Tennessee Bar Journal
September 2009 • Vol. 45, No. 9
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Is Tennessee Going to Fix Its Death Penalty?The 2007-2008 Legislative Death Penalty Study CommitteeThe Survival of the Tennessee Death Penalty System Depends Upon Comprehensive Reform
Informed by the accumulation of examined experience since the death penalty was reinstated in Tennessee in 1977 and in light of the evolving standards set by the United States Supreme Court, beginning in 1976, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the process by which this state selects those it will execute is, ...
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Cover Story
An Odd CombinationVisitation at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for Unit 2, Death Row, is Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Physically that doesn’t overlap with the work-week but lately it has crossed some lines in my life. At work — as editor of this magazine and co-producer of the TBA’s daily electronic newsletter, TBAToday — I am surrounded by the constant flow of legal information, none of it having anything to do with me personally. I look at news releases ...
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Feature Story
Summary of United States Supreme Court’s 2008 Term
Opinions for Tennessee LawyersThe “first Monday in October” marks a new Supreme Court Term, but the Court’s workload never ends. After sorting through 8,851 filings[1] (7,132, criminal[2]; 1,719, civil), mostly petitions for certiorari, the Justices chose a relatively few “cert-worthy”[3] petitions for full review, and the Court issued about 80 formal “signed opinions” in its 2008 Term.[4] Written after lower court rulings, exten ...
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Feature Story
The Trials of Carl StillOn the night of Tuesday, May 3, 1910, two pistol shots were heard in Lonsdale, a community northwest of Knoxville. One fatally wounded Gilbert May, who died the next evening. Gilbert May (age 27) had been dating Mamie Miles (age early 20s). A neighbor of Miss Miles, Carl Still (age late teens), had a crush on her. He was mad at May for “beating his time.” He told the owner of a soft drink stand that “if May didn’t quit talking about him, he was going to have troubl ...
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President's Perspective
From TYLC to TBASCUS in the Blink of an EyeThe Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (TBA YLD) has just garnered an astounding number of first-place awards in the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (ABA YLD) Annual Awards of Achievement (AOA) competition for their outstanding work in Tennessee. At the ABA Annual Meeting held in Chicago in August, the TBA YLD placed first in the Service to the Public category (see photo, page 5) for their 4ALL Campaign for Equal Justice pa ...
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News
Recognition for Good Work
TBA’s 4ALL Program Named Best in State, High Marks from ABA YLDTSAE AwardsThe Tennessee Bar Association was honored with two awards July 31 from the Tennessee Society of Association Executives. The awards recognize excellence in all areas of association management, representing the best in the state. TBA received the “Associations Advance Tennessee” award, in recognition of the association's 4ALL campaign, and “Best Membership Recruitment or Retention Program,”
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People
Memphis lawyer Robert M. “Miles” Mason Sr., a frequent speaker on forensic accounting and divorce, has accepted a teaching post at the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts’ Forensic Accounting Academy. Presented seven times a year in various cities around the country, the academy is an intensive, five-day program that teaches forensic accounting techniques and methodology. Mason, who also is a certified public accountant, will speak on the laws relevant to expert witnesses
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Disciplinary Actions
ReinstatedThe following attorneys have been reinstated to the practice of law after complying with Supreme Court Rule 21, which requires mandatory continuing legal education:
James Louis Coggin, Memphis; and Joseph Dewey Hughes, Paragould, Ark.
The following attorneys have been reinstated to the practice of law after complying with Section 20 of Supreme Court Rule 9, which requires the payment of annual registration fees. They were suspended for failure to pay the 2009 fee:
Joseph Edward Beecham, N
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Book Review
Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and CourageBy Jeff Benedict | Grand Central Publishing | $26.99 | 416 pages | 2009
Author Jeff Benedict’s book Little Pink House is about what lawyers who practice eminent domain already know. Condemnation cases are about people rather than property. Little Pink House’s owner, Susette Kelo, is the perfect landowner client with a hardscrabble life. Her father abandoned the family; she endured teenage motherhood and two failed marriages. After strikin ...
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Paine on Procedure
The Need To Plead Affirmative DefensesCivil Procedure Rule 8.03 requires defense counsel to plead affirmative defenses in an answer. More precisely, counsel must “set forth affirmatively facts in short and plain terms relied upon to constitute” any listed affirmative defense. And the list is not exclusive, because it ends with: “and any other matter constituting an affirmative defense.” The list includes twenty defenses. Among those is comparative fault. When pleading this defense, counse ...
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But Seriously, Folks
It’s Football Time in Tennessee! (Are You Ready for Some Lawsuits?)As that noted graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law, John Ward, used to say, “It’s football time in Tennessee!” And as Hank Williams Jr. sings, “Are you ready for some lawsuits?" You read that right, John Madden breath! Autumn not only means football, but also football-related lawsuits. For example, for the last several years, the college football rivalry between my Tennessee Vols and the Alabama Crimson ...
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