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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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Join your colleagues in the Tennessee bar on an exciting history tour of France, June 19-25, 2010. You will stay in charming three-star hotels as the group travels from Paris to Giverny, Caen, Bayeux, Honfleur and other Normandy locations, sampling French cuisine, culture and architecture. Highlights of the trip include the Normandy D-Day landing beaches, the Memorial Peace Museum in Caen, the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach, the Chateau of William the Conqueror, the famous Bayeux Tapestry, the island monastery Mont Saint-Michel, and the home and gardens of Claude Monet. Learn more about the trip or register now on TBALink, or watch a webcast about the trip to get detailed highlights and ask questions from tour leaders.

TODAY'S OPINIONS
Click on the category of your choice to view summaries of today’s opinions from that court, or other body. A link at the end of each case summary will let you download the full opinion in PDF format. To search all opinions in the TBALink database or to obtain a text version of each opinion, go to our OpinionSearch page. If you have forgotten your password or need to obtain a password, you can look it up on TBALink at the TBA's Membership Central.

00 - TN Supreme Court
00 - TN Worker's Comp Appeals
00 - TN Supreme Court - Rules
01 - TN Court of Appeals
05 - TN Court of Criminal Appeals
01 - TN Attorney General Opinions
00 - Judicial Ethics Opinions
00 - Formal Ethics Opinions - BPR

You can obtain full-text versions of the opinions two ways. We recommend that you download the Opinions to your computer and then open them from there. 1) Click the URL at end of each Opinion paragraph below. This should give you the option to download the original document. If not, you may need to right-click on the URL to get the option to save the file to your computer. 2) Do a key word search in the Search Link area of TBALink. This option will allow you to view and save a plain-text version of the opinion.

JAMES C. MCWHORTER v. ALLEN SELBY and CITY OF SPARTA

Court: TCA

Attorneys:

Petitioner/Appellant James C. McWhorter, Nashville, Tennessee, pro se

Lynn Omohundro, Sparta, Tennessee, for the Respondents/Appellees Allen Selby and City of Sparta OPINION FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY The facts in this appeal are not disputed. At all times pertinent to this appeal, Respondent/Appellee

Judge: KIRBY

This appeal concerns the return of seized property. In the course of a criminal investigation, the respondents seized personal property from the petitioner. After a year passed with no forfeiture proceeding, the petitioner filed a petition for the return of his seized property, pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated Section 39-11-709. The respondents filed a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment, asserting that they no longer had possession of the property. The trial court granted the motion. The petitioner now appeals. We reverse and remand, finding that the petition was correctly filed in the county in which the property was seized, that it correctly named as the respondents the parties who seized the property, and that the respondents were not entitled to dismissal of the petition on the basis that the respondents had transferred possession of the property.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCA/2009/mcwhorterj_111009.pdf

RAYMOND BAILEY v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

James M. Gulley and Deena L. Knopf, Memphis, Tennessee, for the Petitioner-Appellant, Raymond Bailey.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Rachel E. Willis, Assistant Attorney General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Abby V. Wallace, Assistant District Attorney General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: MCMULLEN

postconviction relief from his convictions for especially aggravated kidnapping, a Class A felony, and carjacking, a Class B felony. For the especially aggravated kidnapping conviction, he received a sentence of twenty-eight years at one hundred percent. For the carjacking conviction, he received a sentence of twelve years at thirty-five percent. These two sentences were to be served consecutively for an effective sentence of forty years in confinement. In his appeal, the petitioner argues that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because (1) trial counsel failed to challenge his dual convictions as violating due process under State v. Anthony, 817 S.W.2d 299 (Tenn. 1991) and State v. Dixon, 957 S.W.2d 532 (Tenn. 1997); and (2) trial counsel failed to investigate and call William Isom to testify at trial. Upon review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2009/baileyr_111009.pdf

CARRIE ANN BREWSTER v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Steve Sams, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Carrie Ann Brewster.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Clarence E. Lutz, Assistant Attorney General; Randall E. Nichols, District Attorney General; and Leslie Nassios, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: TIPTON

The Petitioner, Carrie Ann Brewster, appeals the Knox County Criminal Court's denial of her petition for post-conviction relief from her convictions for felony murder, especially aggravated robbery, and aggravated burglary. In this appeal, the Petitioner contends that the trial court erred in finding that she received the effective assistance of counsel. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2009/brewsterc_111009.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. TARIK ROBERTSON

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Randall W. Pierce (at trial) and Randall B. Tolley (on appeal), Memphis, Tennessee, for the Defendant-Appellant, Tarik Robertson.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; David H. Findley, Assistant Attorney General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Tiffani S. Taylor, Assistant District Attorney General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: MCMULLEN

