Court Opinion

ID: 9641513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:33:39.911713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.979944
License: Public Domain

GALBREATH, Judge
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent inasmuch as after a careful review of the record, I am convinced that the evidence does not sustain the convictions for first degree murder. Rather than set forth my reasons, I refer to those discussed elaborately in my dissenting opinions in Tooley v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 652, 448 S.W.2d 683, and Green v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 719, 450 S.W.2d 27, in which I reiterate the long standing principle laid down for us in numerous decisions of our Supreme Court that all murders, in the absence of proof of premeditation, are in the second degree. Witt v. State, 46 Tenn. 5.
The only evidence of how the victims were killed and the vital issue as to the state of mind of the killer at the time and immediately preceding the acts is found in the admissions he made to the police. Nothing in these statements afford any clue as to what motivated the terrible crimes nor the mental condition of the defendant. It is true that he went to elaborate lengths to conceal the crime, and this denotes a deliberate design to hide his guilt, but such strategems might understandably occur in an effort to cover up complicity in any crime. From the proof we are left with the plain fact that the defendant was very intoxicated and simply could not recall more than a scream and that he hit someone. If the jury disregarded the proof that he could not remember the killings, and accepted only his statement to the effect that he killed the two women as they had the right to do, we are left with nothing but the fact of the killings themselves and the subsequent efforts to avoid detection and the plain legal proposition that once the killing is established the law presumes second degree murder and the burden is on the defendant to adduce proof to lower the degree and on the State to prove circumstances so as to raise it. See Coffee v. State, 11 Tenn. 283; McClain v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 499, 445 S.W.2d 942.