Court Opinion

ID: 9524413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:52:34.117509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:09:57.693180
License: Public Domain

REID, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in affirming the verdict of guilty of premeditated murder and the sentence of death.
Four issues are before the Court—jury instructions regarding nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, the admissibility of expert testimony, the validity of arson as an aggravating circumstance, and the comparative proportionality review.1
*720Any error with regard to mitigating circumstances was not prejudicial.
As discussed in the lead opinion, the testimony of Dr. Roger Meyer as an expert witness was not excluded by the court. When the court advised counsel that any evidence “going towards state of mind that would create a defense or an excuse for this Trilling” would be allowed, counsel, without explanation, did not call Dr. Meyer as a witness. The error, if any, was not a legal error committed by the court.
I also agree that arson is a valid aggravating circumstance in this case, in which the defendant was convicted of premeditated murder. I would argue that the principle on which Middlebrooks is based would preclude the establishment of more than one aggravating circumstance with the same evidence,2 but that is not the situation in this case. Here, the facts that established arson of the vehicle were relevant and admissible evidence concerning the offense, not proof of another aggravating circumstance or an element of premeditated murder.
Although I think the procedure for conducting comparative proportionality review set forth in State v. Bland can be further developed, State v. Bland, 958 S.W.2d 651 (Tenn.1997) (Reid, J., dissenting), application of that procedure to the circumstances of the crime and the character of the defendant does not show the sentence of death to be disproportionate. Some of the eases in which the sentence of death was affirmed relied upon in the lead opinion are similar to this case. The absence of similar cases in which the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment may be explained by the egregious means whereby the murder was accomplished in this case.
Consequently, I concur.

. No issue is made regarding the sufficiency of the evidence to support the aggravating circum*720stances or the finding that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances. Tenn Code Ann. § 39-13-204(g)(l) (Supp. 1996).

. State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d 317, 352 (Tenn.1992) ("the constitutional deficiency is that the aggravating circumstance does not narrow the class, not that it duplicates the elements of the offense.”).