The Defendant-Appellant, Tarik Robertson, was convicted by a Shelby County jury of observation without consent, a Class A misdemeanor. He received the maximum sentence of eleven months and twenty-nine days, with four months to be served in a county workhouse. On appeal, he claims: (1) the insufficiency of the evidence; (2) the trial court did not properly exercise its role as the thirteenth juror; (3) the State committed prosecutorial misconduct in its closing argument; and (4) the trial court erred in imposing both the length and manner of his sentence. Following our review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2009/robertsont_111009.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. RICHARD ELLIS STAPLETON

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

C.E. Bud Cunningham, Morristown, Tennessee (on appeal); and R. B. Baird, III, Rogersville, Tennessee (at trial), for the appellant, Richard Ellis Stapleton.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Matthew Bryant Haskell, Assistant Attorney General; James B. Dunn, District Attorney General; and Charles L. Murphy, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: TIPTON

The Defendant, Richard Ellis Stapleton, was convicted on his guilty pleas of attempted especially aggravated robbery, a Class B felony; especially aggravated burglary, a Class B felony; and two counts of facilitation of especially aggravated kidnapping, a Class B felony. The trial court imposed concurrent, Range I, twelve-year sentences to be served in the Department of Correction. In this appeal, the Defendant challenges the length of the sentences. We modify the sentences for attempted especially aggravated robbery and especially aggravated burglary to eleven years each and modify the sentences for facilitation of especially aggravated kidnapping to nine years each.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2009/stapletonr_111009.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. DELAWRENCE WILLIAMS

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Charles M. Agee, Jr., Dyersburg, Tennessee, for the appellant, Delawrence Williams.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Leslie E. Price, Assistant Attorney General; and C. Phillip Bivens, District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: GLENN

The defendant, Delawrence Williams, was convicted by a Dyer County jury of possession of .5 grams or more of cocaine with the intent to deliver or sell, a Class B felony, and assault, a Class A misdemeanor. He was subsequently sentenced by the trial court to fourteen years for the drug possession offense and eleven months, twenty-nine days for the assault offense, with the sentences to be served concurrently to each other and concurrently to his sentence in a federal case but consecutively to his sentence in another Dyer County case. The sole issue the defendant raises in this appeal is whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the convictions. Following our review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2009/williamsd_111009.pdf

County Commissioner Employed by the County

TN Attorney General Opinions

Date: 2009-11-10

Opinion Number: 09-175

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/AG/2009/ag_09_175.pdf

TODAY'S NEWS

Legal News
Politics
Supreme Court Report
Upcoming
TBA Member Services

Legal News

Death penalty debated on eve of scheduled sniper execution

More than 200 faculty members and law students attended Monday's debate at Vanderbilt between two leading capital punishment scholars -- a district attorney from Oregon and a University of Delaware professor of sociology and criminal justice. There was agreement of the hot issue on one point: No matter the punishment, crime victims' families don't get closure. Vanderbilt 3L Andrew Cunningham is credited with the idea to hold the death penalty debate. Organizers said they chose to hold the debate Monday because of today's scheduled execution of John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks in Washington D.C. that left 10 dead.

The Tennessean reports

Shelby district AGs move to 'vertical prosecution'

Last week, the Shelby County District Attorney General's office changed the way it handles the cases of family and spousal violence. It now assigns a single prosecutor to handle a particular case as it makes its way through the court system, a practice called "vertical prosecution." "One prosecutor or possibly a team of two prosecutors will handle that case from beginning to end no matter where it is in the system," District Attorney General Bill Gibbons said. "I think it's going to make a big difference in how those cases are handled."

LSC awards technology grants

The Legal Services Corporation has awarded $3.5 million in technology grants to LSC-funded programs, including a grant to develop a national web site for veterans, military personnel and families who seek help for their civil legal problems, LSC President Helaine M. Barnett announced today. For 2009, LSC has awarded 38 technology grants to 25 programs in 19 states. The grants were made through LSC's Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) program.

Politics

Campfield removed from game for Halloween mask violation

State Rep. Stacey Campfield was escorted from a recent University of Tennessee football game after a dispute with police over a Halloween mask. "He had violated the mask policy, was in the wrong section and was being argumentative and uncooperative," the police report stated. Campfield is running for the District 7 state Senate seat being vacated by Tim Burchett.

The News Sentinel reports

Shelby commissioners deadlocked in mayoral vote

Shelby County commissioners debated for nearly three hours and went through 24 rounds of voting Monday night before giving up on efforts to select a new interim Shelby County Mayor. Commissioners will now met again on Nov. 17 to see if the deadlock between candidates J.W. Gibson II and Joe Ford still exists.