IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT JACKSON

Assigned on Briefs July 1, 2008

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. RAPHEAL LOVE

Direct Appeal from the Criminal Court for Shelby County

No. 05-08431 W. Fred Axley, Judge

No. W2007-01635-CCA-R3-CD - Filed August 21, 2008

The defendant, Rapheal Love, was convicted by a Shelby County Criminal Court jury of two counts

of first degree premeditated murder and sentenced by the trial court to two consecutive terms of life

imprisonment in the Department of Correction. The sole issue he raises on appeal is whether the

trial court erred in ordering consecutive sentencing. Following our review, we affirm the

consecutive sentences imposed by the trial court. 

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

ALAN E. GLENN,J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which JOHN EVERETT WILLIAMS and J.C.

MCLIN, JJ., joined.

Robert Wilson Jones, District Public Defender; Garland Ergüden, Assistant Public Defender (on

appeal); and Timothy J. Albers and Trent Hall, Assistant Public Defenders (at trial), for the

appellant, Rapheal Love.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; David H. Findley, Assistant Attorney General;

William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Ray Lepone and Paul Hagerman, Assistant

District Attorneys General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

FACTS

The State’s proof at trial established that on the night of July 13, 2005, seventeen-year-old

Jessica Sisson and her friend, David McVay, were shot to death by the sixteen-year-old defendant

and two friends, Sidarrius Walker and Hosie Perry, that he had recruited to help him exact revenge

against three men who had fired gunshots at him earlier in the evening. According to the defendant’s

statement to police, he was visiting with friends outside his aunt’s home in Memphis when “Joe,”

“Lil Squeaky,” and “Frog,” with whom he had been engaged in a long-running argument, drove by
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the house firing gunshots. His aunt told him to “let the situation go,” but he instead began

telephoning various friends to tell them about the shooting. 

After meeting up with two classmates, Joshua Parker and Timothy Payne, the defendant

spoke by telephone with Perry, relating the story of the shooting and telling him he intended to get

some guns. Perry arranged to meet him at his aunt’s house, and Parker then drove the defendant and

Payne to the home of another friend, Ladarius, where they picked up Walker. After picking up

Perry, the men drove to another location where they were given two assault rifles and a shotgun by

“Big 40,” a man whom Walker had contacted by telephone. At that point, Ladarius called the

defendant to tell him that he and his friends had just ridden through the neighborhood but had not

seen anyone. Still later, Ladarius called back to tell the defendant that they had just driven back

through the neighborhood and exchanged gunfire with the men.

The defendant and the friends with him in Parker’s vehicle next drove through the

neighborhood, where the defendant saw “Lil Squeaky [and] them standing out.” Parker drove back

to the neighborhood and parked his vehicle in a cove and the defendant, Walker, and Perry, each

armed with a weapon, got out and began walking toward a crowd of people on the street. Lil

Squeaky, Frog, and Joe started toward them and the defendant, Walker, and Perry began firing their

weapons. Afterwards, they ran back to the car and Parker drove them from the scene, dropping Perry

off first, then Walker, and finally the defendant. The defendant then called “Big 40,” who came and

retrieved the guns. 

The defendant said that he learned the next morning that two people had been killed in the

shooting. Asked if he had anything he wanted to add to his statement, he replied that he would like

to apologize to the victims’ families and to everyone who had been standing out in the street, that

he had been “only thinking about getting back at those who shot at [him],” and that he would “take

this as a learning experience.” 

Joshua Parker and Timothy Payne essentially corroborated the defendant’s version of events.

They testified at trial that after the defendant got into Parker’s vehicle, he had Parker return to his

aunt’s house so that he could show the bullet holes to Parker and Payne. The defendant then directed

Parker to another location to pick up Walker and then back to his aunt’s house for Walker to view

the damage. The defendant directed Parker to return to his aunt’s house yet a third time after they

had picked up Perry so that he could show the bullet holes to him as well. According to Parker, the

defendant was upset, yet calm, each time he showed off the damage. Payne also testified that the

defendant spoke in a normal tone of voice, neither yelling nor cursing, as he talked to Walker and

Perry and showed them the bullet holes in the house. 

Parker testified that the defendant was armed with one of the rifles, a weapon with a strap

and a scope, during the shooting. He said when the defendant returned to the vehicle after the

shooting, he was excited but calm. In his statement to police, the defendant also admitted that he

was armed with one of the rifles during the shooting. 

Memphis Police Officer Demar Wells testified that there were two crime scenes: an area on

the street where the shooters fired their weapons and an area near the sidewalk approximately a
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hundred yards away where the victims were hit. From the first crime scene, he recovered ten 7.6239

casings, which he said were projectiles shot from an assault or anti-personnel rifle such as an SKS,

AK-47, or MAK-90; three spent twelve gauge shotgun shells; four shotgun plastic wads; two pairs

of earplugs; and a small amount of powder cocaine. 

Dr. Kenneth Snell, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsies of the victims’

bodies, testified that Jessica Sisson died as the result of a gunshot wound to the back while David

McVay died as a result of a gunshot wound to the chest. He said that he recovered a copper-jacketed

projectile consistent with a projectile from a high-velocity rifle from McVay’s body. The gunshot

wound to Sisson’s body was also consistent with one caused by a high-velocity weapon. 

