Opinion ID: 1659460
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: statutory underpinnings of hale's conviction

Text: Prior to April 25, 1988, Tennessee's first-degree murder statute provided as follows: FIRST-DEGREE MURDER.  (a)(1) Every murder perpetrated by means of poison, lying in wait, or by other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing, or committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any murder in the first degree, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, kidnapping, aircraft piracy, or the unlawful throwing, placing or discharging of a destructive device or bomb, is murder in the first degree. (b) A person convicted of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life. (c) Murder in the first degree is a Class X felony. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-202 (1982). On April 25, 1988, the 1988 amendment to Tennessee's first-degree murder statute, known as The Scotty Trexler Law, went into effect. See 1988 Tenn. Pub. Acts, ch. 802, § 2 [3] . It provided that: It shall also be murder in the first degree to kill a child less than thirteen (13) years of age, if the child's death results from one (1) or more incidents of a protracted pattern or multiple incidents of child abuse committed by the defendant against such child, or if such death results from the cumulative effects of such pattern or incidents. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-202(a)(2) (Supp. 1988). When the trial judge instructed the Hale jury on the elements of this offense, as set out in the above 1988 amendment, he found that the words child abuse were not defined in the statute. He concluded, therefore, that the statute's mention of incidents of child abuse referred to the misdemeanor statutory offense of child abuse, which was defined as follows: Any person who maliciously, purposely, or knowingly, other than by accidental means, treats a child under eighteen (18) years of age in such manner as to inflict injury or neglects such a child so as to adversely affect its health and welfare is guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction may be fined not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000) or imprisoned for not more than eleven (11) months and twenty-nine (29) days or both. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-4-401(a) (1982). As Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-202(a)(2) (Supp. 188) was written at the time, the trial judge had no other alternative. The dissent argues, however, that the trial judge erred in charging the jury on the definition of misdemeanor child abuse. Based upon the need to find the statute constitutional and the legislative history of the child abuse murder statute, the dissent contends that the provisions of Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-202(a)(2) (Supp. 1988) must be read to refer not to child abuse, but to aggravated child abuse. The dissent correctly recognizes that Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-202(a)(2) (Supp. 1988) was enacted in response to the brutal killing of Scotty Trexler. In that case, the abuse suffered by the young victim clearly amounted to aggravated child abuse. After listening to the legislative debate on the bill to establish the crime of child abuse murder, however, we find it clear and indisputable that the General Assembly intended that any death resulting from child abuse, whether that abuse would constitute a felony or a misdemeanor, be punishable by death by electrocution. [4] For example, in the House debates, an amendment was introduced to clarify the language of the bill. The amendment's sponsor argued that juries needed to know the severity of child abuse, and that the Legislature means the abuse, the torture, the beating, and the ultimate murder of a child should be first-degree murder. In response, a representative who successfully argued for the rejection of the clarifying amendment implored his colleagues: I beg of you, those of you who are trying to adopt this amendment, please, for all of us, make sure we do not leave a loophole in some way to allow these people [child abuse murderers] to escape [the electric chair]. Still another representative urged his fellow representatives to pass the bill to make it easier to get a first-degree murder conviction on that type of crime. Moreover, the Legislature has since amended the 1988 statute to remove the requirement of child abuse and substituted the broader language of bodily injury, which eliminates the requirement of even a misdemeanor offense as a necessary predicate to a finding of first-degree murder. [5] Furthermore, the term child abuse, as used in Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-202(a)(2) (Supp. 1988), cannot legitimately be construed to refer to aggravated child abuse as then defined in Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-4-422. [6] The aggravated child abuse felony statute was adopted by the Legislature during its 1984 session. The Legislature is presumed to have knowledge of the state of the law on the subject under consideration at the time it enacts legislation. See, e.g., Equitable Life Assurance Co. of U.S. v. Odle, 547 S.W.2d 939, 941 (Tenn. 1977). More importantly, criminal statutes must be strictly construed against the state. State v. Goins, 705 S.W.2d 648, 657 (Tenn. 1986). Furthermore, as recognized in Key v. State, 563 S.W.2d 184, 188 (Tenn. 1978), quoting Richmond v. State, 171 Tenn. 1, 6, 100 S.W.2d 1, 2 (1937): Under the rule of strict construction, such statutes will not be enlarged by implication or intendment beyond the fair meaning of the language used, and will not be held to include other offenses and persons than those which are clearly described and provided for, although the court may think the legislature should have made them more comprehensive. Accordingly, if the 1988 General Assembly, in enacting the 1988 amendment, intended to incorporate the concept of aggravated child abuse into the first-degree murder statute, it surely could have done so. The Legislature, however, deliberately chose to make incidents only of the lesser misdemeanor offense of child abuse necessary predicates to a finding of first-degree murder in cases such as this. As a result, the trial judge based the jury's charge during the guilt phase of this trial on the misdemeanor child abuse statute, and charged the jury, in part, as follows: As used in these instructions `child abuse' occurs when any person maliciously, purposely, or knowingly, other than by accidental means treats a child in such a manner as to inflict injury or neglects such a child so as to adversely affect the child's health and welfare. He also instructed the jury that in order to convict Hale of first-degree murder, it must find that the State proved each prior incident of alleged child abuse beyond a reasonable doubt.