Court Opinion

ID: 9775297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:53:25.062153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:24.734321
License: Public Domain

BROCK, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in affirming the conviction of the defendants for first degree murder. I dissent, however, from the sentence of death, for the reasons expressed in State v. Dicks, 615 S.W.2d 126.
ORDER
Appellants, William Edward Groseclose and Ronald Eugene Rickman, have filed petitions for rehearing. These have been considered by the Court and are found to be without merit. The petitions accordingly are overruled.
In each petition it is urged that the Court overlooked the “proportionality review” required by Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) and by T.C.A. § 39-2406(c).
This matter was not overlooked. Near the conclusion of the opinion, the Court stated that by any standard of comparison, the facts and circumstances of this case justify the imposition of the death penalty. A case with facts so aggravated and shocking can scarcely be conceived, and no similar case or cases in which the death penalty has not been imposed in circumstances similar to those shown in this record has come to our attention.
The contention that the statutory aggravating circumstances used against ap*151pellants are void for vagueness and over-breadth was addressed by this Court at some length in its opinion in the ease of State v. Dicks, 615 S.W.2d 126, particularly with reference to T.C.A. § 39-2404(i)(5). The Court there sustained the constitutionality of the statute, and we are of the opinion that its application to the facts of the present case is consistent with the interpretation stated in the Dicks case, supra.
The petitions for rehearing and for stay of sentence are overruled without prejudice, however, to the right of appellants to seek reconsideration of a stay if and when a proper application for review by the Supreme Court of the United States is filed.
Mr. Chief Justice Brock adheres to the views expressed in his dissenting opinion in these cases and in the Dicks case, supra.
FONES and COOPER, JJ., concur.
BROCK, C. J., concurs and dissents.