The only witness the defendant presented in his behalf was his aunt, Clara Easley, who

testified that after the gunshots were fired at her house, the defendant came inside and told her that

he had not done anything to “them folks” and did not know why they were shooting at him. She said

she told the defendant to let it go but could tell that he was angry. 

The jury convicted the defendant of both counts of first degree murder as charged in the

indictment, and the trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment for each count. In a sentencing

memorandum and at the sentencing hearing, defense counsel requested that the trial court order

concurrent sentences, submitting that the defendant did not qualify for any of the statutory criteria

for consecutive sentencing. Among other things, counsel noted that the defendant’s father and

mother had both been murdered, in 1999 and 2002, respectively, which had led the defendant to

become withdrawn and to change his behavior. The State, by contrast, argued that the defendant

should be sentenced to consecutive life terms as a dangerous offender. Agreeing with the State, the

trial court ordered that the defendant serve his sentences consecutively.

ANALYSIS

The sole issue the defendant raises on appeal is whether the trial court erred in imposing

consecutive sentencing. Citing, inter alia, his youth, tragic life experiences, expressions of remorse,

and the fact that his only criminal offense prior to the murders consisted of a juvenile adjudication

for unlawful possession of a firearm, he argues that the trial court erred in imposing consecutive

sentencing based on a finding that he was a dangerous offender. The State cites, inter alia, the

circumstances surrounding the killings, including the defendant’s use of high-powered assault rifles

and his actions in firing into a crowd of people in a residential neighborhood, to argue that the trial

court acted within its discretion in ordering consecutive sentences on the basis that the defendant is

a dangerous offender. We agree with the State.

Tennessee Code Annotated section 40-35-115(b) provides that it is within the trial court’s

discretion to impose consecutive sentencing if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that any

one of a number of criteria applies, including that “[t]he defendant is a dangerous offender whose

behavior indicates little or no regard for human life, and no hesitation about committing a crime in

which the risk to human life is high.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-35-115(b)(4) (2006). When a trial

court bases consecutive sentencing upon its classification of the defendant as a dangerous offender,

it is required to make further findings that the aggregate length of the defendant’s sentence
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reasonably relates to the severity of his offenses and is necessary to protect the public from further

criminal conduct of the defendant. State v. Lane, 3 S.W.3d 456, 460-61 (Tenn. 1999); State v.

Wilkerson, 905 S.W.2d 933, 937-38 (Tenn. 1995). 

The defendant asserts that the trial court’s “brief comments” at sentencing did not include

any findings that the defendant was a dangerous offender and that an extended sentence was both

necessary to protect the public and reasonably related to the severity of the offenses. Such findings,

however, are implicit in the trial court’s sentencing determinations, which occurred immediately

after the State’s argument on why the defendant qualified as a dangerous offender. The trial court

made the following findings of fact when imposing consecutive sentencing: 

One of the things that the Court recalls is the way . . . that this defendant was

pictured before the jury as being calm, rounding up is the best word I can say, those

things that would make him successful in retaliation of what happened to his aunty’s

house. 

The calmness with which this individual did this is important. One of the

witnesses, I recall, said that while pulling the weapon from the bag, he was calm.

After the killing took place, he was calm. It wasn’t some radical individual who

decided what he was going to do. He methodically did in the order in which he

needed to congregate what he needed to do. 

And then you look at this, as I recall, one of the weapons had a . . . sight on

it, a telescope. Because this is not an accidental shot. 

None of these shots were accidental in that the victims were over or around

a hundred yards away. And if you didn’t practice with these weapons, you couldn’t

do that. 

You couldn’t fire an AK-47 and just accidentally hit somebody a hundred

yards away. You could, but the . . . averages are not really that sound. They had to

have practiced. 

He knew who kept those weapons. He knew who to call who would call that

individual and say, hey, we need those weapons. It was . . . a methodical thing. 

In addition, what did the victims do to this defendant to cause him to kill

them? And the answer is nothing. Why were they out that night? Because her

friend, her boyfriend, was walking her home. They were outside. They were killed.

And yet, I’ve heard nothing . . . to tell me that this was just not anything more

that a wanton killing, again, in Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee. One died, then

another died. Two life sentences is all that I can give him, and they will be

consecutive.
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The record supports the imposition of consecutive sentencing on the basis that the defendant

is a dangerous offender. As the trial court observed, the evidence at trial established that the

defendant calmly and methodically prepared the retaliatory attack that led to the victims’ deaths.

The defendant formulated the plan for revenge, recruited friends to help him, borrowed highpowered assault rifles and a shotgun, cruised through the neighborhood to hunt for his targets,

calmly removed the weapons from the trunk of the car, and then fired multiple gunshots at a crowd

of people who were gathered with hisintended targets on a residential street. The defendant and his

accomplices even brought earplugs to protect their hearing during the assault. These actions, in our

view, clearly demonstrate that the defendant is a dangerous offender with little or no regard for

human life and no hesitation about committing a crime in which the risk to life is high. Morever,

the manner in which the defendant executed the attack supports a finding that his consecutive life

sentences are both necessary to protect the public from his further criminal behavior and reasonably

related to the severity of his offenses. We conclude, therefore, that the trial court did not err in

imposing consecutive sentences.

CONCLUSION

We conclude that the record supports the trial court’s imposition of consecutive sentences

on the basis that the defendant is a dangerous offender. Accordingly, we affirm the judgments of

the trial court.

___________________________________ 

ALAN E. GLENN, JUDGE