Court Opinion

ID: 9862776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 02:08:20.194106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:32:22.555259
License: Public Domain

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT’S PETITION TO REHEAR
PER CURIAM.
The defendant, Curtis Jason Ely, has respectfully filed a petition to rehear the opinion of this Court filed on June 5, 2001. In his petition, the defendant alleges that due to particular wording used in its opinion, the Court may have characterized the offense of second degree murder as a nature-of-conduct offense and changed the nature of the State’s burden of proof on retrial. Upon request by this Court, the State has filed a response to the petition, and although it agrees that some language in the opinion may inaccurately characterize the offense of second degree murder, it believes that other changes are unwarranted.
We have previously recognized that second degree murder is a result-of-conduct offense, see State v. Ducker, 27 S.W.3d 889, 896 (Tenn.2000), and consequently, the mens rea required for that offense accompanies only its resulting harm, not the nature of the defendant’s conduct. Although we did not intend to depart from this reasoning in the present case, some statements in the opinion of this Court may admittedly indicate otherwise.
Therefore, upon due consideration, we conclude that the Defendant’s Petition to Rehear is well taken and should therefore be GRANTED. Accordingly, for good and sufficient reasons appearing to the Court, the opinion previously entered in this case on June 5, 2001, is hereby withdrawn, and the Clerk of the Court is hereby directed to file the amended and substituted opinion of the Court accompanying this Order. The judgment of this Court previously entered remains unchanged.
Costs associated with this petition are waived.