Opinion ID: 1044002
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State v. Mellons

Text: In Mellons, the defendant was charged with two counts of second degree murder. The two victims had been riding in a car that the intoxicated defendant was driving and were killed when the defendant drove into a guard rail, causing the car to flip and land on its roof in a shallow creek. The trial court instructed the jury on second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter. The jury convicted the defendant of two counts of voluntary manslaughter. Mellons, 557 S.W.2d at 498. At the time of the offenses, manslaughter was defined as `the unlawful killing of another without malice, either express or implied, which may be either voluntary upon a sudden heat, or involuntary, but in the commission of some unlawful act,' id. at 499 (quoting Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-2409 (1955)), and was a lesser degree of homicide than second degree murder, id. [12] This Court concluded that there was no evidence to support the sudden heat element of voluntary manslaughter. Id. This Court also concluded, however, that the lack of evidence did not, in and of itself, require that the convictions for voluntary manslaughter be reversed, relying on Tennessee Code Annotated section 40-2520. Id. That statute provided that, [u]pon an indictment for any offense consisting of different degrees, the jury may find the defendant not guilty of the degree charged in the indictment and guilty of any degree inferior thereto. . . . Tenn.Code Ann. § 40-2520 (1955) (repealed 1979). Noting that instructions on offenses not supported by the evidence should be avoided, this Court nevertheless declared that, the giving of such an instruction, even though it results in conviction of a lesser included offense not supported by the evidence, though error, is not necessarily reversible error. On appeal, a conviction of a lesser degree of the crime charged, or of a lesser included offense, will be upheld, even if there is no evidence in the record to establish the technical elements of that crime, if the evidence demands a conviction of a higher degree of homicide than that found by the verdict, and there is either no evidence in support of acquittal of the greater crime, or if there is, the verdict of the jury clearly indicates that the evidence in support of acquittal was disbelieved, on the theory that the defendant was not prejudiced by the charge and the resulting verdict. Mellons, 557 S.W.2d at 499. Significantly, the Mellons Court nevertheless reversed the defendant's convictions of voluntary manslaughter [13] on the basis that there was reason to believe that the giving of instructions on voluntary manslaughter did prove prejudicial to the defendant. This was not a situation in which the defendant was guilty either of the greater crime charged or of no crime at all, so that the jury's verdict, finding him guilty of the lesser degree of homicide, could best be understood as an act of mercy of which he would not be heard to complain. Here, the jury would have been fully justified, under the evidence, in returning a verdict of guilty of involuntary manslaughter. That the jury chose to sentence the defendant to the statutory minimum for voluntary manslaughter suggests that they would not have found the defendant guilty of second degree murder if given the choice, as they should have been, between that crime and involuntary manslaughter. Under the circumstances, . . . the conviction of the defendant of the crime of voluntary manslaughter must be set aside. Id. at 499-500 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). The Court remanded the case for retrial on two charges of involuntary manslaughter. Id. at 500. In retrospect, it is difficult to discern the precise proposition for which Mellons stands. The proposition for which the majority below relied on it is, in fact, mere dictum. Mellons actually held that the trial court committed reversible error in charging a lesser-included offense not supported by the proof because the defendant was thereby prejudiced. Because the jury was instructed as to both voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, this holding presumes that the jury unanimously decided to convict the defendant of voluntary manslaughter (the greater of the two manslaughter offenses) and therefore did not consider the next-lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter. See State v. Davis, 266 S.W.3d 896, 908 (Tenn.2008) (recognizing that trial courts in Tennessee have for many years instructed juries to consider the next-lesser offense only after unanimously deciding to acquit of the preceding greater offense). Thus, the jury in Mellons did not consider a proper lesser-included offense because it was erroneously given a charge on a greater lesser-included offense that was not supported by the proof.