payroll. Copies of the cashed checks, which ranged in amounts from

$234.52 to $612.97, were identified by Wyman and introduced into evidence. 

William Smith, a bridge foreman for Thomson & Thomson, testified that he had supervised

Garza from April 15, 1998, until May 6, 1998, the last day that Garza worked for the company. He

had filled out and turned in the last time sheet for Garza on May 7, 1998. He had not authorized any

further time sheets for Garza, and did not recognize the time sheets that had been turned in after May

7.

Kathy Jarvis, a former employee of Volunteer Bank in Jackson, testified that she had worked

for seven and one-half years at the small Volunteer branch bank located at 2673 North Highland.

She identified the defendant as a customer of the bank who regularly came by the North Highland

branch to make deposits or to cash checks. Jarvis testified that during the relevant time frame, the

defendant came every Friday through the drive-through window of the bank, where she deposited

her paycheck into her checking account and, using a work ID with Garza’s employee identification

number, cashed a paycheck made payable to Noe Garza. Jarvis had recognized Garza’s name

because she had seen Garza in the bank in the past, prior to the time when the defendant started

cashing his checks. During the summer months of 1998, she never saw Garza come to the bank to

cash a paycheck. 

Sergeant Tom Rudder, a criminal investigator for theMadisonCounty Sheriff’s Department,

testified that he interviewed the defendant on September 10, 1998. After being informed of her

rights and signing a waiver of rights form, the defendant gave a statement acknowledging that she

was responsible for cutting the payroll checks for the company’s employees, but denying that she

had ever taken or cashed any check made out to Noe Garza. She remembered receiving time cards

on Garza through September 1, 1998, and said that to her knowledge, he still worked for the

company.
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Following the trial court’s denial of her motion for judgment of acquittal, the defendant

testified in her own behalf. She denied having created time sheets on Garza, having cashed checks

made payable to him, or having taken any checks other than her own. She stated that she prepared

the payroll checks each week from time sheets that supervisors left in her mailbox, and that she had

added nothing to Garza’s time sheets other than the total hours he worked and his employee number.

The defendant further testified that at the beginning of the week in which the problem with

the checks was discovered, she had received a letter from the Social Security Administration

informing her that more than ten percent of the social security numbers listed on the company’s

employees’ W-2 forms for the year ending in 1997 did not match the names on file with the Social

Security Administration. When she researched the matter, she found that each of the unmatched

social security numbers belonged to a Mexican employee. She said that she had reported her

findings to Wyman, telling him of her belief that the Mexican employees were illegal aliens, and

that she did not want to continue to sign her name to the certified payrolls being turned in to the

Tennessee Department of Transportation. She testified that Wyman told her that the employees were

not illegal, and that she was to continue to do her job. According to the defendant, the next day

Wyman asked her to bring the payroll checks for his review. 

The defendant introduced medical records to show that she had been undergoing an EKG test

on May 29, 1998 at 1:15 p.m., the same day that one of Garza’s checks had been cashed at 12:49

p.m., and again on June 19, 1998 at 12:56 p.m., the day that another one of Garza’s checks had been

cashed at 12:42 p.m. She stated that she had to wait in her doctor’s office before each EKG, until

“eventually” she was called to the exam room for the test. The defendant could not explain her

signature on the back of two of Garza’s paychecks. She acknowledged that she had had “trouble

with authorities in the past.” 

On cross-examination, the defendant admitted that she was a customer of Volunteer Bank,

and that she had regularly deposited her paycheck with Kathy Jarvis at the bank. She again denied,

however, that she had cashed any of Garza’s checks. She said that she thought that Jarvis was

mistaken, and that she had her confused with someone else. She also denied that she had signed her

name to the back of the two checks on which her signature appeared. In response to questioning by

the State, she acknowledged that she had been convicted of both burglary and theft of property over

$1000 on July 17, 1995, in Madison County Circuit Court, and that she had been sentenced to four

years on each conviction. 

Following deliberations, the jury convicted the defendant of fourteen counts of forgery and

one count of theft of property over $1000 but under $10,000. The trial court sentenced her as a

Range II, multiple offender to three years on each forgery conviction and six years on the theft of

property conviction, with the sentences ordered served concurrently, for an effective sentence of six

years. The defendant filed a timely appeal to this court. 

ANALYSIS
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I. Evidence of Defendant’s Prior Convictions

The defendant first contends that the trial court erred in allowing evidence of her prior

convictions at trial. She argues that the jury was improperly influenced in its determination of her

guilt by the similarities between the crimes for which she had previously been convicted and the ones

for which she was presently charged. She also argues that the State improperly used the prior

convictions in its closing argument “as an appeal to the jury to convict [her] because of her prior

criminal history.” In response, the State contends that the convictions were properly admitted by the

trial court and argued by the State for the sole purpose of impeaching the credibility of the

defendant’s testimony. 

