Court Opinion

ID: 9776653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:41:35.150239+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:16.872404
License: Public Domain

REID, Chief Justice
dissenting.
I dissent. In my opinion, the evidence does not establish premeditation and deliberation or that the murder was committed during the course of a robbery, and as a result, the proof shows no offense greater than second degree murder. The jury found the defendant guilty of premeditated murder, felony murder, and armed robbery. The majority, arbitrarily, so far as the opinion discloses, affirms the premeditated murder conviction and reverses the felony murder conviction. The majority also finds evidence to support the aggravating factor that the murder was committed in the course of a robbery.
The evidence on which the defendant was convicted and sentenced to death is entirely circumstantial. It consists of the testimony of Regina Hayes, one of four witnesses described in the record as the defendant’s girlfriend. The record also shows he married the witness Sarah Proctor while he was in jail awaiting trial. The convicting evidence was Hayes’s testimony that, upon returning to the trailer she and the defendant occupied, the defendant told Hayes, “Sarge is dead,” .he told the victim “to go for his gun” and “to say his last prayer,” and then he “blowed his head off.” According to Hayes, the defendant also told her that he got “sixty-something dollars” off the victim. Taken as true, this evidence is sufficient to establish the malicious intent necessary to a conviction for second degree murder. But, without more, it is not enough to prove the necessary elements of first degree murder, i.e. premeditation and deliberation. There is no evidence of what precipitated the incident that led to the victim’s death. The day the victim was killed, the defendant and the victim had worked together on a well at a house owned by the defendant. There is no evidence of animosity or differences between the defendant and the victim and no other evidence as to the circumstances under which the defendant was killed. The Court can only speculate as to how the killing occurred, but speculation, of course, is not a substitute for proof. State v. West, 844 S.W.2d 144, 148 (Tenn.1992).
The majority casts the issue as one of credibility and disposes of that assignment with the observation that the jury by its verdict decided against the defendant. The issue is not credibility at all, but sufficiency of the evidence. There is no evidence on which the jury could find premeditation or deliberation. The trial judge’s summary of the incriminating evidence, quoted and approved in the majority opinion, is not proof and is not established by the evidence. The evidence, given its most incriminating meaning, shows nothing more than a John Wayne “go for your gun, pardner” and a resulting shoot-out. The evidence, though circumstantial, points to the defendant as the person who shot the victim, as the majority observes. It does not, however, prove first degree murder.
*71The State is not entitled to a presumption that a homicide is first degree murder. Indeed, if a killing is shown to be malicious and intentional, the law presumes that the offense is second degree murder, and in order to elevate the offense to first degree murder, the State must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the killing was “by means of poison [or] lying in wait,” or with deliberation and premeditation. T.C.A. § 39-2-202(a) (1982); State v. Brown, 836 S.W.2d 530, 543 (Tenn.1992); Witt v. State, 46 Tenn. 5, 8 (1868), overruled on other grounds, Campbell v. State, 491 S.W.2d 359, 362 (1973); Bailey v. State, 479 S.W.2d 829, 833 (Tenn.Crim.App.1972).
Even if the killing was premeditated, there is insufficient evidence that it was, in the language of T.C.A. § 39—2—203(i)(7), “committed while the defendant was engaged in committing ... or was attempting to commit” a robbery. (Emphasis added.) Robbery may have been the motive for the killing or the statement that he “got sixty-something dollars off Sarge” may have referred to some act unrelated to the shooting. The record simply does not establish that a robbery was accomplished. In order to convict on circumstantial evidence alone, “[a] web of guilt must be woven around the defendant from which he cannot escape and from which facts and circumstances the jury could draw no other reasonable inference save the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.” State v. Crawford, 225 Tenn. 478, 470 S.W.2d 610, 613 (1971). This standard of proof is required as to each element of the offense. Hardin v. State, 210 Tenn. 116, 355 S.W.2d 105, 107-8 (1962).
I also disagree with the majority’s modification of the law of privileged communication between husband and wife. The majority finds that the common law rule in Tennessee is “an anachronism,” and justifies its abrogation with the assertion that “the public interest in ascertaining the truth [in a criminal case] must outweigh any policy to promote marital harmony.” This “timely” rule, found by the majority to permit letters from the defendant to his wife to be admitted into evidence, stands in stark contrast to the rule heretofore honored by this Court. The policy consideration on which the rule has rested for centuries is well-stated in McCormick v. State, 135 Tenn. 218, 225, 186 S.W. 95 (1916):
“No public policy is sound which, in the name of public justice, invades the home and takes therefrom the wife as a witness against the husband, or the husband against the wife, and by means of the evidence of one consigns the other to the gallows, the penitentiary, or the jail. An increased number of convictions might result from such a policy, but at a cost which the public could ill afford. The home is the sanctuary of our civilization, and the increased number of convictions would not compensate for the homes destroyed.”
Id. at 225, 186 S.W. at 96 (quoting Norman v. State, 127 Tenn. 340, 355, 155 S.W. 135 (1912)). I would hold that the public welfare is better served by promoting marital harmony. It should be noted that upon the reduction of the offense to second degree murder, admission of the evidence would be harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt and would not require reversal of the conviction.
The majority’s comments regarding proportionality demonstrate a disturbing misunderstanding or disregard of the duty imposed upon this Court with regard to the review of capital cases. The statement that “It is neither necessary or appropriate to catalog pri- or cases in which the penalty has been death” disregards the plain meaning of T.C.A. § 39-13-206(c)(1)(D) and even the prior decisions of this Court, which, at least, have recognized the duty. State v. Harris, 839 S.W.2d 54, 77 (Tenn.1992) cert. denied — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1368, 122 L.Ed.2d 746 (1993) (“We have reviewed Rule 12 reports from trial judges submitted over the past fourteen years in all criminal trials for first degree murder in which life imprisonment or a sentence of death has been imposed.”) The majority merely restates the basis on which it concludes that the evidence supports the conviction, and even that recitation relies upon the trial judge’s unsupported summary of the evidence. As stated above, there is no evidence in the record of premeditation or deliberation. The trial court’s statement that the defendant “ha[d] determined to kill him” is blatantly conclusory, as *72is the statement that “during the course of the killing he robbed him.” The majority’s conclusion that “our review of the record corroborates that the evidence supports that summary” is equally without basis. The opinion then relies upon an aggravating circumstance gratuitously supplied by the trial judge to the effect that the crime “was heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” (T.C.A. § 39-2-203(i)(5) (1982)) even though that aggravating circumstance was not submitted to the jury and, of course, was not found by the jury. The circumstances of this killing, to the extent they are known, hardly place it “among the most gross and calloused homicides recorded in recent legal history.”
The proportionality review required by T.C.A. § 39-13-206(c)(1)(D) and determined by state and federal law to be critical in death penalty jurisprudence consists in this case of nothing more than the statement: “We do not find the death penalty to be excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the nature of the crime and the defendant.” As a mandated final protection of constitutional rights, this review is an abdication of judicial responsibility.
I am authorized to say that Justice DAUGHTREY joins me in this opinion.