Court Opinion

ID: 9772839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:31:12.239013+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:48.750391
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON PETITION TO REHEAR
Defendant has filed a petition to rehear wherein he, “seeks amplification of the Court’s holding regarding whether the confession question ‘is dispositive of the case.’ ”
Defendant professes to be puzzléd at our direction to the Court of Criminal Appeals that it determine whether the admissibility of defendant’s confession is dispositive of the case, when, says defendant, this Court has addressed that question and answered *651it in the affirmative. The latter assertion is incorrect.
We held that the district attorney general’s office and the trial judge had agreed with defendant that the admissibility of the confession was dispositive of the case. That finding is one of the prerequisites that must be met before the appellate courts will consider the merit of the certified question. Implicit in defendant’s petition to rehear is the notion that the appellate courts are bound to accept as disposi-tive any certified question that the district attorney general and the trial judge agree is dispositive. That is likewise incorrect.
Before reaching the merits of a certified question, the appellate courts must first determine that the district attorney general and the trial judge have found the certified question to be dispositive of the case and then determine if the record on appeal demonstrates how that question is dispositive of the case. State v. Jennette, 706 S.W.2d 614, 616 (Tenn.1986). If the appellate court does not agree that the certified question is dispositive, appellate review should be denied.
The petition to rehear is respectfully denied at defendant’s cost.
HARBISON, C.J., and COOPER and DROWOTA, JJ., concur.
O’BRIEN, J., not participating.