 This issue is governed by Tennessee Rule of Evidence 609(a), which provides as follows:

Impeachment by evidence of conviction of crime.–(a) General

Rule.–For the purpose of attacking the credibility of a witness,

evidence that the witness has been convicted of a crime may be

admitted if the following procedures and conditions are satisfied:

 (1) The witness must be asked about the conviction on crossexamination. If the witness denies having been convicted, the

conviction may be established by public record. If the witness denies

being the person named in the public record, identity may be

established by other evidence.

 (2) The crime must be punishable by death or imprisonment in

excess of one year under the law under which the witness was

convicted or, if not so punishable, the crime must have involved

dishonesty or false statement.

 (3) If the witness to be impeached is the accused in a criminal

prosecution, the State must give the accused reasonable written notice

of the impeaching conviction before trial, and the court upon request

must determine that the conviction’s probative value on credibility

outweighs its unfair prejudicial effect on the substantive issues. The

court may rule on the admissibility of such proof prior to the trial but

in any event shall rule prior to the testimony of the accused. If the

court makes a final determination that such proof is admissible for

impeachment purposes, the accused need not actually testify at the

trial to later challenge the propriety of the determination. 

That a prior conviction involved the same or similar crime as the one for which the defendant

is being tried does not automatically prevent its use to impeach the defendant’s credibility. State v.

Walker, 29 S.W.3d 885, 889 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1999), perm. to appeal denied (Tenn. 2000) (citing
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State v. Miller, 737 S.W.2d 556, 560 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1987)). The trial court must, however,

carefully weigh whether the possible prejudice to the defendant is outweighed by the probative value

of the evidence on the issue of the defendant’s credibility. Id. at 890 (citing State v. Mixon, 983

S.W.2d 661, 674 (Tenn. 1999) and State v. Farmer, 841 S.W.2d 837, 839 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1992)).

In determining the probative value of the prior convictions, the trial court must assess the similarity

of the crime for which the defendant is on trial and the crime underlying the impeaching conviction.

Farmer, 841 S.W.2d at 839. The court must next analyze the relevance of the impeaching conviction

to the issue of the defendant’s credibility. Id. The trial court’s decision to admit prior convictions

for impeachment purposes will not be reversed on appeal unless it appears from the record that the

trial court abused its discretion. State v. Blanton, 926 S.W.2d 953, 960 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1996).

The record in this case reflects that the State gave written notice prior to trial of its intent to

use the defendant’s prior convictions for impeachment purposes should the defendant elect to take

the stand. Thereafter, prior to the start of the defendant’s trial, the trial court held a hearing as

mandated by State v. Morgan, 541 S.W.2d 385 (Tenn. 1976), to determine the admissibility of the

convictions. The State sought to use four of the defendant’s prior criminal convictions to impeach

her at trial, all of which occurred in 1995: felony burglary, felony theft of property over $1000,

felony vandalism, and misdemeanor criminal impersonation. The trial court’s ruling shows that it

correctly considered the issues, applying the appropriate balancing test in reaching its decision that

the State could impeach the defendant with her convictions for burglary and theft of property: 

So in looking at [the] first one and the second one, I’m going

to find that the probative value on credibility outweighs the unfair

prejudicial effect on the substantive values as to the burglary. And

even though theft of property over a thousand is the same crime, we

have cases that say that even though the crimes are the same, if

it–impact on credibility is very high, you can still use it.

So in this case I’m going to find with respect to the first one

and the second one, burglary and theft of property over a thousand,

that the convictions’ probative value on credibility as to each one

outweighs the unfair prejudicial effect on substantive issues. 

Now, as to the vandalism count, it is a felony, but I don’t find

in my study that vandalism has very much to do with credibility, so

I’m not going to allow that one.

Criminal impersonation, in this Court’s opinion the impact on

credibility in that case is just not high enough to offset the fact that

it’s a misdemeanor.
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So I guess in essence my ruling is if Mrs. Rice testifies, the

95-477 conviction on burglary and also the 95-477 conviction on theft

of property over a thousand can be used to impeach her. 

Our review has revealed no abuse of discretion by the trial court in this matter. The fact that

the theft of property conviction was the same as one of the offenses for which the defendant was

being tried did not preclude its use as impeachment evidence against the defendant. See Walker, 29

S.W.3d at 889. In addition to being felonies, the defendant’s prior convictions for theft of property

and burglary involved crimes of dishonesty, see State v. Miller, 737 S.W.2d 556, 559-60 (Tenn.

Crim. App. 1987) (noting that burglary is a crime of dishonesty); State v. Addison, 973 S.W.2d 260,

268 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1997) (stating that theft is a crime of dishonesty), thereby enhancing their

probative value on the issue of the defendant’s credibility. The trial court clearly took into

consideration the fact that the defendant’s theft of property conviction was for the same offense as

one of the crimes for which she was currently on trial. However, by taking the stand to contradict

Kathy Jarvis’s direct testimony that the defendant had cashed Garza’s checks, the defendant made

her credibility an important issue at trial. We conclude, therefore, that the trial court did not abuse

its discretion in allowing the State to impeach the defendant’s credibility with evidence of her prior

convictions for burglary and theft of property.

