Opinion ID: 2358953
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: STATE v. ELY

Text: During the early morning hours of December 3, 1996, intruders broke into the home of seventy-year-old William Bond and repeatedly struck him over the head with a brick, killing him. The intruders took several pieces of electronic equipment from Bond's home, including two televisions, a VCR, and a compact disc player. Within a few days, the victim's former step-grandson, Trinidy Carden, [1] was linked to the crime when he attempted to dispose of some of the victim's property. When Carden was brought in for questioning, he confessed to the crimes and implicated the defendant as the person who had actually killed the victim. At trial, Carden recanted his statement to the police. Instead, he claimed full responsibility for the crimes and claimed that the defendant was not present. On cross-examination, the State elicited the fact that Carden had already been permitted to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second degree murder. Furthermore, Carden admitted that both he and the defendant were affiliated with the A-town Mafia Gangstas, a club that operated within Anderson County. The implication of this admission was that as a member of the A-town Mafia Gangstas, Carden was honor-bound not to betray a fellow member. When the defendant was questioned following his arrest, he admitted to spending the night with Carden the night of the murder, but he did not acknowledge any involvement in the crimes. He stated, Me and Trinidy went up to the Bond house that night. We knocked on the door. No one was home. Take me to jail. Several witnesses linked the defendant to the murder of Bond. Wesley Powers testified that at approximately 3:00 a.m. on the morning of the murder, he received a phone call from the defendant requesting Powers to take him and Carden to Knoxville. The defendant told Powers he had broken into a house and knocked somebody unconscious. Although Powers declined to drive the defendant and Carden to Knoxville at that time, he did take them to Martha Wine's residence later that day where he saw a television and a VCR. While at Wine's residence, the defendant told Powers that he hit the victim with a brick. Martha Wine testified that the defendant, Wes, and Carden showed up at her house at approximately 5:00 a.m. on the morning of the murder. They had a TV, a VCR, and a CD player, and they asked her whether they could store them at her house. At that time, Carden told her that he and the defendant had beaten the victim with a brick. The following day, Carden admitted to Wine that he killed the victim. Jason Johnson, Carden's cousin, testified that three days after the murder the defendant had told him that he had hit the victim with a brick, and that he felt no remorse about the killing. Although two defense witnesses implicated Johnson as Carden's accomplice instead of the defendant, Johnson denied any involvement in the crime. At the conclusion of the proof, the State nolle prossed the charge of premeditated murder and proceeded solely on the charge of felony murder. Ely requested jury instructions on the lesser offenses of second degree murder, reckless homicide, criminally negligent homicide, facilitation of felony murder, and accessory after the fact. The trial court, finding that no lesser offenses to felony murder existed under the current statute, declined to give these instructions. The jury found the defendant guilty as charged of felony murder. On appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that accessory after the fact was not a lesser-included or lesser grade offense of felony murder. The court further held that, even assuming the other requested offenses were either lesser-included or lesser-grade offenses of felony murder, no error occurred because the evidence did not support an inference of guilt of any of these other lesser offenses. [2]