The defendant also contends that the prosecutor argued improper propensity evidence when

referring to her prior convictions in his closing arguments to the jury. As an initial matter, we note

that by failing to object to the prosecutor’s closing comments at trial, the defendant has waived the

issue on appeal. See Tenn. R. App. P. 36(a); State v. Little, 854 S.W.2d 643, 651 (Tenn. Crim. App.

1992) (stating that failure to object to prosecutor’s alleged misconduct in closing argument waives

any later complaint). Even if not waived, however, the trial transcript makes it clear that the

prosecutor argued only that the defendant’s prior convictions be considered by the jury in its

consideration of the weight to be given the defendant’s testimony:

And when you’re considering the credibility of the witnesses,

the Judge is also going to instruct you that the Defendant has put her

credibility in issue because she testified today.

Now, she does have a prior record, and she’s admitted to that

prior record and told you that she has a burglary conviction, a theft of

property conviction over a thousand dollars from I believe it was

1995.

The State’s not asking you–And the law is very clear on this

and the Judge is going to instruct you. You can’t convict Mrs. Rice

simply because she’s got a prior record. You can’t do that. You

shouldn’t do that. That’s not our law.
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But what you can consider, and the Judge is going to instruct

you regarding credibility of witnesses, is when you’re judging her

testimony and whether she’s telling you the truth or Mrs. Jarvis is

telling you the truth or Mr. Wyman is telling you the truth, you can

consider her prior record in judging her credibility today. 

And I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, who told you the

truth today is Mr. Wyman from Thompson and Thompson, Mr. Smith

from Thompson and Thompson, and Mrs. Jarvie [sic] from the bank

when they told you what occurred and how these checks were cashed.

 

The defendant’s prior convictions were properly admitted as impeachment evidence, and thus proper

for comment by the prosecutor in closing argument. This issue, therefore, is without merit.

II. Sufficiency of the Evidence

Next, the defendant contends that the evidence was not sufficient to support her convictions

beyond a reasonable doubt. Specifically, the defendant argues that she presented sufficient evidence,

in the form of proof of her EKG exams, to show that it would have been physically impossible for

her to have cashed “at least one” of the checks in issue. 

In considering this issue, we apply the familiar rule that where sufficiency of the convicting

evidence is challenged, the relevant question of the reviewing court is “whether, after viewing the

evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found

the essential elements of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443

U.S. 307, 319, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L. Ed. 2d 560 (1979). See also State v. Evans, 838 S.W.2d

185, 190-92 (Tenn. 1992); State v. Anderson, 835 S.W.2d 600, 604 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1992); Tenn.

R. App. P. 13(e) (“Findings of guilt in criminal actions whether by the trial court or jury shall be set

aside if the evidence is insufficient to support the findings by the trier of fact of guilt beyond a

reasonable doubt.”). All questions involving the credibility of witnesses, the weight and value to be

given the evidence, and all factual issues are resolved by the trier of fact. See State v. Pappas, 754

S.W.2d 620, 623 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1987). “A guilty verdict by the jury, approved by the trial judge,

accredits the testimony of the witnesses for the State and resolves all conflicts in favor of the theory

of the State.” State v. Grace, 493 S.W.2d 474, 476 (Tenn. 1973). A jury conviction removes the

presumption of innocence with which a defendant is initially cloaked and replaces it with one of

guilt, so that on appeal, a convicted defendant has the burden of demonstrating that the evidence is

insufficient. See State v. Tuggle, 639 S.W.2d 913, 914 (Tenn. 1982).

Viewed in the light most favorable to the State, the evidence in this case was sufficient to

support the jury’s verdict. Contrary to the defendant’s assertions, proof that she was undergoing an

EKG test fourteen minutes after a check made payable to Garza was cashed at Volunteer Bank does

not create a reasonable doubt of her guilt. Although the defendant testified that she was forced to

wait in her doctor’s waiting room before beginning the tests, the jury was free to discredit her
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testimony. The defendant presented no evidence, other than her own testimony, to show that it

would have been impossible for her to have reached her doctor’s office to begin the tests within

fourteen minutes of having gone through the drive-through window of the Highland branch of the

bank. David Wyman testified, and the defendant acknowledged, that she was the employee

responsible for preparing Garza’s checks,including the fourteen payroll checks that were issued after

Garza’s employment had ended. Kathy Jarvis, who testified that she was very familiar with the

defendant, unequivocally identified her as the woman who cashed Garza’s checks. In addition, the

defendant’s signature appeared on the back of two of the checks. This evidence was more than

sufficient for a rational trier of fact to find the defendant guilty of the crimes beyond a reasonable

doubt. 

CONCLUSION

We conclude that the trial court did not err in allowing the State to impeach the defendant’s

credibility with her prior convictions for burglary and theft of property. We further conclude that

the evidence was sufficient to support the defendant’s convictions of forgery and theft of property

over $1000. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the trial court. 

___________________________________ 

ALAN E. GLENN, JUDGE